IS BEING SELFISH OKAY?

Is Being Selfish Okay?

The picture is an etching of Rembrandt.

As I have said, if you do your work and keep doing it, then you should consider yourself to be an artist. But that, of course, is much harder than it sounds.

Somehow you will have to find at least ten hours a week, preferably twenty, when you can concentrate and not be interrupted. Not being interrupted in crucial. Studies have shown that it can take twenty minutes to return to your earlier state of mind after you have been interrupted. And if you are in the "flow" kind of creative thinking when you are interrupted, you may have lost the thread entirely.

Today a lack of interruption seems almost impossible what with cell phones and call forwarding etc., etc. Yet, like many things in an artist's life, it has to be dealt with.

To begin with, you will need to tell your family and friends that when you are working alone, you do not want to be disturbed unless it is a dire emergency. Naturally, everyone will assume that their minor problem is a major emergency but you will have to train them. This goes double for children who are used to getting what they want immediately and won't take no for an answer.

Getting people to let you have time to yourself may be your hardest task. Some people will tell you that you are being selfish which in a way you are. But in this case, when you stick up for your needs and your artistic time, selfishness is good.

There is nothing wrong with being selfish unless it is taken too far. We all know families where the father or the mother or an angry child dominates the lives of all the people around them -- which is selfishness taken to the extreme.

But sticking up for your genuine heartfelt needs is necessary and even healthy for both you and your family and friends.

Healthy selfishness lets you get what you want and then later you will feel refreshed and renewed so you can then give people what they need. As a psychologist pointed out, if you don't take care of yourself you won't be able to take care of others. And you won't be any good to yourself or those around you.

Next in your artistic work, you should find a place that you use exclusively. The ideal place, I think, is a very small detached building if you live in a place with a backyard. A small building can be put together for very little money. You might even use a tent. It has the advantage of letting everyone know that you are in a different place that they need to respect. Also returning to a familiar place designed just for your artwork can help put you in the mood for working.

If there is no such place, find an empty room in your house or your attic or your garage. Mark out your area and let it be known that this is your space and others are not allowed to infringe on it. This again can lead to some arguments, but it is essential.

Next, I suggest you try to work at about the same time each day, You could work on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from eight to eleven at night, for example. But you will need to carve out a chunk of time that you can look forward to. When you have done this for a while, you may find that you have all kinds of ideas that you want to work with that you have thought about in the days before. But now you can put them down during your "art time."

If you can set this up and get everyone to go along with it, you will get into a rhythm from week to week and month to month where ideas come to you and your work begins to flow. And this is the aim of doing your work in this manner.

Some people will try to do their art in spurts or when the opportunity arises. If that works for you, that's great. But I have found that you will not get the same kind of flow of ideas that working regularly gives you.

When you do your work regularly, you will be up to speed when a great idea suddenly hits you. If you work in spurts and you get a great idea, you may find you are a bit rusty with the mechanics of making that idea real. This is just as true for writers as it is for painters as it is for photographers as it is for musicians. You need to do work regularly so that when you are inspired you have the skills to take advantage.

And forgot about all that stormy "artistic personality" stereotype. Certainly, some artists are that way, but most are not. Your family and friends may find it a bit odd and perhaps say you are being selfish, but ignore that. You need to take care of yourself. I believe that people who can do their art regularly are better balanced and better adjusted because they have taken care of their inner need to express themselves.

Although many people will deny this, many of the demands of family, friends, neighbors, children, jobs are in themselves selfish. Which again is not necessarily bad, but everyone has their priorities.

So do your work and keep doing your work and you will get better at it as the composer Phillip Glass pointed out.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
Steve Jobs