Unconditional joy of living

Today I would like to share something that’s been on my mind for last few weeks and I think it’s important to speak about. It’s not a light topic, it’s kind of a serious issue and I was hesitant to write about it at first.
Since today is December 1st, the first day of the last month of 2011. it seemed appropriate to take a little time to make plans for my art and blogs and creative projects in 2012. and put them on paper. As I was starting to write down all of my goals (and I have plenty) I got very excited and motivated but my excitement was soon replaced by doubt and even hints of fear.

I asked myself, considering the condition of the world today, the economy and not so unrealistic scenario of a new world war, should I’d be really making plans for something relatively trivial such as personal art projects?
Is there any point in making art related plans is such turbulent, uncertain times or should I just see what happens and adjust?

Every day I hear people complain (and righteously so) about economy, unemployment, Croatian government, being under appreciated and under payed at work (to put it lightly), people are tired and see no positive solutions or any perspective for future and it’s all very sad. We’re bombarded by media with negativity and fear inducing news more than ever, and, yes, we all know the way media works and it’s basically designed not to inform us but to scare us, but its hard to escape it’s influence. I never watch TV and almost never watch any news, I’m an incurable optimist and always try to focus on the positivity, I take every information coming through main stream media with grain of salt and I still feel negative influence of it.

So, I’ve asked myself does it make sense to make art plans and dream big in a world
today? And my answer is big bold YES.
YES, today more than ever is important to dream big, to create, to be positive. Creativity is from my experience the best possible anti-dote for fear and anxiety. It keeps the flow of positive energy going, it opens door to new possibilities, it connects and moves people. So does art.

In the world today it’s crucial to make your own plans and goals, no matter how hard it may seem to bring them to life, no matter how gloomy and troublesome prospects of realizing them might look like. If you don’t make your own plans, if you don’t take your life into your own hands and take full responsibility for it, somebody else will direct your life for you.
If you reject your personal power of creating your own life and your own destiny someone else will do it for you, your bosses, teachers, media, government, bankster mafia etc. Soon you will fall into trap of not believing you have any power whatsoever to create life you want. I’ve seen it happen so many times before.

So, my answer is YES, today is crucial more than ever to make plans and set art and creativity goals, to manifest the life we want to live and not the life we believe we can have in these troubled times.
It’s important to dream big, to nurture our dreams and goals and to resist negativity with creativity :)
It’s important to keep on creating art and plan on creating even more art, not to underestimate the value of it so in the spirit of that I will write about my creative projects for 2012. soon :)

I’m curious do you have any creative plans for 2012.? And when you make art or craft you do take in consideration the condition of the world today or do simply ignore it and keep on making pretty things?
If you’re on tumblr hit them reply button or ask, you can do it anonymously too, you know :) I’d love to hear your opinions:)

*illustration you see above DREAM BIG! is collab with Alkaline Samurai