Be the farmer
🏹 Have you ever heard of the Hunter and the Farmer? 🌾
Picture this:
You’re a lean, mean, fightin’ machine, and you’re on the hunt for your next kill. You’re the hunter! When you win, you win big, and oh, is it ever sweet. You’re slick, you’re quick, and you’re always ready for the fight. The competition is fierce, but pfft, that doesn’t scare you! Those around you know that you come and go with the hunt, and for that reason, you tend to walk alone.. But you don’t mind, since you’re not the kind to need anything outside of what you can provide for yourself.
💥 ⚔️ 🛡️
Are you light on your feet, ready to pounce when the time calls for it?
Yes!
Are you resourceful and able to adapt with ease to your ever-changing circumstances?
You know you are!
However.. Are you also starving for long periods of time, victimized by the high and low seasons of your prey?
Unfortunately, yes..
Now, let’s picture this:
Every morning, you wake just before the sun, finding comfort in greeting it warmly with a cup of steaming, hot coffee as you venture out into your fields. You’re the farmer! Your life is one of intentional routine and practiced presence, as you plant, tend to, and water your crops. The rewards you reap require patience, and increase only incrementally each day- but they do come, little by little. You take comfort in the dutiful nature your routine has sharpened in you, and find peace in the small communities of other Farmers, tending to their crops, just as you are your own.
🚜 🌞 🌾
Are you diligent in your responsibilities?
You sure are!
Are you dependable, providing not only yourself, but others, a
sense of calm when you’re around?
Yessiree!
Are you grounded by your sense of duty and commitment to your path, unwavering in light of others’ seasons?
You better believe you are.
..sound at all familiar? ✨
Throughout the course of your creative life, your creativity is going to (if it hasn’t already) have a lot of demands. Sometimes, it may demand big asks, such as moving city, or even country, in order to hunt on more fertile ground; other times, it may demand smaller asks, like practicing your instrument regularly, or getting the rough sketch you had in your mind down so, with more time later on, you can more thoroughly bring it to life.
The question is, which asks will you respond to? Which asks are genuinely sustainable? And, perhaps most importantly, which of these asks, in their very nature, promise you results that are really in your control?
We think it’s safe to state that to pursue your creative life through the eyes of the Hunter seems maybe, well, obvious, right? It’s pretty plain to see when comparing the life of a creative to the life of the aforementioned Hunter. For example, given opportunities tend to come and go so quickly, you may feel required to drop everything as swiftly as possible when they do show up, so that you can chase them down before they miss you. Another example could be the fact that the pursuit of many arts require a level of transiency that can make it difficult to find long lasting relationships with those around you, especially when it feels like they’re also competing for the same opportunities.
When you win, it feels like you’re on top of the world- but that doesn’t come without weeks, months, even years of lonely pursuit, starving for even a crumb of knowing that you’re on the right path.
✨ This, friends, is when we may lovingly turn to our so-often overlooked friend, the Farmer. ✨
Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t, but we think we all come to a point in our lives when the hunt feels like it takes more than it gives. Its allure quickly fades as its veil of mystery is removed, and we see things for what they truly are.. Forever uncertain.
✨ You see, there is no tool you can sharpen, specific grounds you can scavenge, or race you can run that will promise you success in your creative life.✨
What can promise you progress, however, is embracing the dutiful intention and care-filled routine that comes with the life of the Farmer.
It’s easy to see successful artists thriving and assume that they’ve accomplished what they have through a ‘big break’, or being in the ‘right place at the right time’. Now, this may be true for some, but it’s not conditional to success, and it also does not allude to the endless projects that DIDN’T work out, or the opportunities that weren’t right, or, most importantly, the time and attention that’s been taken each day to tend to their crops to get their craft to where it was when success, in the way that we see it, met them.
‘Overnight successes’ are figments of imagination. Real success is showing up, each day, for yourself, your craft, and the pursuit of progress- no matter how small.
🌞 Embrace the lifestyle of the Farmer. 🌾
Find comfort in the rituals that work for you, and work for the exploration of your creative life; you just might find that the whispers of creative inspiration begin to come more and more frequently the more you honour your routine. When that time comes, it will be your practiced consistency that allows these sparks to become a bonfire, and your dutiful diligence that keeps the flames both in control, and burning bright.
