Shower the People You Love

04/17/2019 5 By BuddyCushman

I am about to ask you to become a Patron of mine. A someone who supports my devotion to and efforts at creativity – in my particular case as a writer and an artist. And as an artist working in both oils and acrylic, drawing with pencil and charcoal. Working at keyboards and coffee shop tables.

The support I ask for, here, is financial, and if you feel inclined to become a Patron to and for me you can make that happen through the on-line web page called Patreon. I have a “Creator’s Page” there. Google Patreon and search for Buddy Cushman, you may have to log-in to search – free and painless.

I will go into the details of tiers and goals and rewards some other time, most of it’s pretty self-evident. And my page is just coming to life. It is the “Why” I want to talk about here on Couch Surfing at 70 today. And if you think about it – being someone’s patron, supporting someone’s couch surfing…. – well, it’s all Kindness. That’s the main thing – kindness. In a previous post on this Blog, a couple back, I explained briefly my re-entry into the arena of working class stiff and my rather quick exit back out of it. Ethics, vision, perspective….however I explain my thinking, my feelings about the job, it just wasn’t for me. And as I considered what I was doing while I was doing it, and how it felt – feelings raised from a career of service to humans and my experience of the very busted “system” – I had both a longing to fall back into the days I had the previous seven and a half years of not only not having “a job” but of the opportunity and ability every day to chase down my dreams. I also had a clear feeling of regret for not having been “all-in” as a creator all the time, living it, breathing it, jumping out of bed for it. All the time, every day, giving myself over to that life – I’m a writer. I’m an artist. And one day I wept with the clarity that I was going to a job that made me feel bad and thinking how much more I could have been giving to that life of creation I’d had and hadn’t done everything with.

People I hang out with say regrets are bad and we shouldn’t hang on to them, but I don’t believe that. Especially not when they become fuel. So I quit and within the process of quitting I made a vow to what I consider my “Higher Power” as well as to the planet that I would take whatever time I have left here and give myself over completely “to making stuff”. Stuff which hopefully engages and entertains, stimulates and satisfies, it adds to the quality of the day for those who come upon it. And I hope makes the world, if not a better place, a little brighter – a little more fun.

Last week, my first unemployed again, I did a painting of a rooster, on paper, from a pencil drawing I had done previously. I took a picture and posted it on Instagram and somewhat amazingly a woman in Rhode Island asked the price and agreed to buy it for $25, which since I included free shipping and had to buy packaging for that particular 11 x 15 size meant I made next to nothing on the sale. But still – someone bought my painting. A painting I made the first day after the last day of work. Then last Sunday a woman in LA posted on my Facebook page a photo of her daughter holding a couple of books she had read that weekend – and one of the books was my “There Were Elms”. Someone reading my book.

I’ve included both the Rooster and Reader pics here.  

There is something about being an artist, a writer, something about loneliness. I suppose it’s supposed to be that way. But the pay-off of “making” something is so much more. And, for me at least, validation when it comes — hello Rooster, hello Reader — is pretty cool. This is my life, it’s taken seven decades to get here, and I’m all in. And I am asking for your support. Money I receive from my Patrons will go into the nearly-always bare ‘art fund’ at my credit union, which I use to fund self-publishing my poetry, paying technicians to create formatting that works, covers that fit, easels and palette knives and new brushes and green oil and acrylic paints since I hardly have any, annual fees for domain names and web hosting sites, like here at Couch Surfing, and watercolor paper and frames at Goodwill and the occasional on-line training, and promotional fees, and story submission fees, business cards, and coffee.

I am asking for your help. I promise I will give you all I have, and over time – spelled out clearly on my Patreon “Tiers”, shower you with gifts and affection. Shower the people I love with love.

Here’s a P.S. — Yesterday I asked a fellow artist I’ve becomes friends with on line – and a very cool print of a painting of hers is right here on the wall with me – I asked if she could search for my new Patreon site and if she could would she please give me some feedback. It took her a while, but she messaged back she’d found it and liked it. When I checked the page the next time I discovered she’d become my very first Patron. So cool. Marie, an artist, who lives in Scotland.