I often think about the vicious cycle of being a creative. One moment, you are ahead of the game, you’re better than everyone else at whatever they call “art”, and once you are noticed, the whole industry will change to conform to your likeness. The next moment, you should have never been born, or at least, given the tools to even imagine yourself as any real person let alone an artist, you hope no one sees how impossibly mundane you actually are, and how you can’t draw, write, act, or create worth spit.
So then you just don’t.
You were creating the next best masterpiece and you had the nerve to tell everyone about it, everyone that matters. Now you’re hoping you can delete all mentions of your “works”, all memory if possible – maybe because you don’t matter, the people that do won’t even notice you aren’t creating anymore. It’s the worst feeling and the worst inactivity imaginable. Because there’s guilt. If you had kept your desires to yourself, you wouldn’t be obligated to anyone but yourself, and letting yourself down is a fun hobby of yours.
In the end, we are doing just that every time: letting ourselves down. Sure, telling others about our brilliance without sufficient proof can sting when we never present it our case, but in all honesty, it’s still us shaming ourselves. Most often, if you tell people your circumstances, they’re reasonable. (And let’s be fair, if we want to impress unreasonable people, we’ve let ourselves down well before we started.) Many times, though, we are the unreasonable people. We’ll say, I should have created through the night and all weekend even though I haven’t been on vacation and have non-stopped worked for 2 years, or we’ll think, Even if I was seeing three of me every time I looked in the mirror, sickness didn’t keep the greats from their art!
But why should we compare ourselves to the dead, old, and privileged. We are only us and we are not imposters. Unless your selling point is being the reincarnation of Shakespeare himself, you can only be you and you can only give you. Better yet, no one else can give you but you. Get out of the vicious cycle of not working because you’re not good enough to work, and just do it when you can, when it makes sense. Not instead of sleeping, but rather, instead of scrolling through social media for 10 hours.
Read more. Research more. Get inspired more and enriched more. You’ll create more. and not worry if the shoe fits. It fits. It’s your shoe.
SJ Wrytes 