I like writing here best because I don’t have to worry about what I am going to say. There is a certain freedom that comes with that. On a blog that gets traffic I have to worry about things like punctuation and grammar. I have to worry about offending people or getting to political. Here I can voice my thoughts, for better or worse here is where they exist. Not completely in the nude, but thoughts should never be in the nude. Like a naked body I have always thought that our thoughts are most beautiful when they are partly concealed. Like a bikini. The human body looks better this way… I assume the same holds true for the human mind.

I was reading my dad’s bio on his blog today about how he decided that he would call himself a “writer”. What does make someone a writer?  We all write, but what separates someone from being someone who writes to being a writer. Or someone who does art from being an artist. Some would argue  that it is the quality of the work, but even this is subjective.

In most professions the designation comes with a degree, a piece of paper that signifies that you have crossed a certain line. But this is kind of like a runner who runs for fun. When you finish a marathon and cross that finish line you are a runner that has finished a marathon, yet you need not run a marathon to be a runner. In my profession I can not call myself a PA until I pass a test and receive a degree nor can a doctor call herself a doctor until she has met the requirements. The arts have no requirements deep down I think this is what bothers us about the arts, there is no real milestone one must pass. It is all very subjective. We humans do not fair well when confronted with subjectivity.

Hence we are born artists because we can draw, singers because we can sing, writers because we can write, poets because we can recite verse, musicians because we can play the piano?

But to truly call yourself something I believe you have to prove that you can provide value with your art. In our culture this means you have to be able to earn some type of compensation for your craft usually in the form of money.

In this sense very few of us are actually artists.

This will piss a lot of people off who consider themselves writers, or artists, or musicians. But it should not. I too am someone who draws, someone who blogs, someone who writes, someone who runs. Yet I am not an artist, a blogger, a writer or a real runner. I simply am a person who does these things.

What is the difference? And does it really matter?