“Maybe the only enemy is that we don’t like the way reality is now and therefore wish it would go away fast. But what we find as practitioners is that nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know. if we run a hundred miles an hour to the other end of the continent in order to get away from the obstacle, we find the very same problem waiting for us when we arrive.”
~ Pema Chodron “When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times”
Warning – This is a long and an intense post so, if that’s not your thing, this might be one to skip over.
But I do know that many of you are thinking of beginning your own creative journey.
You might be worrying about whether you are brave enough.
You might be wondering how long it will take to make a living or how you’ll ever figure out how to put a price on your work.
You might be wondering if anyone really wants to buy your little things or if you will feel uncomfortable selling your dreams.
You might want to know what it is really like.
You might want to know what is in store.
So, for you, I wanted to share my experience this year. Because it’s been a tough year, a humbling year, and the thing that brought me to my knees, was the last thing I was expecting. And while all of the questions above are completely valid and understandable concerns, like me you might find that the killer blow is something you didn’t consider at all.
When I started my business, I was thrilled. Completely satisfied all the time. Even when things were tough, I loved the struggle. Starting up in the depths of the worst recession in living memory may not have seemed like the smartest move, but I didn’t care. I was in love with what I was doing and I felt sure that everything would be okay as long as I kept doing it.
Always one to believe in the value of hard work, as things got tougher I worked harder.
But then things got tougher, and tougher, and tougher. And I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t do any more. I couldn’t work any harder. And when I couldn’t work any harder, I started to punish myself for my perceived failings. Healthy habits like my yoga and meditation practices and a balanced diet went out the window, in favour of sleepness nights and pointless worry.
“The most fundamental aggression, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
~ Pema Chodron
I was trying to hold everything together, wearing a bunch of different hats and juggling a bunch of different roles. The more I took on, the more my artwork suffered. Where it had once been a joyful and fulfilling experience to create an image, it now became incredibly stressful
When you have so few moments to create an image, you had better get a good one, one you can sell. Better not try something too ambitious. Better not create something too challenging. I managed to convince myself it was only for a few months, just while I figured out how to get more stockists, how to build my email list, how to design my online store and work out social media
But as this year entered its final few months, I was on the verge of serious mental and physical exhaustion. In November it hit hard as I had to accept defeat on some of the wholly unrealistic financial targets I had set myself.
And as I was distracted with punishing myself for not being more successful more quickly, wondering how I would ever get back to creating new work, an old ghost reappeared and a very old wound that I had thought long healed, reopened itself
It was the last thing I expected and quite humbling to know that all the ghosts of our past failures are still sitting there with quiet menace, waiting for a moment of neglect, waiting for a crack to appear so that they may rush in again.[
You see, this artistic life that I am trying to create for myself is not the first leap of faith I have taken and the last time did not go well.
When I was 23 years old I married a man I hardly knew because I couldn’t bear to let him go. I screwed up my courage, took a leap of faith and moved across the world to be with him.
Four years later I found myself alone, lost and shipwrecked thousands of miles from home and the nearest friendly face. In those painful days, weeks, months, I came to understand how much of loss is a physical experience.
Everything hurt. Everything. Every muscle, joint, tendon, bone. My head pounded. My lungs felt like they were full of concrete. I threw up at least once every day. It felt like falling, like spinning through a black space with no idea of how or where I would land.
I had never felt so broken, so hopeless, so wretched and I thought it would never end.
Where I had been fearless, now I was broken. Where I had felt invincible, now I was painfully aware of my fragility. How could I ever be the same again? How could I ever trust my own judgment again? How could I ever take a leap of faith again? I felt such shame for breaking apart so spectacularly and I was certain that I would never recover.
But, eventually, I did. Very gradually, it melted away. Not all at once and not in a straight line but gradually, like all things, it changed from one thing into something else
When I came to make another leap of faith, many years later, I thought only briefly about the past. I was healed, invincible once again. How little I knew.
To be a professional artist is so challenging in so many ways. We take our insides and we display them outside because we can’t not share our experiences. But when we give our creations to the world we can’t control who sees them and we can’t protect ourselves from the reactions and assumptions of the viewing public.
We offer ourselves up to constant scrutiny and regular rejection and, sometimes it is so overwhelming that we find ourselves keeping busy with the business side of things, while old doubts creep in the back door.
For me, the great mistake was in letting go of practices that keep me healthy, that allow me to feel compassion for myself, that help me in accepting what is. Neglecting my own wellbeing created a situation in which my old fears about what would happen to me if I suffered another personal setback were able to completely overwhelm me and bring all of my momentum to a halt.
“I used to have a sign pinned up on my wall that read: Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us…It was all about letting go of everything.”
~ Pema Chodron
I thought that I had got over it, but the fact is that like everything else, all the triumphs and all the failures, there was never anything to get over, nothing to overcome or outrun
The illusion is that we can protect ourselves, or that we need to. Instead of learning to accept the rise and fall, I tried to make myself untouchable by running as fast as I could, a fundamentally flawed strategy as it turns out.
Sometimes things just fall apart. There is a great wave that raises us high and then drops us from a great height and there isn’t a damn thing we can do about it.
“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”
~Pema Chodron
Living life on your own terms is never easy. Never. It is not a one time decision. Each and every day you must decide again. And some days you just don’t want to. Somedays you are tired and you feel like hiding or distracting yourself. But no matter what you do, you can’t escape those quietly menacing ghosts.
Perhaps it is time to stop trying.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man’s-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ”
~ Pema Chodron