Goals, aspirations, heroes, and other things I want to be...

When I grow up, I want to be just like Alexandra Eldridge.

I really do.

But most people I talk to don't know who she is. So they just shrug their shoulders. If I had said that I wanted to be just like Van Gogh, people know who that is, and would understand that I want to be a really great artist someday (but really, nobody wants the life of Van Gogh; he cut off his ear, remember?)
I was just thinking about goals, heroes, and aspirations. I have gone my whole life knowing how important they are. When I pole vaulted, I wanted to pole vault in the Olympics. As I have studied art, I have wanted to get a piece into the Whitney Biennial. Somewhere, somehow, I think that I have been taught that I must aspire to be the best, to keep my sights on the well-knowns, the giants. Kids don't aspire to be their coaches, kids aspire to be the next Michael Jordan, the next Michael Phelps. I somehow learned that if I aspire to anything less than the best, then I am selling myself short of my potential, happiness, success, whatever. Somehow, my own brain started whispering that my only choices were either being the very best or completely obsolete...
I am taking a class called "Business practices for artists" from Joe Ostraff. He talked about how we need to figure out what we want. They can be whatever, but my goals need to match my work output. I thought, "Well, of course I want to be the best and want to paint all the time and go to grad school and die early from inhaling too many toxic paint pigments..."
But I realized that the only true part of that statement was that I want to be the best. The best what? If I am completely honest with myself, I want to be the best painter-runner-gardener-farmer-wife-mother-traveler-cook-builder-dancer. As I thought about it, that doesn't leave much time to be the best artist. I told Joe what I wanted and he responded with, "OK, but don't be surprised when you don't make it as far in the Art World as your peers who work 16 hours a day in their studios".
It crushed me a little bit. I wanted to argue that I could do it if I wanted to! I can do all of those things! But then it clicked...I certainly could do that if I wanted to. But I don't want to spend 16 hours a day in my studio. I want a family, farm, friends, travel plans, trails to hike and run, dance parties, dinner parties, and a chance to build my own house and studio. And I don't even have to have all of those things at the same time!

Am I the only person that has not realized this?

I am just now accepting that  my goals don't have to be to show at the Whitney Biennial, to make lots of money, or to be in history books. Being a great artist is not an either or. There are plenty of great artists that enrich their worlds around them. I want to be one of those people (more specifically, like Alexandra Eldridge).