It has officially been a week here in Denmark. I’ve always wanted to live in Europe… The fantasy of simply being in a European city, speaking the language so nonchalantly, having a huge base of foreign friends… All as part of a natural progression of moving to a new place; it’s been a fantasy of mine for a long time. 

Well, the fantasy becomes a reality at some point if you decide to go for it. Eventually you get into the everyday rhythm of regular life and the new place becomes just like any other place… Primarily because you’re still you, even in a new country.

There are, of course, plusses and minuses and people become just people in the world. The culture is different and the food is different, the cost of living is DEFINITELY different…. but people are still people, wherever you go. A place is what you make it, it’s all about what you feel inside. It doesn't entirely matter who lives there because your love for a place is all about how it makes you feel when you arrive… it’s a “to each their own” situation.

I feel very comfortable in Scandinavia… for lots of reasons. From the moment I took my first trip until now having decided to move here, I just feel at home. I mean, San Diego is my real home but only because my family and friends are there… personally, San Diego as a place, is not so comfortable for a person like myself. I get heat stroke easily, I’m pasty white so I get broiled in the summer sun, my body hates sunscreen and I break out in horrible acne (even when I use the expensive stuff), I’m not a model or a surfer so I feel weird and out of place at the beach… I grew up with this mentality of “chill” but every year there's this influx of other people from stressed out parts of the country that refuse to honor our “chill out” motto… It never rains. It never snows. It’s never “predictable” and everyone I grow to love eventually moves away. 

But it’s beautiful… and it’s comfortable. I was very comfortable there thanks to my large network of family and friends. I was so comfortable there that, some mornings, I couldn't even bare to move… and ever since we left Scandinavia last October I had been battling this feeling that the comfort was overtaking me and that, maybe, I didn't belong in San Diego anymore. 

It’s not that the competition was too stiff or that the people sucked or anything like that. If I waited and worked I could have even bought a home in the ever-saddening housing market… It wasn’t the lack of success or the lack of love, it was that I was just too comfortable and that comfort was taking away my creative drive…. it was making me complacent and unthankful.

I was also missing my family in ways that were new to me. I was physically present but mentally, I didn't have time for them…. and if I died tomorrow, I know I would regret that immensely. 

Sometimes when we want to do more in our lives (I’m sure you know the feeling), we have to recognize what we aren't doing in our lives… It can feel like a stalemate situation, it can feel like a wall between up and down. But it doesn't have to stay that way… you can do something new and different and that thing could totally change your life, but it will make you very uncomfortable as well. Maybe not better or worse but simply uncomfortable enough to push you out of the comfort zone. To start thinking another way… “how can I make this better for me?” 

To put yourself into a scary situation is to put yourself into a desperate situation and when you’re in a desperate situation you’re forced to do whatever you can to get yourself out. Being comfortable in a place is to deliberately choose not to be in the danger zone, and that for an artist is the danger zone… you just didn't know it. 

If it feels like you’ve stagnated, then you probably have. If it feels like there’s a million people trying to do what you’re doing, do something else. When visitors go to a museum, see a Jackson Pollock painting and say “what’s this? I could do that!” they’ve missed a very important point… the point isn't that it’s necessarily, technically great but that he did it first. 

Be Pollock… If you can't do it better, do it first.