—Maxim—
When you are on your way, you are already succeeding.
Our infatuation with instant gratification confuses us about success. We want things to happen instantly, and we live in a world where some things happen instantly. But sometimes it seems to take forever for meaningful things to happen. It takes time to make art and it takes time to make an art career. That has always been the case. But it may take more time these days just to get started. And that makes me feel, bitterly and sadly, like I'm not succeeding. The hardest thing about making art, I think, is getting to make it. I feel like I've spent twenty-five years trying to make ends meet so I can afford to make art at all. It sometimes feels like an endless quest to get to point zero.
But I recently learned something about the word success that I think may help to change the way I think about my objectives and the time frame. The word success originally meant to come after (or before, or under, or over, or near to) something else. As the word was used over time, success began to mean reaching a goal that had been set.
