Making Changes

Things tend to happen when you are working towards longer term goals. We can become comfortable with the daily routine of a goal like that. Wake up, brush teeth, eat, work. What can happens is that things change. What can also happen is that you change your goal. Circumstances have a way of making us want something new. I started out this year thinking that I wanted to paint a thrift store painting every month. I am however building up quite the collection of these. They are taking up space in my home and they aren't really challenging me any more. This has caused me to reflect on just how effective this goal may still be.

I have many different hesitations about changing my goals. I hate to feel like I am quitting or giving up on something. I worry that I haven't really pushed myself far enough, or that I have failed the idea in some way by not continuing to pursue it to completion. I don't just give up a goal for any old reason. But, my husband helped my to understand that maybe it wasn't a bad idea to change my goals. He reminded me that it wasn't much of a goal, if I couldn't adjust it to better fit my changing circumstances. If it is too ridged of a goal it becomes just a task or work.

So, with some deep reflection I have decided to take my already existing thrift store art in a different direction. I am not going to completely abandon my goal, but tweak it so that once again I am working toward something more than just a task. My new idea is to make cartoon like stories of my currently existing pieces. I don't know where I am going to go with these, but I want to explore this new technique of art and expand my skills into new mediums. I am sure I will come up with a new goal that corresponds to this new style of work, since I don't know where this is going yet I cannot really create goal.

In the past during art school I did this kind of thing all of the time. I would start off a project with one idea, and through mistakes and adjustments I would end up with something that could be completely different from the original idea, but still in the same vein. The process of continual adjustment adds the the final product, because you have included what you have learned along the way, you can make it better than what you could have come up with in the first place using the limited knowledge you had then.

The goals we make have to have the freedom to adapt to what we need. We don't always need in the end what we needed at the beginning. We make adjustments as we go to fit the person we are now. It is not a worth while goal if it is not making yourself a better person, so change it to a more challenging goal, then you will always be improving as you go.