The weight of it all
I had a couple of unconnected interactions over the last week that felt actually quite connected. So I wanted to share them here, and I thought that I would do so by simply sharing excerpts of my one-ended side of the two conversations.
The “late bloomer” thing is real. I for sure am one. I think that's maybe why it seems like there's this recent little surge of success on our end; Shannon and I are both late bloomers. And both recovery kids. Lots of delayed growth. I think we only are just starting to feel like we're coming into our own. For so long I felt like I was kind of treading water; I was happy to be doing my life and career with Shannon, but artistically it didn't always feel like I was doing what my soul wanted to do. It's only recently that it's started to feel for me like there's more harmony between what I most enjoy doing and what I am doing. Not that work is life, but when you're self-employed in the arts it's a big part of it, if only because the existential "Who am I" questions are intertwined with work in a way that they're not for most people.
Financial worries as a proxy for self-esteem issues, and then overwork as a proxy for financial worries, is a place I lived in for basically the first twenty years of my adult life. It's complicated! Like Russian dolls made of scarcity.
Devoting your life to making things — to putting every ounce of our being into attempting to communicate emotions to people who need to hear them — is fraught. Even when it’s good, even when it’s successful — it’s fraught. You never arrive. You just keep going.
It’s a lot of weight to carry. The creative life can be incredibly rewarding, in those moments when we feel like we’ve truly connected with the thing we were aiming at — but we fail to acknowledge the corresponding burdens at the risk of imperiling our mental wellness.
Introspectively — jamie