For about as long as I’m able to remember, I’ve always appreciated art in all its various mediums. Perhaps being exposed to all the wonder and imaginative beauty of art has influenced me into wanting to create art myself. I don’t believe this is a bad thing at all. It’s powerful, no matter how insignificant or sloppy it may seem to someone. I’ve had an interest in drawing for a very long time at this point, and even with all the time that I was not drawing in my life, a significant portion of my time has been spent appreciating art. So I guess it’s only natural that this is the direction that my spirit wants to take me.
Which then begs the question stated in the title of this document; Why do I feel that my life is worthless if I am not creating anything, if at the same time I dread the entire creative process?
This problem is likely familiar with anyone that does any amount of creative work. The more time that I spend wasting away in this $1500CAD/month isolation chamber, the less I feel that my time has any value to it. Makes sense. But even when I was comfortably unemployed (as opposed to being uncomfortably (un)employed) I still felt this way. I could theoretically have as much time in this world as I liked and I could still find a way to spend all of it in misery.
When I feel miserable, I then often find myself saying, “you need to go and fucking make something.” I did recently finally get it in my head to some extent, that all the time I spend researching art or contemplating or otherwise freaking out about the fact that I need to make art, in that moment I am not making any art, thus no art will be made. But even after learning this, I still ruminate. I start guilting myself again, because as it pertains to my internal beliefs, I am not being productive.
Despite all this, I still continue being unproductive, knowing full well that I have work again in the morning, that the weekend will end soon, that rent is due, that none of this is forever. I know that I need to take action. Why is that so hard to do? Here’s a Of course, you click the button, but it does nothing, and even when I click the button myself, I remain fully intact in my physical form, unharmed. But I still find myself pressing the button repeatedly, and when I press it, I feel something within me writhe slightly. It longs for meaning in the world, but simultaneously longs for the burden of responsibility to be lifted off my shoulders. It longs to be freed of consequence, while at the same time desperate for something to hold onto in the world to validate my own existence.
I was relatively recently laid off from a job that I felt was the most secure in my life. It was a desk job, without any customers to talk to, without having to sell anyone anything, without the terrifying pressure to perform to a standard. I walked in the building, sat in my chair at my desk in front of a computer with a few of my plushies sitting on top, clocked in, and processed reports for a client of the company I worked for. It was the only job I’ve had up to this point in my life that I could say I was genuinely able to go to work for every single day. I wasn’t afraid of it. It was the first time I had ever gone more than 3 months at a time without missing a shift. Even though it was minimum wage for me, all I needed in my life was some stability. I’ll always take the boring work over the stressful work, because to me, being bored at your job just means that you’re stable. I hadn’t ever had that privilege of being bored at a job up until that point, and I was ready to get comfortable. The company had been operating in my region for over 20 years and there were no signs of impending doom, but before I could make it a full year, suddenly one day they were herding all of us in a conference room in large batches at a time to tell us that they had to make The Difficult Decision. (Everyone knows this is bullshit, by the way, this is a Fortune 500 company we’re talking about.) In about a full month we would all be escorted out of the building and never return.
That was just about a couple months ago now. Most of us were offered other internal work at home positions in the company, and I was essentially forced by my own circumstances to accept, as the severance wouldn’t last for more than a couple weeks for me. The job I am working at the time of writing is one I know full well that I am unable to perform on: work-at-home, customer-facing, over-the-phone tech support. I live alone. I haven’t had a job that felt so horribly isolating before. I felt the walls closing in on me. This isn’t going to work. But no matter what I do, I can’t find another job that I’m both qualified for and am able to actually do. I’m so fucking terrified of people. I can’t drive. I’m an emotional mess. I’m only one bad day away from being fired from any regular customer-centered position. I can’t just drop my own emotions and feelings and thoughts at the door like that, I can’t just pretend that I’m not in the middle of an existential/emotional crisis for the sake of a customer or an employer. I don’t understand how anyone else is able to do it, I’m fully aware that even neurotypical people have to pretend that everything’s OK.
So it’s hard to find meaning in this life, and it’s hard to feel like I’m worth something in the capitalist society. A point comes where the only thing I can feel is that I can’t function in this society that is thrust upon me, and so my life has no inherent value. I’m losing track of everything, bills are going unpaid, food is running low, workable jobs are scarce, my apartment is a disaster. If I miss paying rent by 2 weeks, even just one single time, even though I have never missed a payment, even if I give plenty of notice in advance, I will still lose it all, because to a company, I am not worth waiting for. Nothing I am, have been, or will be, will have any value to anyone in a way that allows me to survive on my own.
But I still have my friends, I still have everyone I love, I still have my passions, my interests, and I still have art. Art will always be there. Art brings meaning to my otherwise meaningless life. It infiltrates everything in this world in the most profoundly beautiful way, and permeates throughout everything it touches and everyone who experiences it.
I want to create because it’s all I have left, and my spirit knows this. I want to feel like my existence is real. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. If I truly need a reason to create, that reason is to know internally that I am real, I exist in this world, and by creating and sharing with others, my existence will be validated and justified.
I dream that one day, I will no longer feel like I need a justification to exist.
november 6th, 2024