Irrelevant Facts

I had an idea for an art show.

A stained glass style painting exhibition in a historic building. That was all I had. Just the idea.

I did not have any of the work done yet. I did not know where the exhibition would be. I did not have some elaborate plan for how I was going to pull it off. And I had about a week before the school year started again and my time became a lot less flexible.

I remember getting immediately overwhelmed.

The idea felt too big. There were too many things I did not know. Where would I show the work? How many paintings would I need? Could I actually finish them in time? Who was I supposed to call? Where would I get the money for all the materials?

There were plenty of reasons not to do it. And that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately:

The worst excuses are the ones that are true.

"I do not have the money." "I do not have enough time." "I have ADHD." "I do not know the right people." "I have never done this before."

Insert whatever yours is.

Sometimes these aren't just excuses. They're facts.

You really do not have the money. You really do not have much time. You really do have responsibilities pulling you in five different directions. You really might have something that makes doing what you want to do harder for you than it would be for somebody else.

Okay.

So what are you going to do about it?

Because once you have acknowledged that something is true, you still have to decide what you are going to do about it. Are you going to allow it to stop you from achieving what you want to achieve? Or are you going to say, yes, that is true, and I am still going to figure out how to get this done?

For me, this was one of those moments. I had an idea. I had a very limited amount of time. I was overwhelmed. And I did not know exactly how I was going to make it happen.

So I did an FKV.

FKV stands for Feel, Know, Vision. It is a simple method I use to get myself out of my head and back into the present with a plan. Learn more about the FKV method here.

First, Feel.

I acknowledged what I was actually feeling. I was overwhelmed. I was unsure. I was anxious. I was also excited. There was fear there, but there was also a part of me that really wanted to see what would happen if I actually committed to the idea.

I let myself acknowledge all of it.

Then I moved on. Know.

What did I actually know? I knew I made dope art. I knew I had a good network. I knew I had people I could reach out to. I knew that if I cut out distractions and really focused, I could produce enough work for a show.

I did not need to know exactly how everything was going to happen. I just needed to separate what I knew from everything I was afraid might happen.

Then came Vision.

The point of Vision is to take you from where you are at to where you want to be, by building the plan to get there.

I started thinking about the work I wanted to make. I planned out the individual pieces. I went out and bought the materials I would need. I started reaching out to people connected to historic spaces.

And that is how City Hall came about.

Three years earlier, I had done an artist residency in Angola. During that residency, I met someone who worked in Newark City Hall. So I reached back out.

I asked her what the situation was with the art in City Hall. There was already artwork hanging throughout the building, but there was also a lot of blank space. We had a conversation about it, and she was open and willing to have me put some of my work up in City Hall.

Now I had a place. So I got to work. I bought materials. I made the paintings. I kept moving. Eventually, I was walking through the doors of Newark City Hall carrying my work.

And before I could even finish hanging the exhibition, pieces started selling.

This meant a lot to me for more reasons than one.

First, because a little over a week earlier, none of this existed. There was no exhibition. No work. No sales. Nothing.

Second, because I saw the instant payoff. That first sale covered the cost of all the materials, production, and everything that had gone into making the show.

Third, and most importantly, the work actually connected deeply with somebody. They were moved by it.

And that, to me, was the most important part.

I love making work that is not just something I can enjoy, but something that someone else can take with them and that can actually help improve the quality of their life.

See the artwork from the exhibition here.

And then, as I finished hanging my work and looked around at the different areas of the rotunda, I realized something. I had seen this place somewhere else before.

I had seen it in Batman.

Parts of The Dark Knight Rises were filmed in Newark, and Newark City Hall was used as one of the filming locations.

So it was pretty dope to know that my artwork was now hanging in the same building as Batman.

What had started as an idea in my mind had now flourished into a painting exhibition inside this historic building, which had literally been transformed into Gotham for one of the biggest movie franchises in the world.

But this was not some big break.

This was an idea.

Everything starts with an idea.

After my idea, I got overwhelmed. But I made a plan to deal with that overwhelm. I found a way to process what I was feeling, use my knowledge to get a good grasp of myself, my capabilities, and the situation at hand, and execute on a vision that would take me from stressed out and overwhelmed to successful.

I reached out to people, I bought materials, I made the work.

And eventually... I was there.

This is why I have been thinking about excuses differently.

We usually say excuses are lies. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. Sometimes they are the truth.

And I think the true excuses are the worst ones because they are easy to surrender to.

You can explain them.

People can feel sorry for you about them.

You can spend years allowing something that is completely true to derail you from the vision, purpose, and destiny you could be achieving.

Acknowledge what is true. Do not pretend the obstacles are not there. Do not lie to yourself. But this time, do not say, "I cannot do anything about it."

Say, "What am I going to do about it?"

Whatever you have been telling yourself is stopping you, maybe it is real. Maybe it is unfair. Maybe someone else has it way easier than you do.

Okay.

Now what?

Let me know below:

What's an excuse you're ready to stop letting control your life? How did it make you feel before and what are you going to do today to let that excuse know it's powerless.