The Artist, the Businesswoman and the Child

18th January 2025

This is something I have been working on this week.

It is completely unfinished and I was sorely tempted not to publish.

I caught myself going through the excuses not to, so I knew I had to.

Here it is.

It came from working hard on the wrong things

The Dysfunctional 3

We have 3 distinct people going about their daily lives inside of us:

The Artist

The Businesswoman

And the Child

The Artist curates (Is this good?)

The Businesswoman promotes (Is this going to sell?)

and the Child is just happy playing (Is this fun?)

They all want to achieve their goals
And we'd like to think they can operate separately
But they cannot.

They are a family

We need all 3 to be working in harmony to find the harmony in what we do.

I find myself using them at different moments:

When I need to deal with promotion or negotiation, I will be the businesswoman and I'll try to be hard.
When I am editing my work, I am the Artist and I'll try to be good.
When I am the child I just enjoying making things. I just play.

When I am creating something and I become angry at myself it's usually because I have failed at being good, or failed at being hard.

But the person who gets blamed is the child.

You were playing too much. Having too much fun.

I must get better at good.
I must be harder than hard.
I must take things seriously by being serious.

So I stop making things.
I stop playing.
No fun.

And what’s funny about this moment:
Hope dries up.
Excitement drifts away.
Life in monochrome.
I am now serious, so, you see now, I am taking things seriously.

It’s only after the Artist and Buisnesswoman have exhausted every option, every possible tactic to be good and to be hard that they understand their mistake.

The goal was the child in the first place
They are their in its service.
To create. To have fun.

“We’re sorry” they say .
Show us the way.
And the child replies, “Let’s play.”

When we sacrifice play for the sake of being good or hard, eventually we find ourselves and our work suffering because of it.

I realised I had fallen into this trap a few weeks ago, and am making an effort to get myself out, plonk about and take myself a little less seriously. My efforts have found me bouncing up and down more.

The Artist’s Date

I always forget this little trick but it’s one of my favorites.

In Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way* she talks about something called the Artist’s Date. Here are smarter people than me discussing it on Reddit:

A few of my previous Artist Dates:
Solo bowling, ice skating alone with headphones on (and trying to teach myself how to do one of those cool parallel stop hockey players do), I listened to the entirety of U2’s Joshua Tree, movies - many, many movies.

As my Artist and Businesswoman have been in charge for the last few months, I am out of practice. But during the writing of this letter I was reminded of how much fun they were. How energised and enlivened I felt after. Let’s play.

This week I’ll be taking an Artists Date, and I encourage you to do so too.

Thanks for reading guys, you are awesome. Can’t thank you enough for being my first two subscribers. And for being so supportive!

You’re just awesome. If you reply to this email i will send you my favorite gif. I’ll see you next week!

Al x

*i use affiliate links if you think that sucks I completely understand, so here is a non affiliate link because it’s a great book
Artist’s Way