Gratitude is Never Not Good

I have to be honest.

When I started blogging about art and money back in 2009, I had no idea where this was going to go. I was working for an internet marketing firm, and I had some thoughts about art and money, but The Abundant Artist was originally just an exploration of those ideas.

One of the very first artists that I followed on the Internet was Natasha Wescoat. Twitter was still pretty unknown, and Natasha had like 5,000 followers (which at the time was a TON of followers on Twitter). I admired pretty much everything that she was doing – her art, the moxy with which she spoke her mind, her tech savviness, and the way that she marketed her work. It was so authentic and real.

She painted while broadcasting live on the Internet. That was craziness. It was brilliant.

I remember taking a weekend trip to Seattle and seeing Natasha tweet that she would be in Seattle that weekend. I tweeted her that I was there too and suggested we meet up. To my fan-boy shock, she agreed. My wife and I met up with her and David Hoang on the street in Seattle.

I’ve worked with some well known folks, and I generally don’t get star struck. I like to think I was cool, calm and collected.

I’m pretty sure Natasha thought I was some kind of weirdo freak. My wife kept giggling because she could tell that on the inside, I was like this.

Yes, that’s the kind of power artists have over people. Art reaches inside of grown men and stirs up their manic teenage girl. Or something.

Fast forward to a few months ago, and Natasha and I were talking about a project on the phone and she shared some of her struggles with me. I asked her how she was doing and we started brainstorming some ways to attack the challenges she had in her business. This all came about rather organically and when we got off of the phone, I was shaking.

Shaking?

Yeah. Shaking. I was intimidated. I was in over my head. I desperately wanted to prove that I could do this. My gremlins were out in full force.

This is, of course, not true. If it were true, Natasha would have sensed that I didn’t know what I was talking about. She would have called me out on my BS. She’s just that way.

It’s silly because Natasha and I have done stuff together before. Blog posts. Social media chats. We even built a course together.

That’s the way that my lizard brain works though. I perceive myself as one way, and when anything happens to challenge that perception, good or bad, I go into fight or flight mode.

The trick is recognizing it. And learning to embrace the not knowing. Embracing the scariness.

Natasha doesn’t know I was this intimidated. She’ll probably laugh after reading this.

We had a few more phone calls. Her challenges got resolved. Mostly it was me just asking questions. She needed an objective opinion. After a few simple questions, she was able to take care of it and she’s doing quite well, thank you very much.

This is pretty much the pinnacle. Right here.

I did not ask her to share this.

Cannot recommend enough the coaching of @AGoodHusband you artists must consider working with him!

— Natasha Wescoat (@natasha) January 17, 2014

Thanks Natasha.