Creative potential flows through all human veins, as much a part of us as the air in our lungs and the skin on our bones. It favors nothing and no one, coursing through us all equally and without reserve – but we each must choose for ourselves if and how we will tap into this internal stream.
Most people are content to poke tiny holes in their creative veins, feeding one drop at a time to various aspects of their lives, using it with caution and always wary of its volatile nature. But mixed in among this crowd are others, others who feel helplessly compelled to cut that vein wide open and let their hearts bleed freely until those creative waters wash over everything that they do.
These others are the people that we like to call artists. They are the people who draw no lines between the internal and the external, and who thus have no fear of bleeding out. They consider passion and purpose one and the same; and they breathe in life so deeply and so fully that their every exhale stirs the dead leaves of thirsty hearts.
Though I admit that I may sometimes manage to irritate more so than inspire and I occasionally succumb to the trappings of fear, I nonetheless consider myself an artist – each morning I rip my heart open anew and I allow it to bleed all over these pages; and only by doing this do I make enough room to drink more of the rich and succulent inspiration that I find dripping from every inch of this world. I write not only because I love to, but because I have to – it’s either write or vacillate wildly between dissolving into nothing and exploding into galaxies.
I invest my most precious resources into my writing – I give it my time, energy, passion, determination, and I give it my hope. I willingly lay my life at its alter in the hopes that my investment will be returned to me in similar form; and what I expect in return is as layered as my investment. Besides hoping that it will keep me grounded somewhere in between disintegration and combustion, I depend on my writing to provide me with the freedom to continue spending my days immersed in my inspiration, to give my readers the pure blood of my creative veins, unfiltered by agents and free from the quantifying, monetizing, and categorizing of publishers.
Each time that I write, I stand naked before you and hope that you see the similarities between my uncovered soul and your own. I hope that when my words shine you recognize it as the same light that burns within your soul; and I hope that when you read my shadows that you have that much more courage to face your own. But I also hope that you recognize that we share the same dream – the dream that by working hard and staying focused, by trying always to learn and grow, and by giving whatever gifts we have to give, that we will be sustained enough to continue working, learning, and giving.
I have chosen, among many other such artists, to trust you with the power to keep that a dream or to make it a reality. I believe that there are many who feel as if they are living in a world of plastic, despite the fact that just below the surface it’s made of pure gold. And I believe that art often acts as a chisel that chips away at that plastic coating, revealing the true luminescence of what’s been hiding just beneath that outer shell.
By investing in artists, you are helping to strip this world back down to its true nature. You are empowering those whose products can’t be manufactured and aren’t covered in plastic; those whose products don’t take like most others but instead they give something back – they give back the soul, the raw energy, the authentic feeling, and the relevant information that so much taking and molding and processing has smoothed over.
I ask that, if you have found inspiration, support, love, light, hope, or just enjoyment from my work, that you consider investing in its future by supporting my creative freedom. By donating below, you can help ensure that I have the resources and freedom I need to continue surrendering to my passion for sharing those understandings with language that’s meant not only to communicate but to inspire, to intrigue, and to breathe a little bit of life into a suffocating world.
I thank you from the center of my soul and the bottom of my heart for your continued support and I look forward to hearing from you on social media and blogs.
With Love,
©Cristen
cristenwrites.com 