Samuel Gearhart @samuelgearhart: Cool summer ideas for a broke 22 y/o who just graduated?
ANSWER:
Broke, 22 years old, just graduated.
Man, you are watching the sun rise right now. It’s got every color in the spectrum and a few others that, as you get older, you will no longer be able to see.
Let’s summarize what you’ve just finished. From the age of 6 to 22, for 16 years, you’ve been chained to desks. You’ve listened to 6 hour a day of boring lectures. You’ve had to work hard every night at work that might’ve seemed meaningless to you. You’ve had to take tests that made you feel either better or worse about your self-worth. You’ve had all your hormones erupt all at the same time in every direction, an explosion, a frenzy of adulthood that burst you open and sliced through your heart.
You survived.
Now you’re 22. You’re broke. But you’re rich. Because for the first time you can taste a little freedom. You won’t be force fed the words and mythologies of our ancestors who passed those words down through our decaying standardized school system. You’re free.
You’re watching the sun rise. And you’ve got all the colors at your disposal.
Devote every day this summer to art. To ART. I don’t necessarily mean painting, or writing, or sculpting. I mean ART.
Wake up and say, “i’m going to create today.” What is creation? Who knows?
Do something you never did before. Explore somewhere you’ve never been. Take a camera and photograph. Take a pad and draw. Take a journal and write. Make a crank call and splice it with a popular song. Write a letter to the President. Make a time capsule to your grandchildren.
Ignite the fire.
The fire that has been stifled while you’ve been chained to the desk for 16 year.
Meet people you never would’ve dreamed of meeting.
But make every day a day of Art. Say it: “I’m going to create art today.”
How do you ignite so that art flows through you, so that value flows through you and creation flows through you. So that it becomes a reflex instead of a hard-to-use out of shape muscle? You exercise it. You stay health. Use tdp.me to track your practice (pre-release, but the site created to track The Daily Practice).
Use it to track you as your transform your life from static and standard to a flowing work of Art.
Please, please, please paint with the colors that I’m too old to see. And then show me.