The creative lives a helpless life. As an artist, I find more and more that it's less about making images than it is about managing fear. The truth is when you are sitting there trying to start a new piece of artwork it's not lack of ideas or skills to pull them off that stops you from making work. 99% of it is the uncertainty that you can make the next piece better than the last one. That your best work is behind you.

I go back to my copy of the Hagakure by Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

It was a Samurai manual for young men written in the 1600's that lays out how to act as a good servant to one's lord, like being a good employee to your boss. I have no boss, so I use the metaphor of my artwork being the leader I serve.

The Hagakure is obsessed with death and the Samurai's code of living that was the way back then. I read it as my duty to making the work I need to make, death translates to me as taking risk and facing fear. It's a short book, but really he nails the point of the book on the first page. In the following quote, change "death" to "facing your fear" or "risk" and you get how this could be useful.

"The Way of the Samurai is found in death. When it comes to either/or, there is only the quick choice of death. It is not particularly difficult. Be determined and advance."

It's not particularly difficult. But I wake up everyday with the choice to face fear and take risks or roll over go back to sleep. And everyday I make a choice whether I know it or not.

Joseph
www.officesuppliesincorporated.com