While I write on this blog,  Music Mutations, is to primarily share my little revelations on music and its connections between other art forms, I find on the Eve of Thanksgiving, I feel a need to share a video I found that describes the process of living happily while pursuing a career in a chosen art form.

I have been blessed to have a mentor living right in my very own home. My husband,  has found this remarkable manner to connect the everyday process of doing what you love, and creating something wonderful. This process morphs into a process that one can not longer call what one does "work". The very definition of work ceases to be a applicable definition, and what he does as a freelancer becomes something else, something amorphous that truly those who appreciate beauty want more.

He risks much when he ceases to work, but create. he risks others thinking he is immature or not responsible, because he creates instead or works. I find these  people to be the losers and simply jealous of the process because they too want to create, and have chosen to work instead.
He risks failure, chasing an identity, and subsequent loss of focus to find the fine line between being responsible to his art and to himself. However, creating good art is a remarkable God -thing and must not be ignored by anyone who comes to understand he or she has the ability to make beautiful connections between creating good art and NOT doing work. I believe God wants us to create, not work.
No matter which art one chooses in life to create be it a novel, a well organized event, a strong economic plan, a beautiful symphonic work, we are all here to MAKE GOOD ART. My husband has learned to make great art in the most benign situations. He can take a simple party and turn it into a photo worthy of a art gallery.He can find a way to make art in his photography, his creation of food, his creation of a new plan. He has learned to make great art.

His life mimics the the freelancer writer and comic creator Neil Gaiman's advice conveyed in his commencement speech. Mike, my husband, has been truly an inspiration. He has kept working just as Neil Gaiman describes.

So, I include the commencement speech below because so many of the truism he speaks are true - but not because he says them, but because he illuminates what I observe in my own home. Thanksgiving is then given right in front of us, and I blessed to have him right in front of me. I love you Mike.