WHEN YOU'RE GOOD AT OTHER THINGS
“And just because we can do something doesn’t mean that’s our creative purpose. It’s deeper than talent. Creative purpose is something deeper than what we can do or how we make our money.”
If you are an artist, and you struggle with failure, read Jon Batiste’s: Isolation Journals first.
I find that I am easily distracted by other things that I am good at. I would get a job, or get another degree, and I would think, “See, I’m good at this, this is what I should be doing. This will make money.” It would be just enough to let me push aside my musical identity, and carry on with it like a dirty little secret I take out of my back pocket once in a while to admire.
I would only look at the things I have done in the past as something that wasn’t possible for my future. But I realized something important-and maybe other mothers can relate to this. The amount of time I actually was hands on focussed on my kids, could have been spent on being productive about my career, rather than the “creative transference” that happened in my life as a young mother. Did they need every ounce of homemade goodness that came out of my kitchen? All the fear that I felt got translated into homemade baby food, saying no to gigs because my kids needed me, when really, it was a way to avoid what was calling me deeply, innately.
I’ve never been poor. I’ve never struggled to make ends meet. We have parents who help us out when we need it. It wasn’t until I took a risk financially in myself that my being was made clear. I have a story to tell, and though it is often with other people’s words, it is my voice.
Jon Batiste said, you have to dig into the things that you cannot change about yourself. I realize I need to use them as fodder for my artistry, instead of seeing them as obstacles.
I am a mother, they make me who I am.
I am sensuous, not sexy and that’s ok.
I am Jazz, regardless if people don’t hear it that way
I don’t read music, I feel it.
Some of these things won’t change, so how can I use them to tell my story?
Lately I have been feeling that familiar feeling of being torn in two. The person I felt like when I was at home and not pursuing music with the time I had to myself, the time I had to create for myself.
At night when I come home from work, I’m exhausted, and I mean go to bed at 6:30pm exhausted. I like my job, and I am GOOD at my job. I have yet to feel that I don’t want to be there, even throughout various outbreaks and other stressful events. I like the stability of a paycheck, the benefits, the security of being an employee rather than an employer. (nothing like the life we lived before)
The problem is that, I am having a hard time with the other side of me, the side that needs the instability, the shifting sands, the open ended days that I used to fill with baking and laundry and walks with friends. I am good at my job, and I know the last post I spoke about living with purpose and being ok with that. The problem is that now I am sitting on a mountain of grant money and I don’t know how to dig myself out to create something.
How to excavate the momentum I had before this all went away? Before I became someone else (I literally feel like a different person)? Is it temporary? Can I be both? How do I prevent being good at other things from taking over the part of me that always cries out?
“i finally feel
the floor beneath me
it’s still and firm
but the newness has worn away
the colour isn’t right
the shade feels off and the
softness wrong.
it’s too hard for me to lay on
and dream my dreams
and feel the breeze
and the vibrations of the sea.
is this how Pangea felt?
the tectonic shift inside me is so great
but i am changing too fast
i can’t keep up.
before it felt like quicksand,
constantly shifting my weight to stay balanced.
but it was exciting and dangerous
and danger made me feel, at least.
but i am not danger.
i am MOTHER, PROVIDER, GIVER and DOER.
I am not that. I am not that anymore.
”