Stuff happened. It knocked me off my groove, and I have remained in a state of being off my groove for several years now. And like somebody dangling off a rope trying desperately to scramble back up, I’ve been twisting in the wind, trying one thing after another to get something—anything—to work. It’s kept my head above water… mostly… but it has not led to success. And it has definitely not led to satisfaction.
But a few days ago, I happened on a tweet, nearly swamped in all the World Being So Much With Us right now, but that jumped out at me like an electric spark.
If it’s your calling, it will keep calling you.
I have ADHD. I can hyperfocus for bursts, but repeated, sustained effort is often difficult for me to maintain. But in all the noise, chaos, new shiny things to chase, and so on, there are two things that keep calling me: art and writing, writing and art. They wax and wane seasonally—I’m usually way more into art in the warm months and way more into writing when it’s colder—but they’re both always there.
And my groove, the happiest and most successful times in my life, also coincided with the times that I was most in touch with those. Suburban Jungle is still my high mark of both sustained personal satisfaction and success in terms of reaching an audience. The one thing it never provided, was a livable income, and that in turn led to me believing that making a living with my writing and art was not possible, and so I’ve spent the past several years trying with little success trying to find a way to make a livable income doing anything else, and being miserable while I was doing it.
Well, I hereby surrender that fight.
I am an artist and writer. That’s the alpha and omega, the sum total of who and what I am, and from here forward anything I do is going to be in service of that. There are people who make their living this way. I know some of them. It can be done. And if it can be done, I can do it, I just need to figure out how.
I need to figure out workflow. I need to figure out finding gigs and building (or re-building) an audience. I need to refocus on honing my craft, which stagnated somewhere.
But mostly I need to remember my mission, every day.
I make my living as an artist/illustrator and a writer, creating fun and engaging work that brings people joy and makes them feel seen and connected. That’s what keeps calling me, and I’m going to answer, again and again.
As someone who was diagnosed with ADD (but my parents didn’t bother to tell me that until I was out of college) I completely understand where you’re coming from. Good luck man.
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