Giving up or growing up?
May. 15th, 2014 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroserose{I've started writing this blog post about a hundred and eighty-six times already. Every time I quit because it was becoming too rambly and unfocused, or too personal, or (more honestly) too uncomfortable. But I feel it needs to be said - if I'm going to crow about my successes, I need to account for my failures, too. So be warned: the following is the result of some intensely personal soul-searching, and may be rather emotionally raw, and probably a bit disorganized, to boot. Those of you who know me well probably won't mind, and those who don't know me at all probably won't care. But if we're still in that awkward midway getting-to-know-you phase where we've met, maybe even see each other regularly, but aren't yet at the "comfortable silences" stage of the friendship, you might want to skip this post. Or you might not - I won't think less of you either way.}
I honestly don't know if I'm cut out for an artistic career.
It's odd, the feelings that come up just from typing that statement. Frustration, anger, hurt, disappointment, relief. Especially relief; it feels as if I've been perpetrating a fraud for so long, lying to people about who and what I am. Just putting that statement out there is a weight off, akin to the climactic moment in the after-school special when the twelve-year-old boy admits that his father isn't a CIA agent, or a movie star, or a Tarzan-like jungle dweller, and is in fact simply a deadbeat who ran out on his family.
But there's also a sense of betrayal, as well. I've always been artistic, always done creative things. I've always had people, impressed with my talents, tell me they expected great things from me. And, as I've gotten older, I've noticed the truth (and the rarity in artistic circles) of something my mother used to comment on a lot - that I have a good head on my shoulders, that I instinctively understand finances and the economics of running a business. Plus I'm good at reading people, at networking and making connections, at maintaining genuine friendships past the necessity of 'contacts'. And I have a darling husband who doesn't mind working full-time to support me. With that kind of setup, and given what other people have done with much much less, what right have I to fail at this?
The part that people don't see, that I don't want to admit to but have been lately forced to confront, is this: I don't have the drive. It might be a quirk of my personality, or it might be a result of that suspiciously-long list of positive factors (the classic "talented kid never learns to work hard to achieve long-term success" narrative), but whatever the cause, it's become increasingly obvious. In every single one of my artistic pursuits, I've followed the same pattern: pick it up, amaze everyone with how quickly I learned it, do it hyper-intensively for a while, then - when faced with the next step, be it learning more advanced forms of the art, or buckling down and setting goals to turn it into something long-term viable and profitable - freeze up, drop it, and dash off to do something else. My childhood was littered with abandoned projects - cross-stitch, beadwork, sewing, drawing, painting, writing. My Google Docs and Yarny accounts both are equally littered with half-formed ideas and unfinished manuscripts.
I know that this is not an unusual pattern for an artist. Show me a successful writer/sculptor/painter, and I'll show you a trail of rejected manuscripts/broken pieces/ruined canvases. Failure is how we get better. And art especially is a difficult career choice, because it's a literal labyrinth - the process of creation is never a straight line from point A to point B. The only difference between a successful artist and an unsuccessful artist is that the latter gave up and the former didn't. It takes as long as it takes. Et cetera, et cetera. Believe me, I understand all that.
The problem is...well. It ties into what I said earlier, about not having the drive. See, the reason for the aforementioned pattern, about picking things up and learning them just enough to impress everyone before abandoning them, it's partly tied into the talented-kid narrative. There's also social recognition - something that tends to be in short supply at in the early stages of an artistic career. But really, what it comes down to, is drive versus fear.
And I have so very, very much fear about my creativity. I don't want people to expect things from me. I don't want there to be deadlines and disappointments. It's not the concept of hard work that bothers me, exactly. It's the inevitable consistency of it, the idea that I might end up hating this activity that I love so passionately now. So instead I want to perpetually be the prodigy who drops in and amazes everyone with their talent. The one whose quiet confidence and amazing abilities upset the social balance and turn everyone's world upside-down before they die or quietly disappear again, to be remembered forever by the whole community. (You know the story, you've seen it in a hundred movies - Mary Poppins, Phenomenon, ET, arguably even Contact.)
The issues with that model in the real world, of course, being self-evident. (It's probably no surprise, I realize upon writing this, that one of my favorite movies is in part about the problems with this exact narrative.) Eventually you run out of audiences, and have to plant your roots somewhere - and familiarity breedeth, if not always contempt, then certainly expectation, which leads to disappointment, and I'm back to square one.
