Stop Pretending...

...Start Pre-tending.

As a painfully cultish culture, we are often unwitting members of the “cult of the contemporary”. We become steeped in the latest self development “framework”. We are fine with “fake it till you make it”. It can be easy to believe this equation:

desire + online courses + tools and ephemera + a social media presence = THE THING.

Hashtag #allthethings add up to the illusion that we are so solidly on our way towards our dream, as to have a free pass to carry ourselves “as if” we are already there.

After all, it only takes a few hundred dollars and/or a few hundred hours of research, or a credit or three at a college to understand the jargon, own the tools, and imagine ourselves to BE the fill-in-the-blank (influencer, copy writer, YouTube entrepreneur, photographer, financial advisor, candlestick maker, author, artist, you-name-it). We are literally told that if we have had only one or two paid clients (successful, or not so much), we can say that we are.

And I get it. You have to start somewhere.

But how about we don’t start “somewhere”? How about if we start with passion?

How about we take it all back to passion?

Who are you? Who are you called by God to be? Are you passionate about it?

Have you ever met a few someones who think they are passionate about, say, drone photography (being very purposefully vague, as I don’t know anyone who is a full or part time drone photographer) but what they are actually passionate about is being seen as being skilled at something artful…anything. And so they saw that cool drone photographer that one time, and thought, “How hard could it be…”

…then they did some research and found a college class. Or an online course. Or five. Then they bought the cool tools, and the rest, as it is often said, is history.

Only it isn’t history at all. Because no one, anywhere, is being blessed by their slightly grainy drone footage. Here’s the thing: not even they, themselves, are being blessed.

Why? Why aren’t at least they themselves feeling blessed by their own drone photography? Why do they seem downcast or slightly envious of other drone-ists? After all, they can put that drone of theirs up in the air anytime and create anything they want!

Because no one is lining up to hire them, they’re already bored. Unfocused.

Because it was never a true passion

(…every good thing in my visual art practice began - and is sustained - by basic photography. NOT by “being a photographer”. Note the difference. So, I’ve been taking things back to those basics, lately. Maybe every good thing in your art practice began - and is sustained by - splashing ink onto journaling pages or looking at art books, not by being a professional art journalist or writing art books. I hope you are catching what I am pitching at you, here!)

Please hear me. Please believe me when I say, I am preaching to my righteous self, first. I am knee-deep in a season.

Not a season of introspection.

Not a season of questioning my calling.

Rather, I have come full circle, and back into a season of pre-tending. Let me explain.

At one time, I was a forty-something woman who had never picked up a paintbrush. I began to feel great passion for creative practice. I then took up the work of pre-tending my future self.

Oh, I took good care of her. It makes me want to weep, just remembering those years.

I slowly onboarded an identity of being the kind of woman who blesses others by making beauty….not by merely taking the classes, buying the tools, and calling myself an artist. I pre-tended my future artist by pure obsession. Great passion. By making a lot of bad art. And keeping at it until the work of my hands became a blessing to others.

Fast forward. I’ve grown. I’ve grown as a painter, I’ve grown as a communicator. I am ready for increase. But I refuse to pretend I am already there. Instead, I must again pre-tend my own becoming. I must tend to being the kind of artist I am becoming.

I’ll be honest: it scares me.

I am taking things back to raw, undressed passion. Here’s the visual, one more time:

I am sitting with the same questions I asked you:

Who am I? Who am I called by God to be, next? Am I passionate about it?

It’s the second question that contains all the growth. It’s juicy with almost-ripe next things. The art of becoming is to never “pretend” that I’m already there, but rather “pre-tend” that woman whose gifts I am growing into.

1. What sort of character will it take for me to sustain a slightly greater visibility? (I have a tiny following, and I have been stopped on the street three times in the last month…by someone who knows me, but I don’t know them. How long were they watching me, that day I was helping my old lady friend with her grocery shopping? Or, how long did they observe The Preacher and I out walking together before they shyly walked our direction? )

2. What can I do to lay a foundation - yet again - of the kind of physical health that my calling would require? (because menopause is a whole, other thing. Its own thing. Requiring both self-forgetfulness and self-care.)

3. Do I even want what comes with fulfilling my calling? (I am wildly satisfied with a small ordinary life. My whole struggle has been to accept it, if indeed I am to walk in even a slightly enlarged space.)

4. What sort of woman plants a(nother) church? What sort of woman writes a really good book? What sort of woman lives the life that makes the art inevitable? And what does that life look like? (answer: passionate/disciplined and passionate/disciplined, and passionate/disciplined and passionate/disciplined).

Help me, Jesus.

I will be over here, with my head down, practicing what I preach. Tending to my passion for the Godhead, my passion for the church, my passion for communicating the awe and wonder of it all with pen and paintbrush.

I will be busy pre-tending the next version of me. Pre-tending my future self. Not pretending I am someone I’m not.

Oh, the wisdom is always in the nuance!