The Daily Journal
By the Ocean
Hurricane on the Way 76 Degrees
6:16 a.m.
The easiest way is to just sell things people want. If you’ve never had a business that does that, know that it’s like magic!
Business people are supposed to do that. They are charged with the task of selling the market what it wants.
Artists do something different. They make what THEY want. Based on what they have inside that they want to get on the outside. Sometimes they sell that.
I seem to have a genetic anomaly that attracts me to business, the art of exchange, without the ability to do things just because other people want them. Eek.
I have to mix the two worlds. Like peanut butter and chocolate, they DO taste great together. Unlike peanut butter and chocolate, the marriage of art and business can require a huge amount of effort to make it work. Business is about the bottom line, about solving a problem at a profit. Art doesn’t care if we get anything done before noon. It’s here to express…on its own terms. At first glance, it often looks like there’s no way they could ever get along.
Even so, selling the market what it wants sounds like the most boring thing in the world to me.
So I don’t do it.
What do you even want? I have no idea. Guessing is a waste of time. I just make what I want to see.
And then I spend my days working to solve a marketing problem that I created:
Finding people who want what I have, which is what I wanted to make.
This is the skill artists COULD receive guidance to develop. But the Matrix can’t deal with artists, because they can’t be controlled. And that is dangerous. That’s why it’s engineered reality to provide those folks with as little positive feedback from the world as possible. If you destroy the imagination of the slaves, no one will care about art. No one will do it (it’s a waste of time). No one will buy it.
No one cares which path you choose here. Business, art, a hybrid. The important part is that YOU understand which one it is. Each one has its own rules. I don’t like either of them alone. From my perspective, I want business to mean something and my art to be useful. When that all happens at once…that seems exciting. Which is what I’m here to do. To bring that new way. So that people can do work they love AND be richly rewarded.
Instead of asking yourself which “box” you’d rather be in, which is what the Matrix trained you to do, how about you stop believing that your only choices are boxes that already exist?
Yes, the business gurus will tell you not to be a pioneer, that you should sell things people are already buying. Maybe you should. I don’t know. But so many of those guys have the kind of life I don’t want to have. So I’m a little resistant to follow their path.
I have my own. Discovering what it is isn’t a means to an end, IT IS EVERYTHING.
If you’re blind to the scenery, experience and value of the journey, you’ll get to your destination thinking you’ve made it when you’ve really just MISSED IT ALL.
Do it all your way. Do you really think you’re here to do something else?