I don't think of myself as an artist.

A creative person, sure.  I have creative skills, and I solve problems with creative thinking.  I think of myself on the craft side of the craft vs. art continuum, and that's okay.  My work doesn't make any sweeping statements about the human condition in this place and time, it just tries to bring useful and attractive objects and places into being, that weren't there before.  I draw and paint and weave and embroider and sew and knit and write and
calculate and imagine…and all these skills come together into objects
that are sometimes clothing, and sometimes buildings, and sometimes
dinner.

I'm really familiar with "artistic success", since my skills are taught by artistic types.  I know what it feels like to sit down to work and remind myself that my work doesn't have to "mean" anything, it's okay as it is, solving someone's problem.

Today I found Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk, and
she's brilliantly confronting the myth of artistic success.  I'd want
all my friends to watch this, even if you don't think of yourself as a creative type.  I found it via a favorite blog, "this artist's life".

She recaps the Renaissance idea as: "let's put the individual human
being at the center of the universe, above all gods and mysteries, and
there's no more room for mystical creatures who take dictation from the
divine."

(Those mystical creatures would have been the Roman
"genius" or Greek "daemon", sprites that live in the walls of a
creative person's room, and who whisper ideas to them.)

"For the
first time in history, you find people referring to someone as BEING a
genius, rather than HAVING a genius.  And I gotta tell you….I think
that was a huge error."

"Allowing one mere person, to believe
that he or she is the vessel, the font, the essence or the source, of
all divine, creative, unknowable eternal mystery is just a smidge too
much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche.  It's like
asking somebody to swallow the sun."

"What now – can we go back to some more ancient understanding of the relationship between humans and the creative mystery…?"  She makes the compelling argument, via her own experience and that of other bona fide artists, poet Ruth Stone and musician Tom Waits, that one can separate oneself from the power of the creative idea, the genius, so as to be kind to oneself, the mere and very frail human being.

I might watch this everyday for a while.