It was a pleasure to read Part 2 of Alain Briot's "Being an Artist in Business."
He proves that with determination, hard work and the right kind of support you can make lemonade from lemons. "Unto thine own self be true" runs strongly through all that he writes.
His journey led me to thinking about the many others I've known whose career paths were rocky and anything but straight and narrow. My father and his father before him learned an occupation and reaped the rewards of that career for the rest of their days. Today, many of our friends have been pummeled about through numerous careers.
Alain is an example of what can be done. By training he's a French educated painter. By choice, he's a U.S. southwest landscape photographer. By necessity he's been a salesman, marketer, bookeeper, printer, framer, packager, travel agent and teacher. No doubt he would argue that list is too short!
Through it all, determination and focus are seeing him through.
For me, the take away from his article is the need to step outside today's ebb and flow to check focus. Answers to questions like "What am I doing here?" and "Is this really me?" will give us confidence in what we're doing, or direction to where we need to be.
Thank you Alain. I'm looking forward to Part 3.
