You Do Not Have to Know Yet

"Tilapäinen epävarmuus? Prosessin luonne? Etsikkoaika?"
(entry, November 12, 2015)

Lesson 4: You do not have to know yet. In fact, not-knowing is part of the work.

In late 2015, I thought I was close to a breakthrough.
One day I was going to be a writer.
The next, a musicologist. Then a visual artist. Then a harmless Tumblr uncle.
Then nothing at all.

My sense of artistic identity kept shifting like northern weather.
Inspiration rose with a wine glass and dissolved before the bottle was empty.
Synchronicity fluttered through a Facebook post or a bus ride, but vanished when I tried to hold it too tightly.

And yet—this, too, was art practice.

The oscillation.
The act of staying inside the questions without turning them into branding.
The refusal to name something before it has ripened.
And the deeper refusal to pretend I was more certain than I was.

This is what most people misunderstand about becoming:
The fog is not a problem. The fog is where the forming happens.
It is where filters drop, and real preferences start to show.
It is where inflated ambition gets trimmed to fit the actual soul.

Lesson 4 is this:
Wavering is listening.
Confusion is a sacred phase in the process of choosing your form.
Let it be foggy. Stay present anyway.

Clarity will come. And when it does, it will not arrive as a mission statement.
It will arrive as a course you are already enrolled in.
As a tool already in your hand.
As a life already underway.

So if today is a day when you don’t know who you are becoming,
just stay.
That means the art practice is working.