I will never forget a social media post with Stephen Fry who rattled this off (and don't think I haven't tried to memorize it).
"If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge;
You will invariably become it. That is your punishment.
If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life, that I would call the artistic life...if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know, you will never become anything.
And that is your reward."
That tears my heart out.
Not because those roles aren't valid.
Not because structure is wrong.
But because once you've become something, you're expected to stay something.
Fixed. Defined. Finished.
But artists… we live differently.
We don't wake with clarity, but with questions.
We sit in the studio not to repeat, but to unravel.
If you’re certain of who you are every day, you’re not painting. You’re performing.
I’ve never had a five year plan.
Never known what the next piece will look like until it tells me.
And maybe that’s the gift.
Maybe never arriving is the point.
In a world obsessed with arrival, titles, status, neatly packaged success, the true artist chooses motion over mastery.
Uncertainty over expertise.
Becoming over being.
They call it chaos.
I call it living.
If you’re not quite sure where you’re going, if today you feel like a fraud,
and yesterday you felt like a genius,
and tomorrow you're just hoping to feel something again...
Congratulations. You’re on the path.
The path where you’ll never truly become anything.
And that, is your reward.