The Wheel is Turning

The summer is coming to quite a rapid end here, and once again I’m marveling at how my last post was written in February, so long ago. Isn’t it funny how time just speeds by us? As things are winding down, we come to the time of year where we begin to turn inward and reflect.

Usually, I feel myself resisting the changing of the seasons from Summer to Fall. The darker times of the year are not often friendly to me- SAD wreaks its havoc and I become very melancholic, lethargic, etc. so when it starts to get cooler and the days become shorter, I desperately cling to remnants of Summer for as long as possible.

But this year, something is different. I’ve felt a thrill at seeing the leaves begin to change, the cooler mornings and evenings are making me heave great sighs of relief. I’m still not looking forward to the darkest parts of Winter, but I find myself running into Autumn’s open arms with reckless abandon. I find myself looking at the idea of the rest of my life and scrambling, doing what I can to settle into some semblance of a plan. I yearn for security, for a feeling of safety and stability that I’ve never really known.

Coming from a home that was in constant stages of upheaval, I’ve begun to realize that moments of feeling safe were few and far between. Realizing this at 27 years old has been…rough, to say the least. But luckily I have a fantastic support system and am slowly working through healing my own trauma and that of the generations before me. Not an easy task (especially given the place we’re finding ourselves in this day and age, with unprecedented events occuring on a monthly basis (if not more frequently than that)), but one I feel called to tackle nonetheless.

Despite all of the false starts and falling short of goals, all of the plans that I haven’t followed through on, etc., I still want to make this dream of mine a reality. Taking a year or so off has been strange, but it’s given me some perspective.

Before, I was clinging to the idea of my small business as if it was a life preserver. Everything I did was colored with a red haze of desperation, of a need to make it work, make it happen, and happen yesterday. When the pandemic hit, I plunged into what I know think was a depressive slump- but at the time it simply seemed like a very unhealthy obsession with Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I would log into it every day, talking to my friends on Discord in order to not go completely insane. But in the back of my head, I was furious with myself. How many years had I spent wishing for an opportunity like this? The chance to just stay home and create? I was wasting my time, but it was so much easier to just lay on the couch with my Switch and ignore the rest of the world. So that’s what I did.

It was only when I got my new job and my time at home was coming to an end that I panicked and began to hastily craft things before I “ran out of time”. It worked for a bit, until my electroforming projects didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. There was something wrong in my process, and my few (admittedly half-hearted) attempts at troubleshooting did nothing to improve the situation. I started looking at other artist’s electroformed creations and using their success to tear myself down. I adopted a defeatist attitude (Clearly I wasn’t meant to work with that medium, no matter how many ideas I have) and, once I started my new job, I stopped creating for a while. Working at a job I don’t hate, that doesn’t incur daily stress and meltdowns, I no longer felt the urgency I felt before. I began to question my reasons for wanting to have a small business in the first place. My well of inspiration ran dry, and I felt like a boat with no wind in its sails.

Last fall I went to a weekend artist retreat, hoping to rekindle some of the flames of creativity within me. It worked for a short period of time, but I found myself comparing my work, my body, and my social media feed to everyone else’s to a very unhealthy degree, so I took a step back from everything in November. 

Photography by @lovelyperks

I barely checked instagram, I didn’t post anything new…I just lived my life. The holidays were incredibly difficult for a multitude of reasons, and then in February I began putting most of my energy into stage combat and rehearsals. Time flew by, and then it was Spring, then Summer, and…well, now we’re here. 

I’ve been working on this website since Spring, but I’ve been taking my time. I’ve decided that I’m not going to rush or force anything this time around. I want to do it right.

If I want to be successful, I need to build a strong, solid foundation on which to build the rest of my creative pursuits. 

Above all, when you’re an artist, you need to create for yourself first. There can be other motivations, but none of them should overshadow your personal feelings. Create what you want, simply because you’re moved to do so. The quality of art that’s created when we’re not held back or dragged down with thoughts of outside opinions, algorithms, marketability, etc. is the highest possible (in my opinion).

Let yourself create freely, without limits. 

When we create solely for others, we put ourselves into cages of our own making. If we only ever pick up a brush to fill a canvas with what we think others wish to see, there is no love in it. That lack of passion shines through in the finished product. 

That’s the thing with art- the artist’s emotions always seem to come through in the end, no matter the medium. If you’re unhappy with something you’ve made or don’t want to be crafting it in the first place, odds are it will be of a lower quality than something that brought you joy to create.  I realized that I had been making things out of desperation, and that turned into forcing myself to craft what I thought others wanted to see instead of what I really wanted to make, which in turn led to burnout that took me over a year to recover from. 

Create whatever moves you.

The right people will be drawn to your passion and will love your creations all the more for it, no matter the form they take.