The past several weeks have presented many of us the opportunity for rumination. One of the topics that I have given some thought to recently is artistic success. So when I ran across Florida Congresswoman Val Demings’ quote in the Washington Post, it gave me pause. Representative Deming is quoted by Jonathan Capehart as saying that her mother told her, “You can make it. If you work hard and play by the rules, you can be anything you wanna be and do anything you wanna do.”  That quote led me to think about a number of people in the arts who are pretty sure they followed the rules and worked hard, but feel that they are not yet anywhere close to their dreams. That seemed to warrant examination.

Perhaps they never really defined what they wanted to do or be. To want to be a Broadway actor is a very different thing from just wanting to be a working actor who makes his/her living on the stage, which is a very different thing from wanting to be a working film actor, which is a very different thing from wanting to be an internationally-known movie star. It’s not that it’s better to be one or another of these categories of actor; it’s just that they are different and the paths to getting there are different and have different sets of rules that must be followed. So it may be that a person dreamed of being one of these, but followed the path for another, and thus ended up in a place different from where s/he wanted to be. Something similar happened to Jerry Saltz. In his book, How to Be an Artist, he discusses all the paths he tried before deciding that writing about art was what he really wanted to do.

As long as we’re talking about rules, there’s that whole “playing by the rules” thing. Again, if someone is playing by the wrong set of rules, s/he may not be headed where s/he thinks she is going, but another place entirely. It is up to each individual artist to determine what the rules are for the path s/he has chosen. The rules for becoming an outstanding teaching artist in painting are very different from the rules for becoming an artist whose work is collected by museums and auctioned at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. Before someone can “play by the rules,” s/he must first know what the rules are for where s/he is headed.

As for working hard, that too means different things according to the track one is following. Most serious photographers work hard at learning the craft aspects of their field, and many work hard at developing a high level of artistry in their images. If all a person is interested in is making excellent images, the hard work can be constrained to those areas; however, if one wants to do fashion photography, there are a number of other areas that will require hard work of several kinds in order to position oneself successfully in that particular area of photographic art. Similarly, other kinds of hard work are required by other areas of specialization.

One thing that is not referenced in the Representative Demings’ quotation is a time frame. Some artists do not find success until they have lived a while. And we are talking about a fair number of artists.  Jerry Saltz, in the book mentioned above, for example, talks about the difficulties he had in arriving at his goal of being an art critic finally at the age of 41.

So maybe those who are feeling they are not close to their dreams just aren’t there—yet. Or perhaps they don’t want to work so hard at ancillary things, or don’t want to follow a particular set of rules or find that the dream they started with is not the one they now want. They just need to remember that dreams, like everything else, can always be adjusted.

Many things have changed since mid-March. Some of us are working from home; some of us are unemployed; a few of us are performing essential services and exposing ourselves daily to Coronavirus risk. Everyone’s life has changed.  Even those of us who have always been solitary artists have seen some change. Everybody feels off-balance, not exactly knowing what the next step might be. Part of the reason that we are feeling the way we are is the absence of uniforms and ritual in our current lives.

A friend of mine says that all successful people dress in uniforms. She did not mean, of course, literal uniforms, but rather that people whom she considers successful dress so that every day they are dressed similarly, whatever way that happens to be. For some that may be a sports jacket, button-up shirt, and jeans; for others it may be a two-piece suit. For Steve Jobs it was Levis black 501 jeans and a black mock turtle-neck shirt; the shirts were designed specifically for him by Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

Many of us developed “uniforms” that we wore pre-pandemic. One of the first things that happened when we were compelled to stay at home was the abandonment of our uniforms. Many of us quickly opted for T-shirts and pajama bottoms. Comfort seemed to be the order of the day, and changing clothes was just a ridiculous concept. However, a man I know who is one of the best-adjusted newly at-home workers I know told me that he just changed uniforms. Needless to say, he is a firm believer in the uniform concept evinced by Steve Jobs. He says that he adopted yoga pants (the loose ones—very comfortable, but a little more stylish than pajama pants or shorts) and a polo shirt, which enables him to be “camera ready” for the unannounced Skype, Zoom, or Teams calls. And shoes; he says the shoes (sneakers) are very important to feeling “dressed.” That’s his work-from-home outfit; it’s very different from his pre-pandemic wear. He says that when he’s off work, he changes clothes to help him differentiate work time and personal time. He also says having a uniform helps with his outlook and attitude.

A second thing that changed in March was our set of rituals. We all had developed personal rituals that we went through every day. Some were consciously developed; others were unconscious. Some of us did a quiet time or meditation every morning before we began our work day. Others of us went through the ritual of coffee, shower, breakfast, commute as a beginning to our days.

Suddenly, our routines changed and not only were we disconcerted and disoriented by the pandemic and its implications, but we are also absent our daily rituals that helped us begin and get through the day. This, of course, led to even more disorientation and distress. We were hit by a tsunami and at the same time became untethered from our moorings. Is it any wonder that many of us felt lost?

The good news is that we can adopt new uniforms and develop new rituals. We might do well to remember Karl Lagerfeld’s famous quote about sweatpants, which also applies to pajamas: “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.” Uniforms don’t have to be “dressy” or what we wore when we “went to work,” but they can reflect a style and an attitude that moves us forward.

Likewise we can add ritual to our day. We certainly do not have to “go to work” to have ritual in our existence; we just have to tailor the little pieces of our behavior to our current situation and then repeat those behaviors until they become rituals that inform our days. The thing about rituals is, at least according to Scientific American, is they work. We certainly don’t have to do the same things in the same order that we used to, but it would be well to do the same things in the same order every day.  The routine and the ritual thus established will comfort us if nothing else.

Many think that the pandemic will be with us for a while, certainly far longer than any of us would like. Perhaps developing new rituals and adopting a uniform that matches our new mode of working will help us cope with this new and still-unsettling way of life.