Community Abstract VI

Abstract – Two Women with Tennis Racquets by Carl Newman

My digital life fell back into the void for the last few weeks while I worked on my upcoming art project. But now that all my deadlines have been met, I just have one small step left before I can announce the full project.

January 20th.

All my exploration of community is finally going to be realized as I shift into a new stage of digital identity as part of the art.

I’m going to finish up my series on identity as the lead-up to the launch over the next two weeks, and I’m looking forward to writing it.

That’s it for my community update. Please keep me updated on anything important you think I should check out in the comments. I’m always interested in what other people in the community have going on.

Today I want to talk about purpose.

It’s good to know your purpose in life.

I don’t mean purpose in some cosmic, existential sense. I mean chosen purpose.

Life is like Minecraft. You can build whatever you want, as long as you follow the rules.

Without purpose and goals, you float nebulously through reality, never changing.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was in film school, I had a teacher.

The best teacher I ever had. He was so passionate about art. He taught me how to see art differently, how to understand it as an artist.

Like many teachers and artists, he was a progressive guy, and he often talked about political topics, the state of the world, and how the world operated.

Twenty years later, I decided to make the switch from the business world back to the art world. While I was reminiscing about the people who influenced me as an artist, I thought of him.

Because I don’t respect social norms, I tracked him down through some good internet work and a film school buddy of his that I emailed through LinkedIn, who knew how to get a hold of him. He emailed me saying he heard from a friend that I was looking for him.

I replied. We exchanged numbers. I called him.

I’d changed a lot. He hadn’t changed much from how I remembered him.

He was the same cynical artist who taught me to fall in love with art.

I assumed that since I’d changed from being a cynical teenager, he would have changed from being a cynical middle-aged man too. How could my mentor not also be a master of his craft, always seeking improvement, never giving up the dream of a better world?

We had a pleasant 20-minute chat. He complained about politics and retold the stories I remembered him telling when I was his student.

They weren’t as good the second time, maybe because I had the lived experience to put them into context now. They no longer seemed amazing. I’d done similar things, followed in his footsteps in my own way.

I could tell he didn’t have high hopes for my aspirations of making a difference in this world.

You know the saying, never meet your idols.

It wasn’t that bad, but it wasn’t what I expected.

In twenty years I’d changed my entire belief system several times. New information becomes available and it reshapes everything you know.

Or one key belief changes and now you have to re-examine every belief for corruption, like a video game after it crashes.

This mentor of mine, one of the three most influential people in my entire life, hadn’t changed at all. His stories hadn’t changed. His conversation topics hadn’t changed.

He’d never really done anything else after I met him but what he was already doing when I met him.

He caught me at the most turbulent time of my life. I caught him at his retirement from turbulence. He had given it a great shot, risked it for art and business, succeeded enough to settle down.

I feel like I’m at the same crossroads as he was when I first met him.

It would be easy to settle down, so why does that feel like learned helplessness?

Is that what a midlife crisis is supposed to be, the moment you consider selling your purpose for someone else’s because it pays better, then realize you’re doing it?

What kind of crisis is that? The answer should be obvious.

But the reality of life is we don’t really get to create change like a movie protagonist. We don’t change the world by force of will. We have to become the catalyst for change to happen, and that’s way less sexy.

And maybe the catalyst for a better world is just better people.

My art, at its core, is about being a good person.

I don’t mean that in a kumbaya way. I mean small change of being better, sustained over time. Not one good deed a week or when the cameras are on.

That’s why I began this community abstract.

I know community is needed for creating any meaningful change. I spent the first six months of last year searching for communities of change, communities for artists in the wonderful world of social media. I joined dozens of Discords. I followed creators who preached community building. Nothing was making a difference in the way I wanted to make a difference, and I realized most creators out here are just trying to live, and selling the audience what they want to hear pays.

In the same way I don’t want to be the same person in twenty years, I don’t want to turn art into a business.

But how can you make art and no money and still live.

And that was one of the biggest struggles people talked about.

This past week I talked to lots of you in DMs. I’m researching what creators want help with so I can test it through my art, and design community resources around what people can actually use.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in, follow along here.

I’m also building a Discord space for communication. Right now it’s under construction and pretty empty, but it’s where I want this community abstract to grow roots. I’ll leave the link here for early adopters.