Building blocks

Here's a cheery haiku that popped into my head a few weeks ago;

Put on your best smile -

Reasons for your existence

Are diminishing

But this is all about reasons for blogging; reasons for me being here at all, talking a bunch of bananas to an imaginary multitude about whatever creeps into my head in the morning, evening or noon-tide. I was going to cut a long story short, but there are many strands to the story and many answers, some ongoing. So, without compromising the Great Unfinished Novel (which is actually one of the reasons).... I am blogging because...

1) I watched the film 'Julie and Julia' on the flight over to Vietnam last November and was inspired by the dedication of Julie Powell in her aim to cook and blog her way every day through Julia Child's cookbook. The key words for me were 'every day' - the masochist in me loves to take on a challenge like that which demands structure and discipline; having just done the year on Arran, which was very big on this, I was up for a new form of stick to beat myself with.

2) Writing is something I love and I have always had sitting at my elbow as second or third favourite creative pursuit after, probably, painting and photography. The 'Great Unfinished Novel' I refer to (courtesy of Lloyd Cole's song lyric 'I was working then on my great unfinished novel. Please let me introduce myself, my name is Ronald'), is that ellusive mixture of autobiography and fiction which, despite the fact that a zillion people are in the queue in front of me shouting 'ME! ME!', I still want to have a shot at a)writing and b) publishing. I have started the writing bit, but the lack of discipline always gets in the way; hence this exercise in structuring my day to fit in a chunk of writing. The idea is that at the end of my year's blog I will seamlessly move on to the G.U.N.

3) I wanted to record for myself the process of this year so that it would gain weight in its significance. It adds much more gravitas to your efforts to 'emerge' as an artist if you are recording the whole thing for the world at large. The blog post 'couldn't be bothered today' cannot exist.

4) A thought popped into my head one day while pondering my output as an artist which went;

'What, and how much would I produce, and how would I market it if my life depended on it?'

'Oh, it does.'

It was that simple; sometimes the greatest truths hit us in the weirdest ways. The choice was simple -get your ass in gear and emerge as a painter or sit there in years to come muttering 'I could have been a contender...' It's not a rehearsal, yadda, yadda, yadda.

5) The seed of self belief was there, and the approach was easy, all I had to do was follow the pattern that was already in my head - the necessity was for the way to do that. The way to do that was to tell a zillion people what I did today. Every day.

6) A very good friend has told people repeatedly in my presence that the reason she gave up painting is that she knew I would make it. So, like, I have to!

The trillion dollar questions are 'When will I know I have made it?', 'What does this mean - 'made it'?' The long answer is to do with money, alas, and involves being able to live off the proceeds of my art; preferably to support the both of us as well. The other answer is more ellusive but more important at the end of the day. Every time I have an achievement I am deliriously excited until the moment fades and I look for the next 'high'. Every little step up this year has been exciting, but I have in mind the 'made it' moment as my first solo show in one of the galleries on Dundas Street. This may be over optimistic, but I think the best way to get a long way up is to aim high; and, to be honest, I think amazing things are possible with self belief.

I would never have dreamed that I could get as far down the road as I have in the time since leaving Arran, but I have.

A quote from a friend on Facebook; 'I am on a journey to collect the bricks to build my life.'