This Way

Note to Self:

You have been standing at the trailhead of your art practice a while now, reorganizing your supplies many times over and you keep looking for the map. There is no map. The path was always going to be made by walking it.

So here is your invitation, and it expires never: begin badly, on purpose, today.

Confidence does not wait for you at the trailhead. It catches up about four minutes in, once your hands take over and you forget to watch yourself. Nobody mentions that you don't actually lack confidence. It shows up when you get to the doing. That is the entire trick.

Bring the cheap paper, the kind you will not guard like an heirloom. Bring the questionable idea. Bring the part of you that has been quietly elbowing you for years. The muse, for the record, is famously unreliable and turns up only once you have already started without her.

I am walking with you. Out ahead sometimes, lost in the weeds other times, hollering back whatever I find. This is not a tour led by someone who has done it all before, but by someone with 50% doubts + 50% confidence but 100% willing. So gather up your art supplies and point yourself forward to take one inelegant step.

The trail starts under your feet the moment you move.

• Art is the trek.
• Curiosity is the compass.
• Generosity is the scout.
• Grace is the pace.
• Connection is the campfire.

Let's go.