Working from the inside out

At the moment I am following my heart and making all sorts of stuff. I am pulling on all the clues that I have found over the years and giving permission to myself to make all sorts of stuff and post. But then very quickly I start thinking about results. I come across posts from people like Jack Butcher and Chris Do who are talking about two things.

Firstly, nobody cares about what I can do. They only care about what I can do for them. Secondly, having a focus and niching down. Which are both valid points. They both make sense to me as well. And even from business and marketing point of view I understand them as well. But what I am going to do with this thing inside me that wants to do things his own way. It keeps telling me to keep going with what I am doing. Explore and experiment. I feel if I start doing those things, I would look and sound like others. I feel I have something inside that needs to be unearthed. That would only happen through free flowing and creating freely. Through play and experimentation. I don’t know. You know it is something that I can not put into words. Even when buying a pair of pants, I can not articulate what I exactly want, but I know it when I see it. This is the same way.

I am moving, creating freely at the moment. I am building, updating and refining things as I go along but I am not sure what it is going to be. All I know is the step by step ideas and creations. I make something that speaks to me and then I share it. I share something that I have made many years ago that still speaks to me. And then I move onto the next thing. It would be great to know the result now. It would be great to know the final result and have a refund look and audience now. But it is not like that. I need to walk the walk. Step by step. That’s why I called it a practice, because I wanted to do exactly this. To write, design, edit and post everyday. To develop muscles for expression in different mediums.

It is crazy how difficult and repetitive this feelings and thoughts can be. I keep getting overwhelmed by the expectations of results, following and praise. But I know I would not be happy. It might sound arrogant. I don’t know. Am I just too selfish? maybe. But the ideas of creating work based on what others need or want. What the market agrees with or what makes the algorithm happy doesn’t not appeals to me one bit. It is not why I am doing this. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with any of those things. It is what is called business. Of course good business is serving others. Good business is listening to the market and algorithm. But that’s not where I am. I need to express myself through this work. I have too. Figuring out the service, business and marketing of it would come afterward. It would be one of those things that I feel would become apparent while I am doing what I am doing.

Operating any other way confuses me. I loose myself and don’t know what to work on next. I get stuck on the right thing to do. What is the right strategy? and I freeze. But the internal compass is always active and knows. Even when I don’t know. It always have a direction and next step to take. I make on that basis.

Doing work this way requires enormous amount of faith and patience. Which I sometimes don’t have. I get scared and tired some times. But I have not been able to operate any other way so far. So for now this is how I am doing it. I am working from the inside out, rather than the other way around.