Make Good Art

This post was actually supposed to be about my new 'no-grain' diet. For someone with absolutely no self-discipline. This diet was one of the toughest things I've had to do, and I was extremely proud of it. Well, this definitely warrants a blog post. I've tried it for exactly seven days, and I wanted to give an update about what I did right and what I didn't and whether it's working or not. For the record, I feel good, and I am going to continue. But then, I stumbled on to this video:



It's about 20 minutes long, but I'd recommend it to anyone who has felt like doing something in the arts.

Anyone who knows me fairly well, knows that I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I read a short story collection of his by chance 6 years ago and fell in love with his words, and I've pretty much read everything he's written. Except for the Sandman series. I haven't read even one of those. I'm not sure how I didn't watch this earlier. If you read the comments below this video, they all write about how they watched this video at the time that they needed to. And, I guess that's what happened to me.

For the last few weeks, I've been feeling really disinterested at work. It's not that I'm unhappy, but I'm not particularly happy either. I wanted to quit, but then I realised that I wanted to buy a new computer, and renew my gym membership and maybe save some money for an expensive holiday. And, so I wanted the job for that. For money. And, when Neil spoke about not doing things for money, it was like he was talking to me.

I've mentioned before that I'm not an ambitious person. And, I'm not honestly. Did I imagine I'd be working in communications for a singles network? No, I didn't. But, do I want to be VP of Marketing at some corporation. No, I don't want that either.

While I watched this video, I kept thinking about, what is the one thing that I want to do that will make me happy? At first, I thought there wasn't anything. You know, maybe open an animal shelter? But then, I remembered the writing. I've always wanted to be a writer. Always. As I grew older though, I convinced myself that I wasn't good enough. I'm not good enough to become a published writer because my writing is amateurish and sloppy. But, you know something? The only way to get better at this is to start practising. My counselor told me the same thing. My creative writing class instructors said the same thing.

I think I keep waiting for a sign. Maybe they'll fire me. Maybe I need to quit. Maybe I'll get married and move cities. Maybe I watched a video of my favourite author telling me to do my favourite thing at the right time. I'll take that sign.