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The Reason Most Artists Will Never Share Their Talent With the World (And Why They’ll Be in Their Deathbed, Dreading All the Art They Didn’t Create)

sharing your art MET

I don’t think I’ve ever talked on here about one of my favorite feelings in the world.

Granted, I share the dazzling sensation with every artist that ever lived.

But I won’t let a mere similarity or the indication that my feelings aren’t special stop me from enjoying it. 

Plus, I found the “angle,” the one thing that makes this piece different from others like it on the internet.

Having your work seen

Earlier this week, I sat down with an old friend. After a glass of wine, or three, she got to talking about my writing and how much she enjoyed it. She went on to tell me about her favorite of mine, Compassion Fatigue. It deeply resonated with her and it related to her day-to-day life as a healthcare worker.

Now I’m not one to invade others’ privacy by publicly sharing their stories. 

I wanted to mention how amazing it feels to have your work and time and energy, acknowledged, appreciated, loved.

We are social creatures, after all. We don’t have a choice but to care:

  • for how other people perceive us,
  • what they think of us, and in this case, our work.

The, sometimes painful, creative sharing process

The feeling of creating something with your hands, or mouth, or whatever (mouth referring to singers, just FYI), and putting it out there in the real world and online world is a wiiild roller coaster.

Artists struggle for years to admit they have a crush on their passion. Then they struggle with dedicating their time to it. Then another struggle- getting to the point of feeling comfortable enough, or just reckless enough, to share it with others.

Of course, some people are the exception. We’ve seen our fair share of artists, who have absolutely no problem sharing, oversharing, and talking our ear off about their singing career, or whatever path it is they’ve chosen. A lot of times these people are painfully confident, to their detriment. They focus more on looks and technicalities, than on their craft and perfecting it.

And that’s they suck and why you hide their stories on Instagram because it all feels too cringey to witness. These overly confident types aren’t what I’m referring to. 

I’m sharing this for the perfectionists and those who might end up on their deathbed, never having created a thing, for fear of it not being good enough.

Being enough and respecting our talents

In books about artists, from artists to artists, it’s often joked around that the worst thing that could happen to your work once you publish it for others to see, is not for it to be disliked, hated, or even torn apart artistically and critically. 

Artists’ worst fear is for their work to be ignored.

The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. 

Maybe coming from the infamous Oscar Wilde quote:

“There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”

Bad publicity is good publicity.

These variations of the same saying have been thrown around for years. Artists cling to them with their lives, often not sharing their work simply because of fear of refusal or being ignored.

In a world where artists believe their art needs pain to be born, and that you have to be in a permanent state of despair to create artistic masterpieces, it’s a revolution to choose to love your work.

It’s a revolution to find joy and take pride in it.

It’s a revolution to share your work, no matter how terrified you are, how scared of rejection, or of thinking what it would be like if you shared your gift with the world, and the world actually loved it.

Create your own self-fulfilling prophecy

A lot of people carry on their lives for years, putting their passion or talent in the back of their head, in a dark alley in the crevices of their mind, forgotten, unattended.

The sociopsychological concept of a self-fulfilling prophecy states that our predictions or expectation become true, just because we believe they will and we engage in behaviors aligning with our expectations, turning them into reality.

The stories we tell ourselves matter.

If you believe you will fail, you will engage in unhealthy behavior to sabotage your success.

For most people, sharing their work and having others like it, love it even, is scary because it challenges their idea of self.

You would have to completely change the narrative you tell yourself – the one of being a failure, unworthy, mediocre, unoriginal, and whatever is your poison of choice to keep your art hidden from us.

The creative process is the sweet spot between divinity and humanity. So share your work. If you want people to tell you how they feel about your art, share it.

If the Universe granted you with a talent, a passion, a deep burning desire to do something, to not do it would be treason to the Universe and to all 7 billion of us who use different types of art to carry through our lives, who’ve been waiting for someone who writes like you, someone who paints like you, someone who creates something ultra-specific, extra special just like the one you have in mind.

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