Welcome Lauren, from Ladaisi Blog!

Bio: Hi. My name is Lauren and I am a twenty-something mother, artist, and aspiring writer. I love painting, creative writing, road-trips, and people-watching in privately-owned cafes. Someday I hope to travel the world, see myself in print, and open my own coffeehouse where I will surround myself by vagabonds and artists and coffee addicts. See you there!

Blog Link: Ladaisi Blog http://ladaisi.blogspot.com

Ladaisi: La-Daisy. A combination of nicknames that sort of stuck with me.

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You Do What You Do

People have always told me to focus on one thing. “Pick one thing,” they’d say, “and just do that.”

Despite the logic behind their advice, I could never seem to follow it. I tried, once or twice, and found myself incapable of ignoring my natural instincts. To dabble.

Loosely put, dabbling is the act of intermittently involving oneself in a myriad of activities. (Some might call it the act of wasting time.) I tend to dabble in creative writing, music, and art.

I have always painted. I remember painting with my grandmother when I was a kid. She painted the ocean. When she finished a piece, she would stick the end of her paintbrush in the corner of her mouth, step back, sway to the side, and tweak. And then she’d say, “You just have to play with it.”

Which is exactly what I ended up doing.

While trying to figure out what I wanted in life, I played at many things. I was a singer/songwriter for a small, unknown band. I attended a few colleges, collected a few job titles, and periodically took short road-trips. I briefly studied acrylic, watercolor, and oil painting, pen and ink portraiture, piano, photography, and creative writing. I joined book clubs, took up running, volunteered as a barista, and wrote literary fiction. I spent a ridiculous amount of time in coffeehouses, watching other people. (Rude? Perhaps.)

And slowly, one day at a time, I finally came to identify who I was. An artist.

When I call myself an artist, I am referring to who I am as a person. I read once that being an artist is not dependant on a particular talent, but rather based on how the individual views the world, and, by default, life in general.

I am an artist because I see creativity in everything. And I cannot help but add my own impression of what I see into the mix, be it good or bad.

Perhaps if I’d focused on one of these various areas in particular, I might have accomplished more. In fact, some might say I wasted my time dabbling in so many different things.

I disagree. If I hadn’t given myself permission to try new things, I wouldn’t be who I am today. I might not have figured out the things I love and the things I don’t, what I want in life and how hard I’m willing to work for it, or what makes me an artist.

Recently, I’ve adopted a few anonymous quotes that define how I view life, at least for the time being.

The first one is this: If you don’t like where you are, then change it. You are not a tree.

Shape your life. It’s your greatest work of art.

The second isn’t actually anonymous; it’s by Henry Ward Beecher: The act of being happy lies in the power of extracting happiness from common things.

Sometimes it’s better to look at the small picture. Extract happiness from simple moments.

And last of all: You do what you do, and they do what they do.

Or, in other words: give yourself permission to dabble.