Being not normal

I'm not sure it ever was a good idea to strive for normal.

Especially if you're an artist of any stripe and I suspect 99% of us have some art in us. What we choose to embrace and project is another matter. But we're all artists, so none of us is "normal."

Alfred Hitchcock said something along the lines of film/drama ought to be, "Life, minus the boring parts." So our task as artists -- as entirely not normal beings -- is to remove the boring parts as often as we can.Hard work, removing the boring parts.

Bob Lefsetz urges:

"So you’ve got to be on a mission. Of personal exploration and greatness. You can’t expect immediate success. You probably don’t deserve it. But when you find your way, deep in your career, when others have already given up and gone back to graduate school, then maybe you have a chance."

Normal was an illusion anyway, a marketing ploy to make you feel inadequate. (You're not, by the way.) Being normal was always rigged against you.

Better to be not normal.

Better to find a way that others can't or won't.

Lefsetz again... He's on a roll. You should be, too.

"Our culture doesn't celebrate conformity, just the opposite. But everyone is too afraid to be outside the mainstream public eye so they play by the rules."