This Life Wasn't For Me
There's a life that was planned for me.
Graduate. Get a job. Work for someone else. Do the same thing every day until you're too tired to care.
I watched people choose that life. I never could.
It started in college. I painted on the side. Sold a few pieces, enough to cover a class. Something clicked. People paid real money for something I made.
Then I got rejected from nursing school.
I felt that shame. The kind you feel when you think you let your parents down. I sat with it for a while. Then I made a decision.
I will paint for a living. I will make this work.
No backup plan. No money. No connections.
I moved back home. I put plastic tarp in two corners of my childhood bedroom. The tape marks are still on the wall.
Bed on the floor. Two feet from the easel. Paint on my hands most mornings. I studied what I chose to study, business, painting technique, filming, Instagram, how artists built real followings from nothing.
Every day. Paint. Post. Study. Repeat.
I lived in the dream before the dream was real.
The art fairs tested that dream.
Sea of white tents. Blistering heat. Months of work loaded into a car. The wind knocked my paintings off the wall. I put them back up. People walked past.
I drove home with almost everything still in the car. One sale. Didn't cover the booth fee.
I sat in that car for a minute. Then I went home and kept going.
Because that “safe” life was still out there waiting. And I still didn't want it.
Then Joe Rogan reposted a painting I did of him.
Morgan Freeman commented on his portrait.
I stared at my screen. Real people I looked up to, with no reason to be generous, found the work. And it moved them.
That was the moment. Right there.
I stopped surviving. I started knowing. I can be this, I am Sam Ryan.
This story isn't special. Every artist you admire has a version of it. If you have an artist in your life, be supportive, show them this story.
I'm grateful you're here. Of everyone who could be reading this… you are the ones who actually care. That means something to me.
One more thing.
I finished Saint Michael this week.
If it moves you, reply and tell me. I want to hear from you. If I put together a print drop I need to know who's in.
Hit reply. Let me know.
-Sam
