It's been almost a year since I wrote here; I just changed the copyright date from 2018 to 2021. I reread a little, including Anne Truitt's words on the aging body. Little has changed. My energy comes but mostly goes; ideas form but motivation doesn't form behind them. I have to convince myself there is a point to doing much of anything. I am keeping up with schoolwork, for practical but also personal reasons: it makes me visible in the world and has an impact on people I care about.
But I don't care much about myself, privately. I can barely sustain any worthwhile activity, and that's if I can start at all - whether it's to work in the studio or to read something more enriching than the news or to reach out for conversation. I sleep a lot, self-medicate more than I like, and feel numb and blank. The impulse to write here (as opposed to one of my several journals) has actually stuck for a couple of days, and I get it: it is available to others even if no one sees it. And its public-ness binds me to being clear and complete in ways I can sidestep in private. My thinking is under more pressure to resolve to something, and words are the right material.
Many of the artists in my community find solace in their work, or a new sense of purpose. I feel a futility. I can understand that intellectually, but it leaves me without a way to summon or focus my creative work. Again this makes practical sense, but it overlaps with the loss of energy related to aging, and I feel defeated and worried that I will ever feel like myself again.
Picture-taking and Instagram have become my primary studio practice - a way to process the shocks of the last year, to be out of the house with a sense of purpose, and to make work that is immediately visible to the world. When I realized this I was relieved not to be as dead-in-the-water as I felt, but I still fault myself for not making "real" work in the studio. I should get off my own back and not sabotage a creative stream that has been working.
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