Today is a perfect day in NYC – warm, breezy, blue skies, everybody happy. I love the energy of this city, and it is a feast for the eyes. I will return home inspired and invigorated and ready to dive into new creative projects. To see all of the art and creativity everywhere I turn is a huge reminder of how much work I still have to do to LET GO and CREATE with abandon. So often I continue to categorize certain creative activities – one thing is "fun", one is for "work", one is "commercial" and one is just "silly". I continue to censor my own creativity, thinking that whatever I create needs to be wonderful, great, mind-blowing and/or money-making. I continue to approach things from the mindset of how well something might sell. So very, very silly (and in the end, not rewarding – finanical or otherwise – at all.)

I have spent almost a decade trying to create for a mass market, trying to create what I think might sell and be as marketable as possible. I have tried to hold myself to higher standards and tried to share my vision, passions and business dealings with people I thought I could trust. Many people have let me down, but there are a few bright lights that have been a total joy to work with, and who do not feel entitled to share in benefits – financial or otherwise – that they did not earn. I have come across too many individuals who love the idea of being attached to something and involved in an idea but do not feel the need to actually do the day-to-day, perhaps mundane, work it takes to make a dream a reality. Too many people who are not interested in making sacrifices and following through with commitments they have made, and who instead do whatever is convenient and "easy". I have had to continue to move forward after experiencing these situations and not let these disappointments con me into giving up. In the end, I have had to find whatever peace and satisfaction I can in my own integrity, because all too often it is all I have.

I am through with these diappointments and through with feeling frustrated by them. Whatever I have experienced up to this precise moment, 5:21 EST May 11, 2205, is in the past and I now choose to only look to the future. I choose to forgive, forget, let go, release and be thankful for all of the lessons I have learned, however I may have learned them.

I hereby commit to myself and the world to let go of all this angst and worry and frustration and just BE AN ARTIST and dive deep into the joy of being able to say that and live that everyday. I read over and over again how much fear people have – artists in particular. Fear of what people will think, if they will fail, if their work will sell, or if they have lost their mojo. These are fears I have had all along and I understand them all too well. But for some reason I am feeling especially brave today and ready to make a serious commitment to just being an artist and a writer and feeling no guilt because of that or fear of what the world may think of it. I am weepy as I write this, because I feel a tremendous weight has lifted. I feel prepared to release what I need to release and just focus on my own work. At this point in my career, I am actually standing before a wide open field, and I can go wherever I want and create whatever I want. The best work I can do right now – the way I can serve this world in the most positive way possible – is to create, create, create. I take my role as an artist in this world very seriously, because if what I do does not make the world a better place in some tiny way then there is no meaning behind anything I do.

I’m off and running, empty of the past and ready to be filled with all the creative energy and light I can pull from this wild, beautiful world.