I seem to like to avoid the issue right now. I sweep the floor. I do the dishes. Oh, I think I'd better do my umpteenth load of laundry. Don't I need to go to the store again? Yes, of course all of these things need to be done at some point....but do they really need to be done every day all day instead of me just sitting down and working on a drawing? Or writing down an idea for a painting? Or filling up some jars of water and dipping my brushes in? Perhaps even sitting here and writing this right now is simply another avoidance issue. And the big one for me is using my son, who is five, as an excuse. "I can't possibly spend time painting right now because then H. will want to too, or he'll interrupt right when I get going, or he'll...". Gee. What's going to be my excuse when he heads off to kindergarten next year? Oh yes, suddenly I'll think I need to go get a job working at some job that I find completely unsatisfying because now we'll need money. And then I just won't feel like it. Really, sometimes I don't know how I end up doing the stuff I do create....
Ahh, but I do. It is that "pull" that has no name. That thing that makes me realize that I should just resign myself to my fate. That intangible that makes me write "I am an artist" next to my profile picture up there, because of the realization that there is really nothing more to say than just that. I can't escape it anymore than the hero in a Thomas Hardy novel could escape being in love with the person they are in love with.
It was always there. I just didn't see it. Ironic that the word would be "see". I always thought I would have a career in theatre. I now see that the reason was my love of the visual. The way it all looked. (ooohh...I should do a painting of that...) But I didn't want to do scene design. I was an actor. Because of the way it all felt.
I see all of these ideas floating around in my head for paintings...and then I let them drift away. What is that? Why have I been lucky enough to make what I have made?
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I hear you. I woke up in the middle of the night on Tuesday with the "I could have been happy if I had just accepted that I would never be an artist and just gotten a job like everyone else" blues. Then I talked myself down and remembered the things I have made, kept chanting, "You can do this. You can do this."
You can do this. I believe in you.
I, too, find endless excuses not to work. The fear of being interrupted is a big one, because I know once I get started, I can't make myself stop. But why not? It's just sitting there, waiting for me to return to it. Paint is different, I know.
My main time suck is the computer, which I am going to turn off and leave off for most of the day, I've decided. I have to, or I won't get anything done.
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