I really have trouble saying what I want, sticking to my guns and fighting for it. I am much happier to avoid confrontation and awkward situations by being agreeable and accommodating.

It's a game of balance.

You may think that I consider this a bad thing, but I do not. I honestly think this is a life skill learned from being raised with siblings and believing with all my heart when Jesus says that the last shall be first. Well, I guess mixing some combination of “the last shall be first” and “the customer is always right” has poised me on the jagged edge of the Kingdom of Pushover. How did I get here? I felt like, just a few short minutes ago, I was standing firmly with my feet planted on the Vista of Compromise. Do I sound like I’m reading a self-help book? I only wish I was! Maybe then I’d know the balance between Dominatrix and Gumbo.

When am I wrong, when am I selfish and when am I fully justified in asserting myself? What would happen if I did? It is a problem of equal measure in personal relationships and artistic endeavors. The personal aspect can get dicey, so I’ll skip it and go straight for my work. When I write, direct or make something – something personal, something with flourish, something with a certain level of panache, I am immediately ready to, with trembling hands, send it out into the world. If it comes back to me with wry looks, disinterested comments or unflattering reviews, my heart begins beating faster and heavier until it disappears into the sea below the Cliffs of Despair, making me want to go right along with it. How could something I had worked so long and hard on be so rubbish? But when do I know if the opinions of others are a true reflection of the value of my creativity and when they are just mean-spirited comments, or if the viewer or reader has really mis-interpreted my work? The pitfall of art is its subjectivity; of course, this is also its great glory.

I look on with (probably hypocritical) superiority when I see an artist unwilling to acknowledge criticism and unable to change the output to better please the audience: the people it was intended to serve. However, I also don’t think the artist should be subservient to these outside forces. Yet in so many ways, I feel that I am – and must be. To do my work, I need a benefactor, an investor, a producer – a Champion, in short. But in order to hook my Champion, she must be passionately convinced of the value of my work and fully in support of it. Or, I must be passionately committed to pleasing her and cow-towing to the values in which she believes. How do I navigate this unstable precipice? Maybe that is the functional definition of assertiveness: running toward what you believe in and refusing to give it up, no matter the obstacle, while wisdom lets you see the smaller battles send them on down the river without raising a finger in protest.