So here’s how I like to create art: 
Exactly my way.
The last session I picked an art project (a webinar and course from my book) and started to research all about how to do it.
I got discouraged
And more discouraged
Until I was so overwhelmed I binge watched tv reruns.
I knew I was running away but I needed to not face it.
I heard Krista Tippett interview Elizabeth gilbert today. And Gilbert talked about creation being for its own sake
Side note: I am cynical about Elizabeth Gilbert because I am very envious of her success. Why her? My stuff is on par with Eat Pray Love. Why not me?
And I heard her talk about defending her art. Why create? And I remembered my tizzy about Simon Sineks “what is your Why?” And how I felt as though I’d been depantsed and my creativity was not good enough. Because I didn’t have a Why.
Gilbert gave me back my why. 
Because I can! 
I have no control over whether people will pay me for my art. That’s never stopped me before.
I know exactly how to make the course. And now that I give myself permission to do it exactly my way, it feels light again
The muse never promised me an audience. I’d like one, but I wouldn’t sacrifice future creativity for an audience for my past creations.
Creating makes me happy. That’s my why. Complicatedly, frustratingly, backbreakingly happy.
I might never find a big audience.
Which is frustrating (see previous comment)
People would be better off if they consumed what I produce.
And people often choose things that make them worse off
Nothing I can do about that
I’ll just go my art my way

Off to seek my fortune–it’s a fairy tale phrase. One of my all-time favorite movies “The Princess Bride” begins with the romantic hero Wesley goes to do that exact thing.

It still happens, I think. One way or they other, we are seeking our fortune.

I’m not sure when this quest-phrase was overtaken by “find myself.”

I know it was popular in the 1960s. Flower children ran away to San Francisco to have be-ins.

We are all looking for ourselves, it seems.

I know I lose myself often and quickly. As I immerse myself in some new environment or project I lose my borders and take on what I see the group needs as my own need.

Immerse is the right word for it. I don’t realize for quite some time how I have merged with something that is not me so completely.

I recall this experience vividly when I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. It was a book. It was the story of someone else. And I found myself feeling depressed and hopeless as I read her story.

Where did my borders go?

This definitely happens with friends, family, work and other social group.

Heck, it can happen with the news.

I have found myself wrestling with a mood or a state of mind for ridiculous lengths of time before shaking myself to the realization:

It wasn’t even me.

It’s not always easy to rediscover the difference between myself and my circumstance.

It makes sense that people might need to leave their circumstances completely to “find themselves.”

One of the things I love best about fairy tales is their uncomplicated lack of psychology. Fairy tale heroes do not have inner voices. They take external action. They seek their fortune, an external pursuit.

Our new quest to find ourselves has appeared only in the last hundred or so years. It seems our fortune–meaning our wealth and our fate–is what we find inside our hearts and souls. To seek our fortune, if we are so blessed, is to find ourselves.