 Hi there, I'm Sandy Olnock. Welcome to my YouTube channel. I am an artist, an art instructor, and an obsessive maker of all the things in all the mediums. And I'm glad that you're here, no matter what your medium or your level of art, because I have some thoughts to share that I hope will get your own mind turning in different ways by the end of this. It might also come out a bit like a therapy session, so I will apologize if it goes that way. But I've been spending some time on the threads platform in the last few months. It's not a place for everyone. I had hoped it would be another place to find people to watch my videos or take my classes or buy my art. And it's not been good for me in any of those ways. No better than Twitter ever was for me either. But what is different about threads is that I'm getting into actual conversations with other full-time artists now, which is really good for my sanity. I've even direct messaged with some of them when topics have gotten tough to have out in the open. See, Instagram, as experienced by many artists, has become quite ridiculous. Engagement is down, algorithms don't reward the calm viewing of our art since we don't include trendy dancing and lots of people have even left the platform because there are just so many ads. Threads, though, feels more like social media did back in the day when it was shiny and new, when people actually got into conversations in the comments. I trust that meta will eventually ruin it like they did Facebook and Instagram, but for now I'm enjoying the heck out of it, even if my work isn't popular there. I'm loving being introduced to so many new artists and learning from them, hearing my own experience as a full-time artist reflected in their lives too, knowing that we're all a mess and somehow that makes me feel like less of a mess myself. Other people also fret because their pieces haven't sold, their inspiration slid behind the refrigerator, nobody signed up for a class or views on social media tanked, and that also makes us cheer each other on even more when a buyer rewards one of us or somebody gets coverage in a magazine or a guest spot on a podcast. It's actual community like I haven't seen on Instagram in a really long time. In the past few weeks I realized there's something in the artist community that makes me feel a twinge of a good kind of jealousy, because the kind of artists that I'm seeing more and more of are working on pieces for days at a time, weeks at a time, even months at a time, the kind of luxury of pouring time into my art that I just don't have. Back when I was younger I had all kinds of big dreams for art that really fired me up. I had ideas for entire children's books, an illustration series for a calendar, dreams of having my work in galleries, all while I was working full-time so I couldn't accomplish any of that. But those were heady dreams that I could say one day, one day when I finally become a full-time artist I'll do all that big stuff. But I never did. I think I didn't know how much work it is to be an artist and to cobble together an income. Money for artists comes in tiny spurts and it's different ones for different artists. A gallery show here or there, a brand deal, an invitation to teach. For me I'm constantly trying to figure out what people want to learn and provide teaching on that either in a free YouTube video that hopefully encourages a few people to take a class from time to time or a whole class which may or may not even pay for the time that I've invested in creating it. It's not an artistic lifestyle that gives me the time to indulge in those big dream projects that I had when I was younger. Now yes I did spend four days on the drawing in my last video because I talked about that but that wasn't luxurious time. It was pressured time. I kept telling myself I've got to get this done, get it recorded for YouTube on Tuesday and I was working you know like really long days. I wasn't just working on it as inspiration came to work on it. It was really trying to slam and get it done. Now I know that you dear viewer, you don't have a timed schedule that you require of me but if I don't keep up a regular YouTube and social media schedule which feels like a treadmill, the algorithms get punishing and if you mess that up in any one of the platforms it can take months to come back from that. And to pay my bills I need to get my work and my classes seen if I screw up somewhere along the way. I can't make my bills much less save for rainy days ahead so I keep running on that flippin' treadmill. When I complained on threads about not having time for more in-depth pieces a new artist friend asked me if social media and making a living were not obstacles in any way. Is there anything else that's stopping me from taking the time to just dive into whatever art that I want to create and let it take as long as it needs to? Because he said if we really want something we'll make time for it. So he challenged me to think about what is stopping me. I dug for the answer. I did a bunch of journaling about it and I realized I have really stopped dreaming big dreams for my art. The treadmill squashed that out of me. It feels like it's enough to just dream that maybe I'll make my bills this month. Much less thinking ahead to creating something any bigger or more spectacular than that. And maybe that's why my art isn't rewarded by algorithms I don't know. My work is decent but it's not amazing like I know I could create if I had the time to invest. But how do I get there when I'm still having to feed the monsters of social media and new classes and all the stuff that I have to do to pay the bills? I wish I could say I knew the answer. I guess I'm just glad right now that I'm even asking the questions. I feel like I've been a bit of a frog who wanted a hot tub bath. But I convinced myself that a lukewarm puddle was all I deserved. And I know I deserve more. But I've got to find whatever it is inside of me that's going to rise up and reclaim those big dreams. Because that's something I want to start doing again. The piece I'm drawing today isn't a big dream by any means but it's a baby step. It's something I had doodled in a sketchbook years and years and years ago. I never did more than that little pencil sketch. But one of the alternative inktober prompts over on Art Venture is hot air balloon for today. And that brought the sketched idea back to my mind. So now I drew it out on paper, my steampunk dirigible. And I'm going to frame this thing and I'm going to hang it above where I work all day to remind me to find my way back to those big dreams. It might have to be by baby steps, a little bit at a time. But I plan on heading in that direction somehow. And I'd love some company. Think about what big dreams are out just past your horizon. Maybe you don't even see them yet. Or maybe it's a shimmer in the sun in the distance. But if the current obstacles that are blocking your view were out of the way, what would that big dream look like? What could it be? If we don't seek out those big dreams, we're going to keep settling for the little ones like me and just making this month's bills. For you, maybe your little goal is just spend one evening creating this week. Maybe it's just doing a little something, but we can both reach for much higher goals. But not if we aren't ready to entertain them, not if we're settling for what we have right now. Not if we think this is all we are deserving of. Once you start getting that bigger vision, then take one step toward it. If it's a baby one, so be it. I'll be right there with you. My own baby steps are going to form a very slow path to my own bigger dreams. But we'll get there together. But only if we look out past that horizon, dive around those obstacles to at least catch a view of what is possible. Now, if you want a little reminder to dream your own big dreams, I have put this drawing in my shop as a black and white downloadable for just a couple of bucks. Print it out, hang it up in your own studio, add color if you want, and then go out there and think bigger. That's what I'm going to be trying to do too. So thank you for coming to my therapy session. I'll see you in another video next week because, that dang algorithm is quite hungry, eh? So go create something every day, and I'll see you soon.