When I was a sophomore in college, a guest motivational lecturer named
Kevin Carroll came to speak to my Principles of Advertising class. I remember at one point he asked the class, “Raise your hand if you’re an artist.” Out of a lecture hall of nearly 260 people, maybe 3 hands went up, mine not included. Then he said, “Now, if you were in kindergarten and your teacher asked you to raise your hand if you were an artist, who would raise their hand?” The entire classroom’s hands shot up without question, mine included. So what’s up with that? Why is it that when we’re 5, and barely have the motor skills to stay inside the lines of a coloring book we believe with all sincerity we are the next Renoir, but when we grow up, unless we have a degree from Parsons and a featured exhibit at the Met, we question whether we can even determine the difference between a pencil and a pastel?
Is it that when we are children the taste of sweet sweet ignorance is injected into our bloodstream at such a high concentration, we live on a continuous high believing we are not only capable of anything we set our sights to, but can do it at an expert level? Or, did we really just have it right all along? That if you truly love something, with all your heart, and you’ve got the passion and determination to stick to it, you can have it. You can be the famous singer or the brilliant doctor or the next president or... the talented artist. I’ll take the latter approach; not because I have concrete evidence that it is the truth (because I don't), but because I believe it is the way we should think, like we did when we were five, and we didn’t second guess what else we were competing with in that big ol' world out there.
That being said, welcome to my blog. I’ve decided to call it nourishment, because sometimes we all need a little something to get our blood going, wake us up, just something to hold us over... at least for a few hours. Think of this as a healthy snack. And it is my hope that at least a tiny bite of this content will refresh the way you think, help you discover something new, or change the way you look at something that was there all along. Or hell, at least something to pass the time while you're at work.
And yes, I would not fancy myself a blogger persae. There are certainly more qualified bloggers out there, that's for sure. But I’m gonna try it on, have some fun with it, and see what happens. Because that is what the 5 year old Shana would do, and I think we could all take a tip from the 5 year old versions of ourselves every once in a while.