As an attempt to overcome this fear, for a little more than six months now, I've been practicing claiming that title - telling people that I am a writer/singer/musician/artist. (And to their credit, when they follow it up with "Oh, cool! Anything I might have heard of?", and I admit that I have not, as yet, published anything, none of them have responded condescendingly, as I sort of expected.) And yet, after my usual initial burst of enthusiasm, I've steadfastly refused to take even the smallest steps towards doing anything that might make that a viable long-term pursuit.* I poked a bit at Amazon's self-publishing platform, and then never went back. I took some shots of signs around town advertising for local musicians/open mic nights, and then never contacted anyone, or even tried to draw up a set list. I (finally, weeks after meeting people and long after they'd likely all forgotten me) emailed BoHo Theatre's volunteer coordinator with a resume and an offer of services, and then didn't press any further when I didn't get a response. It feels like any time I overcome my fears enough to get any traction at all, something happens that costs me a bit of momentum, I freeze up, and suddenly I'm farther back than when I started.
In truth? It's gotten so bad that for nearly four weeks now I haven't written a word and have barely picked up my guitar. My internal monologue seems to go something like this: If I don't continue, well, I'm a failure, and that sucks, but I'll live with it - there are plenty of normal jobs out there that would be fulfilling and worthwhile. But if I keep playing at being an artist, keep claiming that as my identity, but refuse to actually Go Out And Do Anything with it? With all the advantages I have? Then I'm a traitor to Truth and Beauty and Art. And that's worse.
I don't know what the answer is here. I don't want to stop creating - I get moody and miserable and depressed and full of self-hatred when I do that. But apparently I have this internal timeline of How Being An Artist Goes. So if I start creating regularly, it's great for a while - until I miss a step on that timeline, and then I'm falling behind, and I get discouraged, and I stop trying, and then I feel like a failure, and it all snowballs until I can't bear to even think about trying again. And then I'm moody and miserable anyway. Is this what people mean about 'having an artistic temperament'? Because let me tell you, it stinks.
So this brings me back to the initial statement. I honestly don't know if I'm cut out for an artistic career. And maybe it's just time to come to terms with that, and find myself a worthwhile Normal Job, so that my whole sense of identity isn't based on creativity. And then maybe I can just enjoy making whatever art I manage for its own sake.
*I had originally written "a viable career path" here, and followed it up with a couple paragraphs here about the lack of monetary recompense involved in an artistic career, and how in our culture that equates to a lack of identity as well - which is a very real problem! But as I wrote I realized that it wasn't the problem I was dealing with - I would have no problem identifying myself as an artist if I managed to make art regularly, whether or not I ever got paid for it. Unfortunately, I seem incapable of hitting even that low bar.
I honestly don't know if I'm cut out for an artistic career.
It's odd, the feelings that come up just from typing that statement. Frustration, anger, hurt, disappointment, relief. Especially relief; it feels as if I've been perpetrating a fraud for so long, lying to people about who and what I am. Just putting that statement out there is a weight off, akin to the climactic moment in the after-school special when the twelve-year-old boy admits that his father isn't a CIA agent, or a movie star, or a Tarzan-like jungle dweller, and is in fact simply a deadbeat who ran out on his family.
But there's also a sense of betrayal, as well. I've always been artistic, always done creative things. I've always had people, impressed with my talents, tell me they expected great things from me. And, as I've gotten older, I've noticed the truth (and the rarity in artistic circles) of something my mother used to comment on a lot - that I have a good head on my shoulders, that I instinctively understand finances and the economics of running a business. Plus I'm good at reading people, at networking and making connections, at maintaining genuine friendships past the necessity of 'contacts'. And I have a darling husband who doesn't mind working full-time to support me. With that kind of setup, and given what other people have done with much much less, what right have I to fail at this?
The part that people don't see, that I don't want to admit to but have been lately forced to confront, is this: I don't have the drive. It might be a quirk of my personality, or it might be a result of that suspiciously-long list of positive factors (the classic "talented kid never learns to work hard to achieve long-term success" narrative), but whatever the cause, it's become increasingly obvious. In every single one of my artistic pursuits, I've followed the same pattern: pick it up, amaze everyone with how quickly I learned it, do it hyper-intensively for a while, then - when faced with the next step, be it learning more advanced forms of the art, or buckling down and setting goals to turn it into something long-term viable and profitable - freeze up, drop it, and dash off to do something else. My childhood was littered with abandoned projects - cross-stitch, beadwork, sewing, drawing, painting, writing. My Google Docs and Yarny accounts both are equally littered with half-formed ideas and unfinished manuscripts.
