What about you, fellow creatives? Do you choose to become a writer, a painter? What makes you choose to write or paint or … ?
Here's what I posted in her comments:
OMG-the choices the choices....it kills me some days.
Do I get up way too early to write and reach my daily goal? Or do I sleep in?
Do I write - or do I draw?
Do I knit? Do I work on spirit dolls? Do I work on my courses? Or do I cook and feed my kids?
Too many choices-and don't even get me going on do I check email? I feel so guilty-there are all these wonderful blogs to check out and comment on.....there's never enough time for that for me.....
As much as I hate to admit it, every thing I do is a conscious choice.
I choose to write. I choose to draw. I even choose to feed my kids now and then (I'm teaching my oldest to cook so she doesn't die of starvation.)
I do not always make the best choices-and I work VERY hard at releasing the guilt of that...but I carry on...every day...
Here's the rest of what I want to say:
First of all, I do want to assure everyone my children do NOT starve. I run a house like my mother's--even the mice in the walls (not that we have any) are well-fed and overweight.
Choices.
it's a concept I have tried to teach the ex in the past in relation to the children...it never clicks in his head.
You dedicate time to the things you find most important to you. And "time" means time actually spent with that project.
Sometimes my 'time' with something calls for me to be unable to sleep for 2-3 days at a stretch while I work my butt off on a particular thing...and then I do nothing for a week afterwards because I am too exhausted.
With my pay the bills job--which I am already transitioning into a new era there--it leaves me exhausted, miserable and unable to do my own thing. PLus, I do it for twelve hours a day. I do not talk to someone the entire twelve hours, most days, but I sometimes feel as if I have spent far too much time simply wasting my time and allowing my life to be sucked away.
Hence the whole--time to move along shifting in process right now.
And I heartily thank every single person who wishes along with Jamie Ridler's wishcasting Wednesday...because I swear it is the combined strength of our wishing together that is helping me break off and make this shfit.
The job wears me out, sucks away my creativity, and often times my will to live. Sometimes all I want to do is wander along online, scoping out all the amazing blogs and the beautiful scenery the internet can provide, for hours on end, days if the mood strikes me correctly.
Bad moods. I become apathetic. I don't like myself very much.
I run into the guilt of not writing, not drawing, not keeping up with the coursework I have set for myself.
I always feel guilty because there are so many terrific blogs I read, almost daily, and never get to read enough of or comment on...and there are those weeks that fly by and I haven't done a darn thing for anyone else.
I will be honest: the comments I get on my blogs make me feel---human---alive--as if I am meaningful--as if I am not completely creating in a vacuum--as if I might actually have some useful and expressive talent. Talent, capital T.
It makes me feel alot better about myself to spread the love too.
When I can't do that as often or as much as I would like, I start to feel guilty.
I hate that.
I have to decide, do I honor my own work/art and comment on other people's work/blogs as I am able....do I give up entirely on the commenting on others blogs (which would seem so wrong to me, really).
My favorite decision of late has been--do I load/unload the dishwasher and hand-wash the things that won't go in (or don't go in) or do I write or draw or collage or...well...anything but dishes normally wins out hands down. :-) Even folding the laundry. I can wash and dry laundry like nobody's business. When all my stuff is hung up, it's so simple. I don't have the space or ability for that anymore. So, into drawers things go. Well, at some point. I have been known to wash and dry laundry for a month without folding or putting it away. Yes, I do have that many clothes and so does my kid. Both kids used to, but the ex ensures anything I send home w N never returns, unless he hates it, which is rare. And the only stuff he sends over here is crap and junk. And if I so much as keep a pair of undies I am evil incarnate. So, N doesn't have much here. The funny thing is...I bought new undies for the boy so he'd have plenty here--he tends to go through undies for vast bizarre reasons (as in he stuck his finger in his mouth and wiped his spit across his undies so he can strip naked and run around :-) )--and somehow--the undies I bought are vanishing and not returning from T's house. Funny how that works--I'm evil--but he's a saint. How does that happen?
Every day is a struggle. What do I do today?
I have not been sleeping well lately. Too much stress. I hate that.
So, I haven't been getting up at 8a in order to have that hour to write before I log in to work.
I crawl out of bed about 5 til 9a and let the dog out. I am usually logged in by 9a, give or take. But I have started to soak up that extra hour or two (because the alarm now goes off at 7a instead of 6a) rather than getting up and doing my work.
