"It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcome the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human."  Seth Godin

Today was the first day of a huge project. Quite a profitable and strategic project. Nevertheless, a project that doesn't feel very much like art.....I wonder if Van Gogh would have been encouraged with money from a side gig painting houses, or taking commissions just for the money. Did Picasso ever paint just for the money? It's said he was a marketing genius. Does your workplace ever feel like a red light should be hanging by the door? (Meaning the work involves going through the motions and doesn't feel creative.) Here are some thoughts on the matter.

Making art always involves some level of slog, or tedious hard labor. 

I don't think it was really richly rewarding experience making the oil paints used by the old masters. That's why they had the apprentices do that....when these artists could afford them.

Did you know that movie makers spend the same amount marketing a movie as they do making it? Is making the movie at the same level of art as creating the marketing campaign? Finding the art depends on the people carrying out the task, not the task itself.

Making art requires taking risks and in order to bounce back from occasional failures, aka mistakes, you need resources. You need to be able to get up and play again the next day, even after a bad day or two or 10. Some jobs provide you with cash flow and some with rich experience and sometimes the two coincide in the same project but not always.

More to the point....

"All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence." Martin Luther King, Jr.

There's the rub, doing all things with excellence, even the sloggy part. But there's 1 more thing to make it better.

"Party where you are." Tonya Leigh Williams

What Tonya teaches is making the best of whatever your work situation, to the extreme. To her point, just to make a few suggestions...

- Bring candy to work for your meeting.

- Wear socks that don't match and see who notices.

- Buy some elementary-school teacher stickers like "You're great!" and pass them out.

- Have a dance break with popular music.

- Today I brought a monogrammed linen napkin with my lunch -- lunch from home is usually the best kind.

What's your approach?