I know that this is not an unusual pattern for an artist. Show me a successful writer/sculptor/painter, and I'll show you a trail of rejected manuscripts/broken pieces/ruined canvases. Failure is how we get better. And art especially is a difficult career choice, because it's a literal labyrinth - the process of creation is never a straight line from point A to point B. The only difference between a successful artist and an unsuccessful artist is that the latter gave up and the former didn't. It takes as long as it takes. Et cetera, et cetera. Believe me, I understand all that.
The problem is...well. It ties into what I said earlier, about not having the drive. See, the reason for the aforementioned pattern, about picking things up and learning them just enough to impress everyone before abandoning them, it's partly tied into the talented-kid narrative. There's also social recognition - something that tends to be in short supply at in the early stages of an artistic career. But really, what it comes down to, is drive versus fear.
And I have so very, very much fear about my creativity. I don't want people to expect things from me. I don't want there to be deadlines and disappointments. It's not the concept of hard work that bothers me, exactly. It's the inevitable consistency of it, the idea that I might end up hating this activity that I love so passionately now. So instead I want to perpetually be the prodigy who drops in and amazes everyone with their talent. The one whose quiet confidence and amazing abilities upset the social balance and turn everyone's world upside-down before they die or quietly disappear again, to be remembered forever by the whole community. (You know the story, you've seen it in a hundred movies - Mary Poppins, Phenomenon, ET, arguably even Contact.)
The issues with that model in the real world, of course, being self-evident. (It's probably no surprise, I realize upon writing this, that one of my favorite movies is in part about the problems with this exact narrative.) Eventually you run out of audiences, and have to plant your roots somewhere - and familiarity breedeth, if not always contempt, then certainly expectation, which leads to disappointment, and I'm back to square one.
As an attempt to overcome this fear, for a little more than six months now, I've been practicing claiming that title - telling people that I am a writer/singer/musician/artist. (And to their credit, when they follow it up with "Oh, cool! Anything I might have heard of?", and I admit that I have not, as yet, published anything, none of them have responded condescendingly, as I sort of expected.) And yet, after my usual initial burst of enthusiasm, I've steadfastly refused to take even the smallest steps towards doing anything that might make that a viable long-term pursuit.* I poked a bit at Amazon's self-publishing platform, and then never went back. I took some shots of signs around town advertising for local musicians/open mic nights, and then never contacted anyone, or even tried to draw up a set list. I (finally, weeks after meeting people and long after they'd likely all forgotten me) emailed BoHo Theatre's volunteer coordinator with a resume and an offer of services, and then didn't press any further when I didn't get a response. It feels like any time I overcome my fears enough to get any traction at all, something happens that costs me a bit of momentum, I freeze up, and suddenly I'm farther back than when I started.
In truth? It's gotten so bad that for nearly four weeks now I haven't written a word and have barely picked up my guitar. My internal monologue seems to go something like this: If I don't continue, well, I'm a failure, and that sucks, but I'll live with it - there are plenty of normal jobs out there that would be fulfilling and worthwhile. But if I keep playing at being an artist, keep claiming that as my identity, but refuse to actually Go Out And Do Anything with it? With all the advantages I have? Then I'm a traitor to Truth and Beauty and Art. And that's worse.
I don't know what the answer is here. I don't want to stop creating - I get moody and miserable and depressed and full of self-hatred when I do that. But apparently I have this internal timeline of How Being An Artist Goes. So if I start creating regularly, it's great for a while - until I miss a step on that timeline, and then I'm falling behind, and I get discouraged, and I stop trying, and then I feel like a failure, and it all snowballs until I can't bear to even think about trying again. And then I'm moody and miserable anyway. Is this what people mean about 'having an artistic temperament'? Because let me tell you, it stinks.
So this brings me back to the initial statement. I honestly don't know if I'm cut out for an artistic career. And maybe it's just time to come to terms with that, and find myself a worthwhile Normal Job, so that my whole sense of identity isn't based on creativity. And then maybe I can just enjoy making whatever art I manage for its own sake.
*I had originally written "a viable career path" here, and followed it up with a couple paragraphs here about the lack of monetary recompense involved in an artistic career, and how in our culture that equates to a lack of identity as well - which is a very real problem! But as I wrote I realized that it wasn't the problem I was dealing with - I would have no problem identifying myself as an artist if I managed to make art regularly, whether or not I ever got paid for it. Unfortunately, I seem incapable of hitting even that low bar.
