Lately I've been thinking about the importance of spending time alone. Not just being alone in a room, but alone in your own little bubble. Just your thoughts, your vision, and your world. Putting your work/art/self online is a necessity these days if you want to make a small business out of it. This is lovely in some ways because it gives more people the opportunity to make a career out of their passion, but it can also be incredibly draining. As an introvert, the internet can get overwhelming to me. Sometimes I wish I could hide away and have no one observe what I do. But, at the same time I feel like I need to be posting in order to generate customers and sales. I love connecting with my customers and other artists through social media, but the constant access to other people's worlds is really overwhelming to me. I feel like we are constantly being bombarded by other people's opinions and point of view. It isn't natural to have access to so many people in one day.
Although hearing other people's perspectives and point of views is important and informative, I feel like too much of this can become troublesome. We haven't learned how to actively create boundaries with what we are intaking on social media. I start to feel drained and frustrated after scrolling on tiktok for too long. It becomes impossible to not compare your work to other's after getting sucked into scrolling for upwards of hours. I have noticed that in order to create from a place that feels "truest" to me, I need to kind of put blinders on and just focus on what I'm doing. I will always be influenced by trends, other artists, and outside things, but I like to think at the core my work is a manifestation of my own vision, something only I could create. That is the beauty of art. It is a reflection of the way someone sees the world.
I have been thinking about the playfulness and purity of creating as a child. You are making art just for you. Drawing, painting, and crafting up whatever your brain imagines. And not judging it! Art made by children has so much character to it because of this. I aim to create from this place. In order to do this I think it is important to spend some quiet time alone in your imagination. What does your dream world look like? What images make you feel lit up and excited? Sitting around and daydreaming is half of the process in creating. It's hard to access this part of you when you are constantly listening to and seeing what other people are doing. There is a time and place to hear from strangers online, but we need to make sure we are carving out more time to listen to ourselves.