I do not want to be like Sylvia Plath. I could not deal with it. Awake in the wee hours to write and rewrite. Staying up w her kids to raise them and still have a perfect and pristine house. Etc, etc.
I don't function well if I get up at 6a....I have found I function decently if I get up at 7a. No matter what time I go to sleep. My internal clock prefers 7a.
I do, however, want to find that space where I can write and work on my art and work on my courses and work w E on her courses and keep a moderately clean house -- all at the same time, every day....and still have time for email, and phone conversations, and IMs, and commenting on other people's blogs....and everything else I want to do in a day.....
I haven't figured out how to quite manage that yet.
So, I purposely make time for the things that are important to me.
Right now, paying the mortgage and feeding the kids is a very important thing to me. So, that gets priority.
My significant other is very significant, so he gets top billing in there too.
Which means I check my email and will make time ti IM w him if he's there.
My writing is important. My art is important. My self-education is very important.
Do I do these thigns every day?
No.
But I try.
I am hoping trying counts.
The ex always swore because he had "good intentions" he was fine....I think it's a crock...and I won't go into my Hitler had good intentions speech (you know, until he went nuts and all...)
I do think because I don't give up completely I should give myself credit...and I try to. It may take me a year to finish a 12 week program...but I do get it done, eventually. Even if I have to re-start it a couple times to keep up.
The one question I keep forgetting to answer is WHY....
Why do I chose to write? Why do I chose to draw? Why collage? Why....why do I do what I do artistically/creatively speaking?
Why do I want to do so much more when I have more space/money/time??
Because there is a driving urge in me...to write...to draw...to be...me....to not fit into that stupid mold they pour everyone into.
I am an Artist.
My soul is weak and strong and coarse and tender...and I have no real choice other than to express it or I might just--die or implode or explode or whatever happens when I reach that limit....
My writing/art keeps me sane...gives me that release better than my three-shot tequila quest (it takes 3 shots to really round off my edges -- I am ok with two shots, but that third one makes everything so calm and peaceful...lol).
My artwork is my therapy.
Why do I draw now? Because I spent too long listening to those people who 'meant well' who told me I had no imagination and I gave up.
I listened to the ex and allowed him to kill me--literally--he ripped my heart and soul from me and I was nothing at all but some random husk walking around...and by the time I began to heal the other ex got hold of me and ruined me even more....
I allowed myself to be smothered. I allowed myself to be killed.
I am not the Phoenix, bursting forth whole and vibrant from the ash. I am a little mewling kitten with my eyes almost open, hoping the light I seek is a good thing.
This sort of harkens back to what BlissChick asked a bit ago:
If no one had ever told you who you were, who would you be?
Do you who I would have been?
Sometimes I wonder if I would ahve been that cowgirl I am struggling now to become. :-)
See, the person I see that I could have been would have been a stripper and a farmer, would have gone to college and studied nursing and psychology and religion and philospohy. I would not have been a nurse though.
I would be a much more hard-core hippy than I am currently. Talk about self-sustainable living....I'd have been far more all over it.
I would have built my own house by hand--with help, yes. I 'd have been raising animals and plants and herbs and flowers and vegetables.
I would have been drawing and painting and writing and creating. I would have created sculpture from metal. Would work with clay.
I would have many more children, would have started having them when I was in my early twenties and would still be having them. I would have wonderful nurturing relationships with the fathers. Yes, fathers. Only because I am not the type to stay stuck with one guy who eventually will bore me. But I am the type who can be open and generous and loving to complete idiots if they allow me. (Currently, T will not allow this to happen. But then again, he never did during the relationship, so I don't expect him to change.) ALthough even the other me would find the one man with whom to spend the rest of her life.
I would probably have grandchildren at this point. I would raise my children to love the earth, to be open and free, and yet be responsible.
I'd travel, all over the world, touching things, learning things, exploring things, reaching through the present to feel the Past.
I'd write. And write and write and write. And it would all sell, because i would have such amazing wisdom to share from my Journeys.
Thats not who I am, but I am working to integrate the pieces that are still me from the person I might have been into the person I am trying to be right now.
That's the best I can do. Find the me I lost and work to integrate the pertinent bits into who I am now.
That's why I do what I do. Because I am trying to heal the breaches. Trying to fill the holes. Trying to be the best me I can be. In whatever way best suits me. :-)
