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I seem to have an interesting conflict going on.. All around me (medical problems of loved ones notwithstanding) life is uneventful, casual and easy, but it’s all resting upon an unstable scenario and the foundation is rotten. The job I have pays the bills but leaves me feeling unskilled, unhelpful and uninterested, and I’m frankly amazed that I’m still employed given how little there seems to be to it of late. I have no enthusiasm left for the creativity I used to enjoy (music, art, writing), the things which used to drive my second life and gave me joy and hope beyond the day routine, to the point that I actually felt I may eventually find success making a living by those creative skills – it’s perhaps a good thing that I didn’t if this is now how I feel about them. I can very well imagine feeling like this forever, sticking to this same dull life routine because it’s all I know and have no sense of a direction in which to change if I were to make an effort. I’ve made changes before and have become all too aware that even making those changes leaves me dissatisfied and eventually back where I started. I know that sounds as though I’m setting myself up to fail and hate whatever I become, but the fact is that what little enthusiasm I feel for anything anymore fails to show me any evidence to contradict this feeling that any change pursued will all be for nothing.. Has anyone else faced a scenario such as this, and how did they get out of it?
Greetings Gavin,
Your post is one that made me think to myself, “WOW! It sounds like me at times.” I struggled with this for many years although at the time I was not fully aware of that momentum being a struggled. I always thought to myself, ” This is messed up. Oh well.” For me it was a normal state of being. It wasn’t until long after that, and I do not recall exactly when, I recognized that I really needed to understand what the heck was going on as I absolutely did not like it. It kind of reminded me of the many times people would tell me to just go with the flow, but only dead fish go with the flow. Knowing that I decided to put forth a HUGE effort that would lead me to an understanding of what I needed to change and why. On a side note I am reminded of a quote by a woman named Jeanette Winterson. She said, ” In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.” To this very day I try to remain connected to the meaning of this. Moving forward…I spent a number of years with some truly amazing people who helped me with my PTSD. As we dove deeper into my life the question of my cognitive abilities came up. The pursuit of that aspect of my life, who I was/am seemed odd to me but in the grand mosaic in the scheme of things it made sense to me. It is very important to me at this point that make clear that in my telling you this I am in no way doing any chest thumping or bragging. My IQ was tested at 134. The only thought I have about tis is, “So what?”. I graduated high school 2 years early at the age of 15. This was extremely awkward for me because the 15 year olds in high school were on track to graduate at 17-18. I felt very out of place with them. Conversely I did not feel to be a part of the ones who were on track to graduate at 17-18. So for me I was in a dead zone. I was bored in college. I graduated with a BS degree in microbiology in 3 years as opposed to 4. My first job was at Stanford in the microbiology department which I found to be very boring. I realized that for me that feeling of boredom was an immature reaction. So I decided to pursue my masters degree. Again boring. I got my masters degree and never returned to the academics of microbiology. I did many things after that and like you I felt unenthusiastic about pursuing things that I thought would fulfill my creativity and make me happy. By the way all this time I got involved in pottery making pottery on the wheel and free hand pottery. I have been told that much of my work was worthy of selling it commercially. I, like many artists, devalue the quality of my work telling those who admired it, “It’s not that great.” I recall that one time while attending a lengthy ongoing pottery workshop (3 months) our group had a chance to visit LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. We brought along our portfolios of the work we had done to show the curator. Several of us in our group were invited to put 1 piece on display. Two days after I put one of my pottery objects on display, the curator called me and told me a German business wanted to buy one of my pieces. I offered it for free but he insisted on paying for it. Having spent roughly 3 hours of making it, using approximately $4.00 worth of clay and about $6.00 of glaze, and the cost hardly worth mentioning to fire it, he was delighted to pay me $350.00 for it. Again the artwork I made was no big deal so I donated the money to a homeless veterans project. I think that now would be a good segue for me to make my point…
For quite a while now I understand what Jeanette Winterson said when she shared her quote, specifically when she used the words “space ” and ” opportunity.” For me, that space of opportunity was one I had not recognized. I realize the importance of that now. That space is an opportunity for me to keep my fingers on the pulse of my life, where I am going, what I am constantly learning. I realized that my happiness does not hinge on some outside locus of control, that it is only found within me. That space of opportunity allows me to embrace my happiness and creativity, that I do not have to rely on any outside entity to make that happen. It reminds me of a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson: ” The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” I do not dwell on what I could have/should have/would have ideas. I think about now. It also sounds cliche’ for me to say I live the now. After all, that is all we have. Not 1 hour from now, not tomorrow or next week, but now. All I have is that space of opportunity. My ideas do not pay the bills but it is within that space that my creativity flourishes, it is where I nurture my happiness.
