Dead Days

I don’t want to do this anymore.

Yesterday I was motoring along at 100mph making the latest in our Structured Chaos series but today I’ve ground to a total halt. It’s one of those things that sometimes I just really can’t bear to do anything. I can’t go near it. I’ve pushed my hands and my eyesight to the limit to try to create something amazing which will invoke joy in others. I wonder though why I’m bothering.

Trying to get sales in the art world is an uphill struggle. People are happy to look and share but rarely want to dig into their own pockets to own a piece of my soul. They gasp in awe at a month’s work yet somehow don’t want to pay me a month’s wage for it. Lecturers on the other side of the planet have been talking about my art but don’t want to pay me to deliver those lectures or pay for my travel to exhibitions of my own artwork. Arts Councils promise the chance of money and then coldy reject me after I’ve wasted days filling out forms. Everybody takes a piece of me but nobody is prepared to give me anything back in return.

So all the while I’m still supporting myself by getting a full-time wage elsewhere. I’m really better off flipping burgers in McDonalds than I am doing this as a career.

I keep telling myself that the only person I have to please is myself. I keep telling myself not to be so demanding and it’s ok to have a day off. I keep telling myself that this malaise will lift and that when I see the final result of this artwork it will all be worth it.

The creative itch inside me won’t be satisfied until I have this artwork out of my head. If it wasn’t for that itch I’d be doing something else right now and the sadness in my soul would be one of unfulfilled personal ambition rather than just annoyance at the human race for letting me down.

I have to be selfish and do this for me. I have to dig deep and pull myself through this.

I’ll start tomorrow…