Art, Thou Art a Fickle Mistress

I've always had dreams of being an artist of some sort.

I quickly bypassed any trial when it comes to music. I'm slightly tone-deaf and I heard [a] that was pretty important when it comes to that kind of art expression. The extent of my foray into the world of musical expression was bunch of lyrics for a couple of friends, air drumming when I'm walking home and learning to strum the first few chords to More Than Words because who wouldn't?

I tried drawing in high school because two of my best friends at the time drew whenever they could. They have been drawing all their lives and were so very impressive. It was frustrating because all I could do was copy what they made, and badly at that. I tried writing stories meant for comics but I could never get it to come out the way I wanted, and they always looked like I was copying someone else's anime style. I could never draw what I could see in my mind's eye.

I figured writing, writing is where I can became the creative artist I'm meant to be. I tried all kinds from songs, to poetry, to scripts, to short stories, and finally to novels. My novels [b] ranged from romance to fantasy to sci-fi. I still write every now and then - little snippets of dreams that I fear I'll never meet. But, I fear that maybe this might not be what I'm meant to do. I see-saw between the fear of mediocrity and the dreams of pen to paper that I still have. I try turning my back but the call is hard to resist.

Then I found photography. Oh man, did I jump into that hard, or what? I'm still not that great - especially when I had to sell my first DSLR because of a family emergency so I had a couple of years break from it. But when I bought my second camera earlier this month, it felt like riding a bike.

I never forgot.

I felt like my camera, my Dorian Jr. [c] was just an extension of myself. Finally, something real, something that's mine, something that I can do to show who I am. Though there are those much better than I am - but I don't care because my fickle mistress has finally chosen a way to express herself through me.

I'm not going to giving up on my writing, far from it - I'm going to mind-meld the two and make it something that's mine and mine alone.

Art may be fickle, but she only gives up when you do.

***

Footnotes:

a. Hahaha, "heard", get it? Whatever, I think I'm funny.

b. Novel, novel outlines, they're the same right? They're never gonna see the light of day anyway.

c. Dorian was the name I had given my first camera and of course Dorian Jr. is the name of my second camera. Blame Toy Story because I blame that movie too.