What motivates the Artist?

What motivates you?  What makes you get up everyday to pursue your "calling"?  I consider myself creative, a creative person.  I understand indulging the "the calling".  The calling to create, the craving to express art through many forms.

I have designed clothing, written published articles on everything from natural and herbal beautifiers to interviewing singers, started a promotion company representing a musician I never met but wrote an amazing bio and press release on and had the editor of Billboard Magazine write an article on him.  I have started a t-shirt line but never sold one t-shirt, I have worked in television and radio production, worked for a renown world music club as a publicist, am an amateur photographer, whose amateur pics have ended up in 2 hip hop magazines....there's more but this is about you :) .

I'm just trying to say I understand the unsettled feeling, when you know you have more to do, more to be but you're not quite sure if what you're doing is IT.  So you just keep expressing your art.

What motivates you?  The feeling.  The craving.  The desire. The calling.  You motivate You.  Creative people cant  help it.   You are driven to indulge and express.  The key is remembering that every medium you've chosen to express your creative self has led you to the next.  That even though you may be waiting for that BIG BOOM letting you know you've hid the jackpot, your life's calling; that every pursuit contributes to the next.  You bring every experience to the table all the time.  Your last creative experience influences and impacts the next.  Radio engineering prepared me for television production, writing articles for neighborhood urban magazines, prepared me to write press releases for musicians.

I didn't realize that I was on one track, learning all along the way.  I just jumped from one thing to the other indulging the creative in me.  Now I know that every indulgence has prepared me for this moment.

I still have other creative pursuits.  But now I look at how the next pursuit will enhance my current pursuit.

So get up and go create, be motivated by that crazy feeling in the pit of your stomach!