It happens. You get to feeling pretty happy with yourself. Like maybe you ARE coming into something with your creative self.
Finding your mojo.
Finally getting the big IT (whatever that is...).

Then you join an art club, enter a contest, pick up the latest art magazine, click on Facebook, swing by Instagram and suddenly…start hating on yourself. Comparing your work with what you’re seeing. Your ideas and processes with everyone else’s.
Longing to be unique and one of a kind BUT knowing all the while--being different isn't any easier now than it was when in the seventh grade.
Wanting so badly to just blend in.  Challenged to see the oddness AS magic.

“You see this pattern over and over with many creative people: they have this little bit of magic, a spark of something that comes naturally to them, and it’s often messy and weird and a little bit off, and that’s why they catch our attention in the first place. The odd magic is what we love about them.” ~ Austin Kleon

Funny creatures that we are, we want to sing our own song but then quake at the thought that it IS different!

Like having a nose that is too big for our face or a crazy laugh that is contagious, it’s enlightening to realize that these very things are what distinguish us from the billion of others on the planet. Learning to see these things for what they are—not less than, not fatally flawed— but an absolute gift, our very own odd magic—is the beginning of wisdom.

What is that thing that comes naturally to you, but is messy and weird and a little off?
That’s your odd magic and that, dear one,  is why we are drawn to you.

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.   ~W.B. Yeats

 "It's a Happy Kind of Thing"
9 x 12in oil on museum quality panel