I was slouching my way through YouTube, looking at various rants and listicles, when I ran across a list of 18 things that ‘highly creative’ people do. Seemed interesting, so I watched it. Oh dear God – they hit me square between the eyes with every point. But more than that, it evoked an emotional response – I wanted to celebrate it and deny it at the same time. It seems my old enemy Impostor Syndrome isn’t done with me yet.
Part of my issue – maybe the biggest part of it – is that it’s really hard for me to see my artistic endeavors as being worthy or worthwhile. I was raised with the understanding that art was not a career. “Oh, that’s nice dear, but it’s just a hobby, right? You’ll never make a living doing (theatre, writing, painting), so stay in school and study something Worthwhile.” I heard this from all quarters, every adult I knew. Possibly the most damaging thing was that my father, a very talented artist, never spoke up against it.
And so, I studied math, physics and engineering. Because I also wanted to be an astronaut, that seemed the best course I could take towards the goal. I liked physics, I was okay in engineering – I had a natural gift for understanding machinery – but me and math were not friends. This was mostly due to the fact that math requires a lot of work and study, and I had no interest in doing either at the time. Finally, I was flunking Calculus, so I changed my major in college – first to Art, then Theatre. I figured Theatre would be an easy way for me to get a degree. Well, yes and no, as it turns out, but I got the degree, anyway.
Since then, I’ve had a very technical career (with a two-year digression into Professional Acting), and even the drawings I did at that time were all in AutoCAD. Still, I kept wandering through art supply stores and gawking at the toys, occasionally buying a pen or a brush or a canvas, but never painting. I did the same with writing – coming up with all kinds of interesting story ideas, but only occasionally writing anything down. I never really finished anything. For the longest time I thought I was lazy, or not really interested in doing art. Actually, I hadn’t yet convinced myself that it was Okay to do Art. I didn’t give myself permission to take it seriously. I avoided the theatre for different reasons.
Only now, late in my life, do I understand the ridiculous waste of time and talent I have suffered through. These thoughts used to make me scream in frustration and bewail my ‘lost opportunities’ – but that was just a dodge. You see, back during the years I used to wail about my poor, stunted art career, I was actually a Fake. I was lying to myself – mooning over creativity while I continued to insist on being a ‘useful’ technocrat. Which I did poorly, by the way. One of the many threads of delusion twisting through my psyche was that of my being a successful architect or engineer, or whatever. Since my heart wasn’t in it, I was pretty lackluster. I never got promoted and couldn’t understand why not. Foolishness.
Compounded with that was the fact that I never devoted enough time to art or writing. The capabilities were there, I knew they were, but I was a Fake there, too. I was sure I would be able to just jump back in where I left off, whenever I wanted, at the same level of ability at which I’d stopped. It doesn’t work like that. You need to keep practicing art, just like you need to keep up any athletic training, just to stay even. I didn’t give my creative impulses any outlet, because I was sure that my technological abilities would set me up in comfort so that I could come back to the art someday. So, I concentrated on the scientific and technical – which I was really pretty good at but had no heart for – as a down payment on the future. Didn’t work that way.
Final score: 0 – 0, with fakery being the only real player on the field. What an unbelievable waste of time and effort. Well, now I’m done with pretending and fakery – hopefully. My all too recent commitment to my writing and my arts should reignite my creative spark, or at least that’s the hope. So far it seems to be working. I’m not yet back to the point where my craft consumes every waking hour of the day, but then, it’s also not paying the bills yet. Once my writing picks up steam, I should be able to move into the next phase. About time, too.
Don’t misunderstand me – I don’t see anything I learned in those years, or any rabbit hole I went down as wasted effort. Just the insistence that I had to be an engineer/architect/astronaut first and disregard the art as unimportant. I was good at the technical stuff, just not devoted to it. Because I wasn’t devoted to it, I made no progress – because I wasn’t willing to work hard at something my heart wasn’t in. That, and only that, is what I regret about those years. It took far too long for me to realize that I am a creative to my core, and that I needed to focus on the things I’m passionate about, even if it doesn’t make me rich.
I intend to spend the rest of my life making up the ground I’ve lost. But to do that I must understand one thing to the deepest level of my soul. My arts, whether writing, painting, singing or theatre, are important and worthy and worthwhile. I am not wasting time by doing these things – they’re necessary and good. No more faking. I am on the right road at last.
Be well.
bcd