I used to be a starving artist.
I would have done anything for my art, and sacrificing the comforts of life seemed trivial at the prospect of being able to live my life on my terms.
I technically never starved… unless you consider fasting for spiritual reasons starvation. I did have a very reduced food budget, and have been shocked when I have either randomly heard what a friend spent at the grocery store or had the discomfort to be with a family member while shopping.
“Six hundred dollars for groceries?” I gasped to which I was assured it was a common occurrence but, it “is Whole Foods after all…”
I didn’t spend $600 in a month!
I have learned a lot about poverty eating and the importance of balancing maximum caloric intake for minimum expenditure. You find yourself in junk food territory very quickly. It gives a lot of caloric bang for the buck.
It’s almost like they pay you to eat it.
And while I regret the limited mindset my finances had on my family members and how it infiltrated every aspect of my life before I addressed it and pursued abundance instead, I have learned a lot about what a person actually needs to live and how we as a civilization live on a grand amount of excess.
And when I say excess, I mean excesssssssssssssssss.
The first thing everyone thinks when I say starving artist is dumpster diving. And while I never had the pleasure of this experience — I have heard gleeful accounts at the mostly new state of food from dumpsters behind restaurants.
I wouldn’t do this.
I have dumpster dove into the pristine magazine recycling dumpster that used to reside at our neighborhood post office.
At first it was just grabbing some magazines from the open window on the side of container.
Who throws away a perfectly good copy of last month’s issue of Cosmo?
I was young anyways when I found these magazines riveting… But one day, the window was mostly shut and try as I might I couldn’t open it. It was totally jammed and I wondered if the post office was intent on me not taking some magazines they were throwing away.
I read them, yes, but I also cut them up and created the most amazing dream boards that turned into the amazing life that I walk around in now. A life where I live the imagery that I used to admire.
I have learned that at some point, to take the dream and turn it into reality, you have to act like the person who is in the dream and stop acting like the person who is getting the less than stellar results of the now.
Instead of Ill take that vacation when… You step into a reality where you just take the vacation and the goal that was just at the edge of your consciousness, right out of reach, pops into your lap while you are on your way to the airport.
What changed? Your mindset.
The revelation always precedes that magical moment in time where the tiles all fall into place. And we can see the sparkles around the miracle of manifestation.
But there are some things that we don’t need — the busy work without end… or the erroneous belief that this world is merely physical and it was a coincidence that our dream appeared just as we trusted that it would and leaned into it.
The world is not physical. This is a spiritual life. How can you lean into that idea today?
What are you holding onto that you don’t need? What could you let go of that would free you up to create?
