Make art for yourself
The rest is largely not up to you.
Last weekend while my little potato was away, I made the most of the quiet by eating, sleeping, binge-watching Workin’ Moms and in general catching my breath.
In between all of that, I had a day and a half of hyper-productivity and… drumroll… finished editing Torts! *SCREAM*
Another shout-out to Thomas for providing me with such detailed comments and such a wonderful foreword. I am now firmly of the belief that comments = someone engaging deeply with the material = dedicating their time and care to your baby = one of the great kindnesses in the world.
How many YEARS did that take? Too many. I think I was done the first draft of Torts in like 2019. And even now, it still has to be finalized and published which means it will be a couple more weeks yet before it makes its way out into the world. I keep trying to remind myself that all good things in this world take time to build. I do feel like Torts is my best book yet and that I am getting better at making them. I hope it translates on the page but even if not, I feel the immense pride in my heart and that’s what matters.
This week has been long and exhausting. Every week is long and exhausting but this week really took the cake. On top of my boss being fired (last Monday), this week my work husband tendered his resignation. I am thisclose to quitting my day job. My brain feels like complete mush because the churn at the day job is making minced meat of me.
My instinct is to just quit and run away as fast as I can, even if I know that this would just cause me even more instability. In an effort to grow as a person and not take such extreme measures in moments of crisis, I have decided that to not make any rash moves. This means that I am going to stick it out at my day job until I go on leave in April. Then I’ll have about a month to take a break and figure stuff out.
The older I get the more I realize that so much of our lives is outside of our control. What other people do. The world at large. The arc of time. All of it, outside of our control. To means this means that I should not be wasting my time trying to control things that are clearly outside of my control. I should be focusing on the things within my control, and my art is one of those things.
Rick Rubin (in an interview that my life coach shared this week) said that we make art for ourselves. We have to. It has to be that we make it for ourselves and if someone else likes it, that’s a bonus. It’s hard to make art for someone else. I mean I can’t speak for others, but this absolutely feels true for me.
So I am continuing to make my legal picture books because I find joy in making them. I am making them for me. Whether anyone else cares, that’s outside my control and a waste of my time to worry about it. Making them fills my own cup and so I will continue to make them, even if no one ends up reading them. The point is just that I had fun making them. Once Torts is done, I will be moving on to wrapping up my Canadian Tax Law Picture Book. I am looking forward to it.