Today’s an important day, friends!
It’s the one you’re living in, it’s the one you’ve got to work with, and it’s all you need.
If I had a dollar for every time I disavowed my work, body, art, social skills (I was the kid who cried when strangers talked to her), relationships, etc.—giving up on them because they didn’t match the ideal version living in my head, I’d have so many freaking dollars.
I keep seeing my friends do this to themselves, too. Either we write off our creations because they’re messy and “too” far away from what we think they should be, or we just waste a lot of time between the moment we generate an exciting idea and the moment we finally execute it optimally, wishing the hard part would be over and we could magically arrive at perfection.
- Nothing works like this.
- The messiness isn’t just unavoidable, it’s also a necessary part of the creative process.
We need a certain amount of chaos to innovate.
If we’re going to arrive at a new way of looking at the world (which is what art does), we have to shake things up, jolt ourselves into challenging territory, get ourselves into situations where we truly have no idea what’s coming next or how we’re going to come up with a solution.
And what if, during these moments where we feel a hundred thousand miles away from our goal, we not only didn’t give up on ourselves but also started to actually enjoy the haphazard manuscript, fumbling handstand, muddy canvas, or the sketchy business plan—because that’s what our life is right now, and it’s not going to last long anyway.
What then?
Good things, I think.
Photo by David Cova
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Founder of The Get Down, Tasha Blank lives in service of Dance, which, when done real, is the quickest path to love in the here + now. She creates events that disrupt the status quo by injecting incredible beats with the intention to let wild our most liberated badassery. Her DJ sets meet you in the moment, and invite you on a physio-sonic trip into a newer, bigger you. Her weekly emails deliver extraordinary beats to thousands of music-hungry dancing maniacs. Sign up at tashablank.com.