walls and bridges

The life of a creative person - who is not particularly gifted, nor commercially viable, nor critically acclaimed, is still, nonetheless a valid one - and one fraught with struggle and doubt.

The first struggle being: giving yourself permission to call yourself an Artist of some kind in the first place. It's a high falutin word for something that cannot really be 'helped'. It just is. Some people can turn emotions into art, poetry, books or songs. 
Creatives might just be prodigiously gifted, without having to emerge from the mire of pain in order to do so...but more often than not, many people stagger unsteadily down the path to creativity because of troubled childhoods and traumatic events in their formative years.

The creativity is the tangible evidence of an inner demon being released.  I think the one thing we - under-achieving creatives - all have in common is a feeling of never really fitting in. 

I've been several kinds of creative. And I've crossed paths with interesting, eccentric, troubled, arrogant, heartbreakingly kind, scattered, and stunningly proilific incarnations of creativity - in whose company I felt either less or more worthy of calling myself a creative. You never can tell who those people will be. In my career, I've walked up many beckoning hallways only to have the door shut in my face. I've constantly shapeshifted. It all seems to have been such - folly at times. 

And at other times, it all made perfect sense. And, at the times when it made perfect sense, I lost my courage to pursue it further. I hid in my various disfunctional distractions. 

Well, lockdowns made that a lot harder. I had no distractions, pleasant, painful or otherwise. I only had unfinished business. Unanswered questions and the abiding URGE TO CREATE. 

And that's what i have been doing. Putting time and effort into creating. And learning ways to be more creative. And it's taking more and more time. I use distractions DELIBERATELY now, to give myself permission to take time out from the constant brainstorming in my head. I not only have a lot to say, but I have to package it myself, promote it myself. Learn new technical skills. It's a busy life.

A fulltime job. On no pay.

And yet, to be paid, seemed unthinkable. But to continue at this pace and NOT be paid, is also somewhat daft. It is time to SUCK IT AND SEE

Read More