Artist Shane Glines wrote a brilliant blog post many years ago. He said:
“Young artists love lines. I spent most of my career concentrating on lines, style, and other flashy surface details. I spent a lot of time and effort perfecting a pretty line. But your line in itself is ultimately unimportant. It’s the space between the lines that matters.”
Glines philosophy totally changed how I approached drawing at the time but I think you can use his principle in any are of your life.
For years I focused on getting degrees, accolades, and big clients. To me, those are ALL LINES. And the space between the lines is the experiences you have along the way.
As Glines says, we concentrate on lines because they are visible. The same is true with our plans and goals, we can see the thing that we want. We can imagine it or pin it up on a vision board. We cannot always always see the form or how we’re going to get there though. That’s a lot more fuzzy.
There’s nothing wrong with lines or “goals”, just don’t forget to look at the space between along the way.
Adam