The World Needs Your Art

I’m tired of writing. I think.

Well, maybe.

I recently posted on Facebook to see if anyone else is tired of writing too.

“I have dozens of blog posts in my writing queue but I’d rather just keep being superpresent and living my life instead of pausing for an hour or two to write about it. Anyone else ever feel like that?”

I got some . But I still let the question sit with me throughout the day.

I let it sit with me as I worked out in the morning. I let it sit with me in the shower. I let it sit with me as I got my hair cut. Damn, I thought about it a lot as I got my hair cut.

What if I just stopped writing? What if I just walked away and lived happily ever after? Who even reads this shit anyway?

What I came up with after a day of thinking though was:

The World Needs My Art.

Wait, I mean…

The World Needs Your Art.

 

Personal development books are essentially all the same. Here, let me sum up every personal development book I’ve ever read in eleven sentences.

1. Always tell the truth.
2. You and only you are responsible for your life.
3. Live in the present.
4. Do shit that scares you.
5. Learn to understand other people.
6. Do more of what you love.
7. Be grateful for what you have.
8. Ask for what you want.
9. Learn from the pros.
10. You are worthy of love.
11. Everything about you is already perfect.

There, no need for you to read another word of personal development again. And no need for any of us to write another book, article, blog post, or status update ever again.

In fact, just read Napolean Hill’s classic  a couple times through and you’ll be better off than 90% of your peers. It was written in 1937 and it’s still one of the best personal development books ever written.

And seriously, who are we to be writing about this stuff anyway? Napolean Hill spent over twenty years researching success, wealth, and achievement.

Twenty years ago I was in seventh grade.

Here’s the problem though. If we all had this attitude, then there would be no more new material in the marketplace.

Parents would recommend books to their kids. Friends would recommend books to their friends. Wives would recommend books to their husbands. But no one would want to read them because they were all written 80 years ago.

 

What if every band decided not to create music because they would never be as good as the Beatles or the Rolling Stones?

What if every artist decided not to paint because they would never be as good as Leonardo da Vinci or Pablo Picasso?

And what if every author decided not to write because they could never be as good as Tolstoy, Shakespeare, or Dostoevsky?

It would be a much less colorful, magical, and inspiring world.

So yes, the world needs your art.

We need you to keep writing.

We need you to keep singing.

We need you to keep dancing.

And we need you to keep showing us what makes you feel alive.

Because sometimes seeing your art is the only time when some of us feel alive at all.

So keep shipping baby.