Five weeks of me actually doing a drawing every Monday. I am amazed at my follow through!
Today’s quote comes from Rabindranath Tagore, a writer from Bengal. “You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
In other words if you want to get across the sea, you need to find or make a boat so you can get across.
Some people seem to be really lucky. Boats just show up for them, like they were magically prebuilt for the person. They need a job, they get the first one they apply for. Even luckier are the ones that have new jobs drop into their laps before they even think about needing a new one. These people are rare, statistical outliers, and should not be used as a guide to building your boat.
The rest of us need to build our own boats. These metaphoric boats can be made from anything. Social Media, networking, vendor events, typing blogs, variety of arts, that 9-5 grind, school; whatever you do to make your dream a reality.
The best thing would be to build a boat with lots of different things.
I have a good presence on social media; a blog (two actually,) Patreon, Etsy (new!) Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter. I have Friends and Family. I have art. I have determination and conviction. I have past experiences and the ability to learn. I have even gotten a part time job and I have my share of problems. All of these are building my boat.
I am not standing still waiting for a boat to come by. Any boat that comes for me is probably going to be someone else’s dream. I have been on that boat before and it did not do me any good.
It would be great to be able to re-purpose a “found” boat to reach my dream. Do a few repairs and sail away. It would probably save time. The only problem with that is you might end up making detours to take care of the other persons baggage. It could be worth it, it might not.
I think we are always working on our boats. We build them as we sail. We fix problems, make new friends, get new problems, learn new skills. All of these can be used to build better boats. If you get into a storm and your boat sinks, you can use your skills to build a new boat.
In the end, standing on the shore, watching the water, is tantamount to doing nothing. Nothing begets nothing. You will go no where, maybe get a sunburn and be food for the crabs.
Build a boat, do the thing.
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