Glitches in Hope - 08.08.24
A day late. Last night I was supposed to write, but I kind of just fell apart exhausted. Then I woke up this morning, with no hope at all. No hope of success. No hope of a future. No hope of anything really.
This isn’t something new. If you’re familiar with this journal, you’ll know that I regularly lose hope… that’s a mix of things. Where I am right now in my life, & the nature of this career. But here I am, writing to you. I’m on the bus to rope training. What happened? How did I peel myself up off my floor & face the day?
Truth be told, I didn’t really face the day.
What actually happened, is that I lay there… in silence. I let my thoughts rip through me.
You know when you massage a muscle, you temporarily occupy its function. Your knuckle doesn’t just push the lactic acid out, but it lets the muscle relax from its duties for a moment. If only my brain was the same. A constant stream of content from social media, from youtube, from spotify… all of these things have been occupying my mind, suppressing my thoughts. Then, when I try to sleep, I need a video or a podcast to distract me from those bottled up thoughts. This seems to culminate into one messy mind, full of knots & anxiety. This metaphor may be completely off base, but it speaks to my solution:
Just sit there & fill the silence with your thoughts. Air out your brain.
So I did this, & it helped, but there’s one more step that I took to get back into a functioning space.
Who knows where this information came to me from, but someone put it brilliantly: “Great art makes you want to make yourself.” Equipped with this knowledge, that’s been proven to me in the past through Studio Ghibli films, I set myself to watch the latest episodes of One Piece. (A pirate show I’ve watched since I was 15) The energy, love, & joy in those characters. The passion behind this story & all of those involved in making a 25 year long story is humbling. For most of my life, one man has dedicated himself to a single world of his own creation, & without fail, has delivered some of the most defining cultural moments in any media out there. That’s inspiring in & of itself.
It’s through watching this show today that I managed to get myself packed, ready, & out the door on time. It’s through great art like this that I want to make myself. It’s art like this that I want to make, so that others will someday peel themselves off their floor & make themselves. I’m not the artist I thought I’d be. I’ve not lived the life that I wanted to live… but that’s most of us. We’re bound to the world around us, to both the choices we make & those made for us. With this in mind, is patience & self-forgiveness warranted? Better yet, is it useful?
Really what I need is to get making again. However that happens. Falling in love with making would be ideal, but we take what we can get. Sometimes the pressure of guilt, of expectation, of comparison can squeeze you up & into your chair. Luckily for today, it was inspiration that got me up… but this feeling is temporary as most are. I’ll need something new tomorrow, & something the day after that, & so on.
I’m not the type to be deeply driven by pure passion. I’m not the type to be lavished with praise, fame, & money. I’m the type of artist that’s lost. I’m floating out here, trying to figure out how to navigate my way through my own misty mind, & through the mists of the world out there. How we find ourselves anywhere is still a mystery to me. All I can do is stoke my love for making. All I can do is focus on the art that makes me want to make myself.
So these glitches in hope are nothing new. The solutions to them aren’t either. I’m not alone in these feelings, but sharing this feeling doesn’t really help me feel better. Knowing that someone else is lost just makes me feel bad for both of us. What does make me feel better is the kinship that comes with finding a lost soul & sailing alongside them for a while.
So if you’re lost, come sail alongside me a while. We can laugh & dream about what’s in the mist.
N
