Under Pressure

In and Out of Dark Places

Some people's art career hopes collapse and they crack under pressure in ways other people don't. Not saying being treated badly or having severe problems is a jolly character-building opportunity, just saying that two different people in the same circumstances will have very different reactions. One will crumble, and the other will keep going.

I'm not a big fan of comparing problems to see whose Yardstick of Sad is longer, because everyone has their challenges.

Some things are beyond your control, like chronic illness. While I had long term health problems, focusing and performing my art was much harder. No amount of thinking positive could overcome the discomfort and brain fog. With the drop in income and prospects came professional and financial pressure I thought I would never be able to get past.

But I got better, and that happened because I was just plain lucky. Not everyone gets better.

Then I got worse again. Then I got better.

There are other challenges that are in my control, such as how I respond to provocation. When someone treats me badly or unfairly, I can control my reaction to that.

Some people in the biz have mocked me a bit for being a process wonk, but process is what it's all about.

Which is why AI is so useless to someone like me.

The art is in the doing.

When I pay attention to industry gossip, or unproductive things that people try to drag me into, that is an attempt to steal my time and attention.

I can never recoup that loss when they do. Time of life is a zero sum game.

That's why they do it. They want you to dwell on them, what they are doing, what they are saying. They want you to be drained of energy and focus.

Once you've tripped, now you put energy and focus into the provocation; "LOOK! They tripped me! What a jerk! How they have stolen from me!"

A rip off, indeed.

But the more I dwell on it, the more I lose. And the more I lose, the more angry I become about what I lose.

If every day I get up and look at what has been done to me that thwarted my goals, and then judged myself based on what I did not achieve, then I am the pawn of people and things that do not have my best interests at heart.

They get what they want, and I get nothing.

If instead I focus on what I am doing to get better as an artist - how I drew that line, how I turned that phrase - then I am focusing on process, and bit by bit, things get done.

It’s like meditation.

I noticed something about some of the people who crack under the pressure of art making: they almost never talk about their art and how they make it. They talk about what they didn’t get and what has been done to them.

Some people are moving TOWARD ART and some people are moving FROM something. From their past, from disappointments, from bad times. But they seem to run right back to the place they were trying to get away from. They lose the path to their art, stuck in an endless circle, becoming bitter and angry and jealous.

And the art didn’t get made.

I think this is why they try to drag you along with them, trying to get you caught up in drama. Because this dark place where they live kills art. And they are hoping to kill yours.

Onward to Victory.