(Too) Great Expectations
28 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
I started off so promisingly.
Now I sit on facebook and email on a box office computer (since it is dead. Joy) reading about the success of my peers and crying into my keyboard. Whether they are acting, travelling or becoming even more qualified they are all surpassing me in the career stakes. When the highlight of your day is a grande skinny latte you know you’ve gone wrong somewhere.
Husband is of the opinion you are not what you do, having that classic 80s child rebellion from yuppidom fight club mentality. Whilst I agree per se with the statement I cannot apply it to myself (like all good advice. It trips off the tongue in conversation but in your private monologues the kind voice is mute). In fact I get down disheartened with the state of my working life that as soon as I get home I crash, unable to be creative in any way other than concoting a sugar based snack and turning the tv to csi or scrubs. When that is your most scintilatuing task your inner artist starts to weep amd chant ‘be afraid. be very afraid’.
And the most frustrating thing is I had so much potential when I was younger. Very few friends, no boyfriend or popularity to speak of, but so much ability and hope. I sang solos, was in orchestras and music groups and choirs. I even managed to be the geeky girl who overturned the stereotype to play the lead in the school musical. I wrote my own songs and performed them year after year, feeling proud of my progress.
Where did it all go wrong?!
Probarbly university. I don’t know why, but that’s when my inner creative genius told me to sod off and i found solace in mars bars and caffeine. I tried songwriting, I even managed one music gig over my three years before the duvet beckoned once more. I told myself it was the course. I had to focus. Streamline my mental activities.
This is called denial.
And yes I could rattle off many other excuses from my inexhaustible list:
I had a wedding to plan
I graduated in a recession
I suffer from depression (hey that rhymes!)
I am exhausted by my current mind numbing job.
Yet however many reasons with which I console myself, in the end I am still ultimately failing in the artistic sense.
Perhaps it is because I want too much. I fantasise about being tori amos/ carrie bradshaw/ helena bonham carter and natalie portman’s prima ballerina in black swan. Sometimes these dreams collide in one solitary day. However I can’t shake any of these hopes and ambitions, despite the misery it eventually brings. It would feel failure to accept defeat. And I know I am a failure for not reaching these sparkly far fetched ideals. Somehow I believe I should be able to do anything and everything, and am distraught that I am doing nothing. Apart from staple gunning posters and the occassional “hello box office?”. Self flagellation all round.
In an attempt to better myself from this low point I purchased a book called the artists way which has persuaded me to get up half an hour earlier each morning (in itself a notable achievement) to complete tasks, which promise to detonate mental tnt to clear the artists block.
I shall update you on my sleep depriving experiment (each second counts) although seeing as I spent most of my day today pointing customers towards a table RIGHT NEXT TO ME to pick up tickets (I might have repetitive strain injury- think I can sue?), coupled with the fact that I have a bottle of wine in the fridge with my name on it, I do not hold out much hope.
On that cheery note I may stick my head in the oven- well it worked for sylvia plath….
