How do we live as artists? I don’t mean what we do when we’re alone, the couple of hours during the morning or the night that we are actually doing the thing we love, the writing or painting or singing or photographing. How do we live, every minute, every hour as artists in the world? I sit at my desk at work trying to let my mind wander to what I’d rather be doing. I read blogs in the hopes that I’ll find other artists at this exact moment bringing something beautiful into the world that I can witness. I scour the web for pieces to get me through the day. I listen to music, to interviews, to the voices in my head. Some days I walk away from the office feeling like I did OK, like I can breathe well for the night because I actually did what I was put on this earth to do. Some days I leave like a zombie. Brain dead, frequency flat-lined, exhausted at having to hear one more person complain about their keyboard, one more person force another into helping them solve a computer problem, a design problem, a management problem. All the problems in the world and we as individuals keep asking others to solve them. When is it time we look to ourselves?
I’ve been feeling great expectations for most of my life. As I should! But the expectations for what others think should be my life is overwhelming. Dump this, dump that, add this, add that. Change, change, change, change. I look at the things that make me, that piece me together and for where I am right now, all the pieces, missing or not are just who I am. I feel sometimes I’m being shoved into a skin that isn’t mine, that doesn’t and won’t ever fit me, the deer hiding under a bear’s pelt. I’m supposed to be stronger and louder and more forceful, but I’m a force in my own way. I know as I get older I will grow to be more forceful, more vocal, stronger. That’s what comes with age.
For now I’m building a little fire, keeping my hands warm, polishing old poems I’ve found a new love in, getting back to the words that make me me.
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