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Why publish work?




Over the last week, I’ve been doing a lot more reflecting on what it means to publish work.

I heard an interesting perspective recently- A content creator named CJ the X said in a video, “To never publish your art is selfish.” I’d never really considered it that way. I have a lot of work that I’ve never published. For me, I’ve never seen much of a reason to share work publicly- Who cares anyway? Nobody is looking, what’s the point?… I’ve started to realize— The point is that someone else *might* find meaningful value it.


All my life, I’ve been inspired by people and stories and works in the world around me, and experiencing those things has helped me understand myself and grow as a person and an artist. Every artist exists in a big long line of influences from other artists, and from the culture surrounding them. (These lines are more like a web if you really think about it…) If you never publish work, does the line end with you? Do you exist as a point on the web from which nothing else attaches?


It’s not about being self important, it’s about being responsible for the work you’ve consumed and the things you’ve been able to realize about the world through the work you’ve created. It’s about understanding that if you’re going to spend your time and energy making something meaningful to you… you owe it to everyone who put time and energy in to you to present that thing so that it might contribute to someone else’s life, too.


Sometimes I think about what it means to go to space. It didn’t just take 20 years (or however long) to develop and build a rocket, It didn’t even take one lifetime, it took hundreds of years of compounding human existence. It took generations of math and engineering- it took infrastructure, and the entire lives and energy of the people who built the infrastructure. It took the people who work in restaurants so that all those people would have somewhere to eat. It took the entire world and everything it took to create that world to make it so building a rocket to space was possible.


I’m not in a hurry to get massive popular attention. I’m realizing that I need to be seen if I want my work to touch and enrich the lives of people. I’ve never been (and I’m still not) infatuated with the idea of being famous just to be famous. I want to grow a following because I want my work (if it means something to people) to be in a position where it can be seen by the people who might actually get something out of it.

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