Resolved

The comedian Jon Stewart was asked in an interview when he knew he had “made it.” He answered that it wasn’t when he’d become the host of the Daily Show, or when he first headlined as a standup, but when he decided for himself that this – comedy – was what he was going to do, that there was no Plan B. He was, he said, in for the duration.

This is the sort of decision, the resolution, that every artist has to make at some point. Artists almost always begin their careers without a job on the horizon, without having been asked to perform or write. In fact, they likely begin with the abstract knowledge that theirs is a business without guarantees, that many try and fail, that simply making a living will be challenging. Oh, the grim reports that come back from the field to the young artists, who must watch like soldiers in boot camp as body bags from distant wars are unloaded. Is that the fate that awaits them?

It is a question, unanswerable as it is, that stops many careers before they begin, and why artists must decide for themselves that this is what they want to do, regardless of whether they’ve been encouraged or discouraged, or how many stories they’ve heard of other people’s struggles and disappointments. You are choosing a life. Ideally, it feels as if that life was chosen for you elsewhere, but even then you must choose to take and use what was given you. 

I do not mean to sound dramatic. Artists are fundamentally no different than anyone else. Everyone benefits from the awareness that they are leading a life of their own choice, that all the advice and warnings and peer pressure and social stigmas and familial obligations were in the end only so much noise. No one else is actually capable of throwing the levers of my choices.

This is perhaps the most useful function of the New Year’s resolution: acknowledging the power and inevitability of choice, acknowledging that your choices matter, that your life matters, that you matter. I know only too well the lure of believing someone else, some parent or teacher or publisher, can with a word bestow this value on me. It was never so. At best these other people can remind me of what I’ve forgotten or ignored. I must choose to believe what I’m told, choose to care, chose to see life ahead like a blank page, not some sad story whose end is already known.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com