Dear Artists,

I’m so happy to share a letter with you today, and spent too much time overthinking how to get it right and get a clear message across. These first few drafts included a voice memo in my commute with a cold where I thought my voice sounded kind of sexy and I ended up yelling a bunch because I got so into my message and coughed too much. So, no. So then I tried to do a work around where I played that recording on my phone to talk to my computer using dictation, so I didn’t have to type, and felt like a genius as I watched this happen! But the editing didn’t work. No! Lastly, I tried to record something in the car after my son’s soccer game last night, before picking up a Happy Meal, and desperately needing to pee. Again, this didn’t work, too rambly. Which leads me to typing this up the old school way -- which I should have done in the first place.

Want to know what my message is today? DOING THE WORK.

Yes. You have to do the work. And sometimes, the work you need to do is what you’re most trying to avoid. We procrastinate, we make excuses. We rationalize. Fear and doubt creep in. It’s scary. It can also be intoxicatingly exciting, and then turn to an endless stretch of mundane later. It ebbs and flows, but it’s the work that MUST be done to move forward.

Don’t know what you want to paint next? DO THE WORK.

Can’t see beyond the bend of the road in your life and trying to figure it out? Yup. Do the work. You’ll figure it out along the way.

There are no shortcuts. There are no hacks. It’s up to all of us to have the moments alone – sitting with our thoughts or words or ideas, and slog or flow or coast through. Friends and people can help along the way, but it’s ultimately up to us. I think we can work together, meet up for a bit, work parallel, and sometimes overlap – but the big work, facing our fears, doubts, pushing past the unknown, getting through the other side – ultimately, I think that’s a solo effort. But one that is DAMN WORTH IT and having friends along the way who get it and can nudge us, egg us on, believe in us when we can’t see it ourselves – those are the people you want along the way.

So what is the work? What the hell do you even mean?

Well, the work is whatever you need to do to figure out or start whatever you need or want to do. That sounded a little weird, so here’s an example. If you want to paint better, you need to paint! Paint more. Make a bunch of crappy paintings, make some good ones, make some that you wake up the next day and are pleasantly surprised, and some that feel like a walk of shame once the light of day hits. Hah. And newsflash, you don’t have to show everything on the internet. Make work for yourself, make work to share, make work that feels a little vulnerable, make work that makes you high five yourself after you’ve pitched or completed or done something that took some chutzpah, sisu (a Finnish word, look it up), and grit.

Realize when you need to learn something new, and when you’re learning to avoid the work. Like researching learning to avoid the work. As much as I love a new class, or reading a book, or researching artists I love – sometimes that can be avoidance of doing the work you need to be doing. That stuff is fine and wonderful – as long as you’re also doing the work. Don’t research the crap out of learning how to make pattern designs and improve that you don’t actually get the pattern design out of your damn sketchpad and completed in the computer program! I’m raising my hand in my car where I’m recording this). My painter / former art professor husband (www.mikeast.com) gently pointed this out to me on a memorable and enlightening walk to the playground and it floored me.

“But I thought I WAS doing the work?!”

He said, “Marissa, if you want to be a pattern designer, you need to complete the patterns from start to finish in the way it’s meant to be, and that’s how you’ll get better. Not by practicing more – but by doing the work I was avoiding. Most likely out of fear. Fear of not being good enough, or it not being right, or it not being what I wanted it to be. But, anyway – avoidance and fear.

So you see, this is really a letter to Marissa so I can read this when I forget. Translate what YOU want to do to anything else. Want to write better? Write more? Record videos for Instagram or get comfortable talking on a camera? Then practice and share!  It gets easier! Stop researching and listening to random people that may be great marketers and influencers, but might not know about YOUR ART!

Hell, I don’t even think you need me to tell you this. Who am I but some random lady that told you she had to pee in a parking lot in the first paragraph on a podcast piece? I have no idea what I’m doing half the time either, but I’m not going to let it stop me while I figure it out. And I don’t think you should either. YOU know what you need to be doing. I think we all do. We just forget and look to someone with more credibility or followers or whatever it is that gives them the validation we aren’t giving ourselves. So my answer to that? Uh huh, yup. You know it. Go do that work.

And if you’re being too hard on yourself, this is coming from a woman that is typing this in her bed with a baby sleeping on her legs at the last minute because somehow she was doing the WRONG kind of work herself. (And I said I wasn’t going to ramble, but I digress). We all forget sometimes. More high fives to yourself and less grief, please?

Big hugs and lots of love,

Marissa

P.S. I should have just typed this out in the first place. That’s the ONLY way I can write…no shortcuts in this doing of the work! But I may try the dictation one more time, you never know…xo

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