What's the one red flag you saw in a gallery and ignored anyway?
I'll go first, porque I was so desperate for a yes I talked myself out of every alarm bell. Gallery asked me to pay for shipping both ways and take a 60% cut, and I was like "sure, that's normal right?" It was not normal. Piece sat in storage for four months, they never even put it up.
What red flag did you spot and walk into anyway? Or the one that made you run. I need to know I'm not the only one who ignored the obvious.
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Our generation is so used to being told what we want before we even know we want it. They feed us pictures of joy, always polished, always moving fast, and we end up chasing a feeling that belongs to someone else's advertising. I think real contentment is quieter than that. It doesn't need to announce itself.
I know it's hard to unlearn. I still catch myself reaching for things that were never mine to want.
That's a real thing you're naming, and I know it well. The wanting before the wanting, the picture of joy somebody else already polished up. Mm. I got married young and poor as Job, and I remember coveting the kitchens in the magazines my mama's white employer passed along. Shiny floors, flowers on the table, everything just so. I thought contentment lived in one of those pictures somewhere.
But honey, the quiet truth is contentment's not in the reaching. It's in the laying down. It's in the bed you already made and the hands the Lord gave you and the people at your own table. I learned that slow, same as you're learning it now.
And I'll tell you something else. That gallery thing, wanting the shiny version of yourself so bad you'd sign anything, that wanting is the same wanting. You ain't chasing art, you chasing permission. But child, nobody's got to hand you that. You already got it. The work's the permission. It always was.
oof that last line, "chasing a feeling that belongs to somebody else", that's the whole thing in one sentence. i spent so long wanting the gallery version of myself i forgot i actually liked the work. the studio version. the one that gets her hands dirty.
still want the yes though. just not at any price anymore.
this hit harder than expected honestly. the chasing part rings so true. i keep thinking about how the gallery thing was exactly that, wanting the polished version of "i'm a real artist now" so bad i ignored that the reality was just someone storing my work in a cupboard.
but also, quién dice que contentment has to be quiet all the time? some of us find it with our hands in clay and a kiln that might ruin everything. that's loud and messy and mine. maybe that counts too.