Wednesday 3rd January, 2024
…& a haaaappy new yearrrr!
We made it through the holidays. Decorations are being torn down to make room for all of our ambitious plans. Are you feeling it? Are you? Are you?
In the past three days I’ve had a wide spectrum of feelings & experiences… I’ve succeeded, I’ve lived… I’ve failed, & I’ve dissolved into moments of depression. Like most years, months, weeks, & days, I’m a yoyo of feelings.
On the first, I was treated to a morning full of pancakes & friends. Exactly what you want in a morning. We then leapt into the icy January sea… not exactly what you want in the afternoon… but it’s a great new tradition for a few of us. That kind of shock makes you feel accomplished & alive! The mutual suffering brings us closer too. This first day was a good one. I got home, & got to work on my life. I even got to bed at a reasonable time.
Then the second of January reared its ugly head. Up at 6.30am… which is a good thing. I got out of bed & began cleaning up, washing dishes, eating breakfast, etc. Then I tried to do some college work, & I began to stray into a background tv show. I distracted myself with data storage & transfers. There’s sooo much video footage that needs to be sorted & edited from the past 5 months of my social media hiatus. Needless to say, I failed to get anything of substance finished & eventually gave into the floor & fell into an early sleep.
This morning was probably the lowest point. I woke up & felt so useless. I was tired, overwhelmed, & felt like I couldn’t get anything done. I tried to have breakfast (& I did)… but I had to immediately curl up afterwards & lie in bed for a few hours. I have a tendency to spiral into a hollow mess on the floor when things get bad. Luckily I turned my new electric blanket up to full blast & the heat made me so uncomfortable that I had to get up. I lost a couple of hours to this kind of momentary depression. It happens more than most people think… more than I realise or expect.
Being an artist comes with a whole host of issues, as I tend to lay out regularly… At best, you feel like you’re contributing to the culture of the world, to people’s lives. Most artists who enjoy enough success to survive have those feelings of uselessness… like they’re contributing nothing to the world. Then there are those of us with not enough success to survive. It’s hard to believe that you’re helping anyone when there’s so few people actually wanting to listen to you. Feeling useless is an active theme in my life… & what I would give to contribute something with my music.
I don’t say any of this to look for pity of course. I’m venting of course… writing helps me sort through my own thoughts. But I’m also writing this for the other artists who do read. For the creatives who feel & are made to feel like they don’t make anything that matters… like they don’t make anything of value. I want them to know that it’s a shared suffering. Now, I’m not able to fully defend our particularly privileged suffering… as a friend said to me last year: that I’ve been an artist for 10 years… that I should be proud of lasting so long. They’re right in a way. Of course, that doesn’t soothe any of the pain that we feel from feeling useless… but I do have to be aware that I’m still, a kind of lucky.
What I’ve ended up doing is getting a bus into the city. Sitting in my favourite cafe. Surrounding myself with chattering strangers. I feel at home surrounded by humans. I feed off the buzz of a noisy cafe. It’s definitely helped to get out & about. I’m able to write this on the bus home, & I’ll be able to get some work & planing done when I get off. The person that I’m trying to be is a person that comes step by step. My process of getting better moves in & out with the tides… but it carries the sand slowly down the beach.
Now, I’ve to get off this bus & buy a new kettle… happy new year.
Nathan
