In the months since I graduated from college, I find that some of my belief, enthusiasm and knowledge has slowly drained away. I graduated with a BA in Visual Art feeling very confident that I could and would become a sucessful artist and would make a living off of my art. While I still dreamed of doing this, I allowed myself to be influenced by the unbelief of others. Almost anyone I meet has no great oppinion of the chances of making a living on an art degree; many of these people have urged me to do something else, even before I left school, these people were not out to get me but on the contrary were worried about me. I have found that it might be easier to face people who wish you ill than it is to face those who love you and worry about your well being and I've been caving a little and begun to wonder if perhaps they're right. I've prayed to find out if maybe I really should be doing something else with my life, begining to despair of my dreams but each time the answer has been that art is my path in life.
I had made great plans for myself when I left school, of how my life would be, but I once again forgot that God's ways are not my ways and that he generally has a better plan in store for me than I have for myself, even if it is a longer or harder way that I would have planned for myself. When I was in high school I planned on being a writer, and that as my desired school did not offer a creative writing major I would simply obtain a degree in English with a creative writing emphasis, I also planned that I would minor in art. As my senior year progressed I found that I was miserable in my English class and that my art class was my favorite class and thus switched my major to art and vowed that I'd minor in English instead. The minor never happened and one of my first art teachers changed my life by showing me a whole world that I'd been unaware of previously. The above mentioned art teacher became my mentor and not only taught me to improve my skills and to make art that was real and meaningful and gave me a succinct definition of art (something no other teacher before had been able to give me) but this teacher also gave me hope of making a career out of art and taught me that it was completely possible to support myself by my art. This teacher did not need to teach in order to make his living, like so many other teachers, this teacher drove a porsche.
I was able to take the required class: Business Practices For Artists, from this mentor and he had us read Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The book tells the tales of many successful people and invites the reader to utilize the book to join those individuals. Now when reading this book for my class I think I must have been less than convinced because I remember that reading it took far longer than it needed to and that I was a bit embarrassed to be reading a book of such a title, although I don't know quite know why, I suppose I didn't want to seem like I was a gopher in a get rich quick scheme or something like that.
I started reading the book again today, I've been praying and fasting for help in my art career and I think the idea to read this book again was a prompting. In musing why the book didn't seem to have worked for me the last time I was reminded of the story of Moses putting a snake on his staff in order to heal people who'd been bitten by the flying, fiery serpents. While looking at a snake on a stick seems like a fairly simple and easy way to get healed, there were people who refused to look upon the snake and died of their bites. I might have been one of those people who refused to look. So I'm reading the book again and I'm going to go for it this time, it certainly can't hurt and it could very well help.