Day 27 - A Flatlay

Sometimes I am not sure if I am an artistic person or not. I mean I have moments of artistry, sure. But I don’t know if that makes me an artistic person. I never gave it too much thought until I got married to an actual artistic person. At that point I just slid over and occupied the “analytical person” slot in our dynamic in the same way you let a speeding Ferrari pass you on the left on the highway. She is a bottomless well of inspiration it seems, and by contrast I felt numb to insight. Her friend groups started consisting more and more of people of a similar artistic station, which made me feel more and more out of my element concerning creation. Time passed, and I became the Biologist while Sarah bloomed into something enchanting to me. Among other things, chiefly she is brave about creating.  

I think that is my biggest problem, the largest hurdle in my creation. I am too afraid of the opinions of others, and I give far too much weight to their (imagined) criticisms. I tell myself that I am foolish for still drawing in the style that I have been since high school, or I am just recycling other peoples work in an inferior fashion; never adding to the creative pool in any meaningful way. I try to really pick Sarah’s brain on this topic, and she is likely tired of me asking about it, because I just cant seem to grasp how to force yourself to be brave and how to force yourself to make art. After years of reflection on it the truth is that I do not think that I am an artistic person, at least in the traditional sense.

This is not a call for your praise, or some self-pitying plea for reassurance. It just seems that when I think too heavily about being an artistic person and the trappings of that moniker, I become paralyzed. My problem is the expectation, the comparison, the anticipation. Therefore, I have abandoned it. I am simply someone who occasionally stumbles on something like inspiration and when it is gone, I should not be sad at its absence; I should not expect its speedy return, I just need to embrace it while I have it as a companion.

This is a spread out of my journal that I enjoy flipping back to. I am proud of the drawings, and it makes me feel good to know I am capable of creating something at all.