The world is getting a bit out of hand lately. I think we’re all seeing that.

But I’m going to encourage you to pause a moment . . . and just breathe . . . And while you breathe I want you to reflect on this:

Crazy as things are, and crazy as they might get, you still have choices you can make.  You’re still in control of more than you might realize.

And these are important choices.  They could very well shape the way you and those you care about get through everything that could be going on over the months ahead.

Choices like . . . Whether to endlessly obsess over the news and social media all day (clicking, tapping, swiping every few minutes), OR to focus your attention on making the most of each day, going for a walk, calling those you love, and writing hopeful letters of encouragement to family and friends.

Choices like . . . Whether to sit around complaining and grumbling to anyone who will listen (or just as bad, spreading all your discontent to the world on Facebook), OR to sit down with your journal and come up with a list of positive things you could be doing to better yourself during this time, things you could be studying or learning, things you could be helping with in your community.

Choices like . . . Whether to allow yourself to get depressed and fatalistic about the future, OR to get together on the phone (or hop online) with a friend and get busy making some plans about how you’re each going to come out of all this just fine.

One choice you can certainly make right now, today, as an artist, would be to treat the weeks and months ahead as an opportunity to dive deep into your craft.  You can be reviewing tutorials, organizing your images and content, trying out new techniques every day. 

You can choose to go through 21 Days to Creative Abundance and really give it all you’ve got this time, launching a serious creative project along the way (Day 12!) then carrying it to completion.

Because make no mistake: 
Stepping aside from the chaos right now and electing to create art is a
life-sustaining choice.

And if you can create art that expresses something of beauty, mystery, enchantment, hope . . . 

Well, the world can use more of that.

Turning off the news and sitting down to create a work of art is something you can choose.  Something you can control.  Something you can set in motion and make progress on . . .

Every single day.

And that could very well be just the sort of choice that gets you through all this — and ultimately brings you the sort of calm your family and your friends really need to see in you right now.

I hope you will choose creativity over calamity.  And I hope that you will make your time over the next few months matter by bringing the world a little more beauty, a little more encouragement, and a little more reassurance that if we all choose to embrace what’s best within us — and live up to that — we will undoubtedly see our way to the other side of this.

And perhaps even come out stronger than ever . . . in all the ways that matter most.

– Sebastian

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PS:  The lovely image featured in this post (which I see not as an icon of war but as an emblem of hope) is by the talented Canadian AWAKE artist Georgia Tielemans.