I have my own little in/out struggle going on. How to make another leap of faith, when the obstacles are mainly within myself?
I’m kind of stuck.
Because I presently have no studio my work seems to have halted in some aspects. The idea I was working on no longer seems valid. No other idea has taken its place. (Worth saying though, songwriting is thriving)
I currently have no income… End of year sessional visiting lecturer anguish. If the students don’t sign up there isn’t a course. If there isn’t a course I don’t get paid. Simple. But I cannot financially commit to a new, lovely big studio without the income to pay for it.
Thing is, in the scheme of things I know that it is a small amount of money, this is a good deal… If the money was sat in an account somewhere I’d have already said yes and I’d be in by now.
I’ve been told off by the usual special friend who tells me off. I’m a spoilt brat who is whining and moaning and I should just say yes! Say in! And get on with it. I think he has more faith in me than I do. (In many other respects too I suspect)
So, having been told off, I come home and brood a bit. I would rather swear at him and have a bit of a strop. But I have learned that even if it makes me angry, even if I ultimately decide he is wrong, he usually has a point. And sometimes he is playing devil’s advocate just to make me see it. Anyway I digress….
In a different part of my world, I did say yes to something that now, I see I perhaps should have said no to. But I don’t think I would have seen that had I not said yes. Seeing it has been useful.
I’m in some sort of mid art career crisis. Is this a thing? The sort of things I am able to do easily are no longer the things I want to do. I moved out of my old studio because it was no longer the place for me. I had done everything they could conceive of me doing… The things I wanted to do next I think worried them. I have ambition (scarily, I think that is what it is I feel). I didn’t need more square feet, just more space. But in my stroppy tantrum spoilt brat way, I walked out without another space to go to. This is a bit of a habit. I don’t intend it, but that’s what happens.
So far, it has worked out. But one day, maybe this day, it might not. I might have shot myself in the foot one last time…although I have thought that sometimes someone else has handed me the gun and ammunition.
So what I’d like to ask, if anyone is still reading this, is how do I do the next bit? How do I move from the parochial, the hire space, the local….(I’m not counting the very occasional group project that does marvellous things and gets me to foreign climes….)
How do I get further? I’m stuck.
Looking back, which I have been able to do from quite a good vantage point this week, I’ve come a long way in the last six years or so… But it’s not enough. I have more to do and more to say. And I want to do so in places which broaden and deepen the audience… Which would challenge my internal and external discourse and would make the work stronger.
Am I stuck?
