Mighty Oaks from Little Acorns… It’s all about the Follow Through

How many times have you started a new project- great idea, materials on-hand, maybe even a hungry audience in mind- only to find a few days or weeks later that it hasn’t gone anywhere? That many?! Yup. Me, too.

There’s a simple phrase that will inspire all those half-finished projects to become finished ones, which in turn become the objects or ideas that inspire you to take the next step on your creative journey. It’s “follow-through”. The only real way to create art, change, or anything else in your life, is to follow through.

I have always believed that in life, what we do is what we want to do. What we actually put our time into, rather than what we say we want to put our time into, is the evidence of our commitments. Sometimes we have to choose, consciously, deliberately, how we spend our time.

One of my closest friends from college professed he wanted to be a great sculptor. In fact, he was a great sculptor, during college and graduate school. After those years, however, while he proclaimed he wanted to sculpt, he spent his time in other ways: Bike-riding, hanging out with friends, just “living” in general. He was enjoying his time, but he wasn’t using it to make art.

Letting our passions run dry can happen to anyone, especially when we leave an environment designed around them (college, a supportive peer group) and move into something less structured, like Life. This is the time we need to shake ourselves awake! We must choose our commitment to creativity. Life will get in the way. We can count on that. But it’s the seeds we plant now, then nurture in small ways every day, that grow into life’s tall trees.