Like everything else, being an artist requires work. We are not defined by who we say we are. We are not defined by who we surround ourselves with. We are not defined by what we intend to do or intend to be. We are defined solely by what the hell we do.

If you do nothing, you are nothing. If you wake up, pick up the pen and then put it back down, you are not a writer. You are a pen handler. If you pick up the brush, look at the canvas, but squeeze out no colors, you are not an artist. You are a canvas wrangler and a horsehair fondler. If you take out the camera, look around, and never press the shutter, you are not a photographer. You are a walker, a people watcher, a viewer. You are probably healthy, but you are not an artist. Being an artist doesn’t require creating great art. It requires creating art. Being an artist doesn’t mean you like art, or buy art, or watch art. It means you create art, you live artfully. You do.

We are not what we are. That is the great mythology of humanity. We are what we do. Stop making excuses; go do some art. Paint some shit. Squeeze clay into being. Rearrange your garden so that it looks like a picture of SpongeBob. Take a photo. Make the world better.

Do.

You may have seen one of the many variants of this video on YouTube or Facebook. Here is the source, without the pretty pictures, without the nice music. Life isn’t pretty pictures, and that, my friends, is why we NEED you to be artists. No excuses. We’re running out of time, and we need you to do this.

Do.