In reading your post it is obvious to me that you are indeed a very creative person and I also suspect, although there is a very good chance that I am wrong, that you undervalue your creativity, your art as in the way that I devalue mine. If people like my artwork, great. If not, so what. There is more to create.
I am not sure if you find any value in what I said. There is only one thing I have tooter, for now at least. Spend some time in that space my friend. Try not to put your creativity on hold or find happiness in some external locus of control. You have all you need my friend. It is inside you. Nobody can match that.
Pearce
Hi Pearce,
It’s very true to say that I probably undervalue my art, but then doesn’t every artist.. I suspect for many that problem is the basis for the well of improvement which we seek to tap into. I also have that passive rejection of praise and enthusiasm from others. Even though underneath the regular day job, I can call myself an artist with some measure of success in having a handful of real published book covers to my name, the chaos which I find myself in seemingly assures that I will always trip myself up and irrationally be the architect of my “doom” at some point. It’s been a fairly traumatic time over the last year with my partner dealing with her cancer diagnosis, the events of which took me away from my art and which have left me too depleted to even try and find my creative joy. As to carrying what I need, well I certainly try not to look for happiness outside. That is the first lesson I learned in getting myself out of a big hole which plagued my teenage and best youthful years.. as the saying goes you can’t get those back but you can try and make the most of what’s left. Even now I seem to be failing at the latter because of a wish to keep what I have and not let it go, and even then let it go for what? Why does the comfortable world which you make around you always become a prison? True freedom would perhaps be too chaotic for me, though it may yet come to that in the same way it came to Stephen Strange (sadly without the superpowers.. lol). Looking at it now it seems as though my internal happiness relies upon constantly shifting my perceptions and almost destroying everything I build – some stress seems to come from resisting that urge, as much as it endures from me doing exactly that on occasion. Whether it’s a dissatisfaction with what is, or feeling that I have to get away from something which has become corrupted, even when you know that it will hurt others to do so, seems to be an ever present threat. Even now I’m caught in a trap between my own sanity and not hurting a person I love and care about – whilst ever I remain without destroying that I know that I can say that I do care, As for the art I have no idea when that will surface again. It was my only hope for some salvation and getting me out of the unproductive, fish up a tree job that I seem to hold down somehow. There are, as you might imagine from my words above, times when I wish it would all go away without hurting anyone else in the process. I’m sorry to hear you labour with PTSD. I don’t mean that in a patronising or pitiful way, but genuinely as one unknown human to another – suffering is as the heart of what makes us and yet is all the more unwelcome in spite of that. Personally I tend to think there are better ways of finding oneself, by our community than to have that “journey” be left to the unreasoning, sharper edge of life. I hope you are faring well with it – without underestimating your struggles, it sounds pretty positive and if it is so then I will be thankful for that on your behalf. It seems perhaps fitting that I should apply Buddhist principles to life since the best course of action at present seems to be not by doing, but by laying low and being patient, and allowing things to pass. This is perhaps the source of my discontent as much as any.. the not knowing when it may be best to act and when not to. I often have trouble acting since I’m not the entrepreneurial type, otherwise I might be the artist I always imagined I might be, rather than the slave to what seems to be my only realistic source of income, much less the amount I pull in for my pain, which frankly probably isn’t that much. Time to lay low with it for now I think. They keep saying that things change and nothing stays the same forever, but they never add that this is usually sits within a framework of things getting worse every year, rather than better. You can tell I’m tired can’t you? Lol. Hopefully this will pass too.
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