What do you collect in life?
Essay Series: Introductions 1/8
I think I’m a collector. Ever since I was young, I showed obvious pack rat tendencies and gathered hundreds of the same kind of anything that I was fixated on at the time:
Scooby Doo memorabilia for days… 300 pairs of earrings even before I got pierced ears… a quarter and stamp collection (growing up in Japan didn’t make this one easy), to name a few.
I can’t tell you for the life of me why, but seeing things in bulk made me extremely happy. The process of collecting granted me the most entrancing of feelings; one theme could hold my attention for years.
But.
Somewhere down the road, I stopped.
My ability to see what I adored in life slowly began to blur. Perhaps starting to work at 15 replaced creativity with a false north, instructing me to follow a career path instead.
Even though one job after the next muffled my desire for what I wanted to do, those same tendencies from when I was a kid resurfaced in a number of ways without my knowing. Only recently, I connected a few dots after revisiting this side of me.
“Oh yeah! That was something I used to do.”
“Right! That was my life at one point.”
“Oh natsukashiiiii... I would spend several hours engrossed in that.”
Have you ever had similar thought blips?
These thoughts came up enough times and I slowly began to ask myself:
Why did I stop? What changed? Am I a different person now?… Can I backtrack?
It took a while before I finally put this topic on the front burner. One early impetus that did get the thoughts rolling was a video by a man by the name of Randy Paush. He opened by talking about his childhood dreams and how he actually ended up fulfilling them. If you have an hour and want a good cry, watch it for yourself here.
Thinking about this made me realize that I allow a lot of things in my life that have no business being in my life.Including jobs that I didn’t really like. If had extra time, I felt like I needed to take on responsibilities to fill the air—just because of a warped sense of duty.
Recently I have managed to flip the stone back over and found that I still love to gather and collect things. It’s just in different forms now.
So what does this tendency currently look like? I find myself gathering memories. I collect sentences that turn into titles for paintings. I read books and jot down the words that jump at me from the page. I put pictures of scribbles, places and pictures of rust into a file to see how it can influence future projects. My art is a place where all these things that I love can gather.
Recalling this part of me changed not only how I paint but how I think of myself when painting.
Knowing what makes me excited and understanding that having a cookie-cutter answer is not only unnecessary, but is just plain boring. I do these things just because I love to do it.
I would recommend anybody to grab their hot coffee, take a deep breath, and try to remember what made them happy way back when. My brushstrokes are changing because of it so maybe you could discover something that will help you too.
..Or you’re absolutely fine and it’s just me that needs to keep relearning the same lessons.
More of which I will share over the next few months. Otsukare.
Hey lovelies. This is an 8-part series entitled “Introductions” that will slowly make its way to you over the next few months. I’m sharing some pieces of my life and how I started creating along with a little insight into the process for some current projects. Share your life with me too and enjoy the ride.
“You must habit yourself to the dazzle
of the light and of every moment of your life”