Imagine…it’s easy if you try

most of the time when I tell people that I’m from alaska they say “Oh, why did you ever leave?!”

One man asked me “How come it took you so long to leave?”

“I couldn’t imagine a way to get out for a long time”

And that’s the way of it. If you can’t imagine, if you cannot concieve of what the next step is, you don’t take steps.

I know someone who wants to be a “public speaker.” I will be honest, I think of that as almost impossible. A public speaker? what? How does someone set out to *DO* that?

Reading over my blog, I see again and again how I am wrestling with how to be an artist. I am sure, so very very sure, that I will never make any money as an artist. So my current plan has been to find a way to fit art into my life in between making money.

Or maybe becoming independently wealthy.

On the other hand, I might be going about it the wrong way. As much as I hated my life in Alaska, I couldn’t imagine anything else at the time. I think back now and wonder how come I didn’t climb out the window and hit the road. I suppose it was a long walk to Anchorage.

But if I knew then what I know NOW, I would have found a way. It was not impossible.

So back to what I know now NOW, what could I do? How is it I really want to live my life? What am I doing, here? Could I imagine another way of doing and being?

What if I COULD be a public speaker? What if I COULD sell my art and make money?

…i wouldn’t need a lot…

One of the things I have learned to do to protect myself, a defense mechanism from a long time ago, is to arrange my art so that it didn’t take anyone else’s help. If I had to rely on someone else to get this stuff DONE, it wasn’t going to happen.

And just producing something, just producing a sentence or a melody, that was enough.

But I’m confident now that I can do sentences. I have ten years of sentences in my past. And that’s just since I started tracking it.

Now, I want more. I want an audience. I want a bigger audience. I want more than the people who happen to walk by. To be self-referential, I think Miriam needs to get her lute playing off a deserted alley and sell out stadiums.

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