Hello everyone! and welcome to the second and last week of The Declaration of You! Blog Lovin' tour.
The Declaration of You will be published by North Light Craft Books this summer, with readers getting all the permission they've craved to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique and uncover what they are meant to do! This post is part of The Declaration of You's Blog Lovin' Tour, which I'm thrilled to participate in alongside over 100 other creative bloggers. Learn more and join us, read here!
This week's theme is uniquity, and I have to be honest... at first I didn't really know what it was or what I was supposed to write about. I'd never heard of the word so I thought it was some kind of fancy word I didn't know and looked for it in the dictionary, only to discover it wasn't a real word... lol! So I decided to put two of my neurons together and started decomposing the word: the word unique was in it, so it definitely had to be something about the uniqueness of each of us. Then I remembered I bought The Multi Passionate Must Haves kit of goodies a while back (but haven't really had the chance to enjoy it yet :( ), and that there was The Declaration of You ebook and decided to read about uniquity to be sure I was on the right track; and I was! hehehe.
For soooooooo many years I struggled going back and forth Loser Land, constantly comparing myself to others and harshly criticising my own work and telling myself it wasn't perfect nor good enough. The Art and Business of Surface Pattern Design helped me a lot boosting up my confidence, but I still took the train back to that horrible place whenever discomfort or rejection came. Early this year, while reading Lilla Rogers' new book, I had a huge aha! moment: I realized I DON'T have to be perfect, and in fact... it is within my imperfectness that my uniquity lies. I now love every single wrong trace I draw, my non-symmetrical shapes, my doodled style... I no longer try to draw perfectly normal things, I just draw with my own style and love my weird looking characters and objects: I finally fell in love with my style and aesthetic.
There are other things that add up to being imperfect to complete my uniquity (see my visual declaration above), but I strongly believe my blunt honesty is the quality that really makes me stand out everywhere I go, whatever I do, and whoever I meet. I've been judged many times for being too honest, but I just can't help myself: if I think/believe it, it'll show somehow (on my face, in my words, in my work...) and I really love this about me; I wouldn't change it for anything!
Uniquity might not be a real word, but it should! We should all discover what makes us unique 'cause it is in our individuality that real perfection and beauty are. Looking up to other people is ok... in fact, I think it is a great way to explore yourself; identifying why you look up to that other person might help you find your uniquity. I still look at others' work, but now I do it with real admiration and love for their art. I no longer compare myself to them (to avoid sad and frustrating trips to Loser Land), but try to learn from them. (FYI... I love many maaaaany designers -I discover at least a new one I like every day-, but my latest design crush is Flora Chang; you should definitely check her out!). Admiration is easy to feel but not so easy to believe you can transmit to somebody else. I'd never thought someone could look at my work the way I do at that of others' and think of me as an example to follow. The first time (and only, so far) another fellow designer told me "I, one day, want to be like you", I felt like a Super Star -hehehe- and it just encouraged me to keep working hard and developing and evolving myself and my art so that I can, one day, inspire more people around the world :)
