Relentless

Mr.Fella and I watched Rent tonight.
One of the lines from the musical is "the opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation." Mr.Fella turned to me and said "huh. That's right, you know."
"It is" I replied.

Before we moved to Ottawa, I took a year of belly dancing lessons. I needed something to get me out of the house while I was on maternity leave and it was a wonderful, growing, experience. There were many times when I thought "I need to keep doing this. I need to."

I hadn't been able to pursue it this fall, and it made me sad in a deep sense.

Sometimes I worry that I'm some kind of narcissist because I always seem to need to create something. I always need to write something. To paint something. To dance something. To say something (I talk so much sometimes).

Which is fine until I look back and think that my writing is pointless, my paintings are clumsy, my dancing is amateur and I need to learn when to keep my mouth shut. I've had my fair share of those experiences - I offended one of Mr.Fella's family members with my old blog, I've never been able to keep a single one of my paintings because they always make me cringe. Even right now I'm thinking about the fact that most of my entries seem formulaic. Maybe they are, a bit, but you know what? Life's formulaic.

And you're never going to do something that someone hasn't already done.

The vast, vast majority of us are not going to do anything that is even remotely close to ground-breaking. And if you care at all about being able to continue doing what you want to do, what makes you a better person to do, you'd better find a way to be okay with that.

Mr.Fella and I went to a Christmas party a few weeks ago. It was hosted by one of the grad students that Mr.Fella works with. He was from Newfoundland too, actually, but had been off the island for many years.

My husband and I arrove early. When we got in the door, we asked, "how are you doing?" and my fella's friend gritted his teeth and gave us an unconvincing "Oh, you know. Okay". My husband, always the listener, asked what was wrong and we poured a couple of glasses of wine.

"I'm dropping out of the program", his friend responded.

"Holy shit" Mr.Fella said. "Why?"

His friend then went on to explain that the program hadn't been quite what he expected. He had writer's block and he was a perfectionist about everything that he wrote. When he was accepted to grad school, he envisioned a lot of like-minded individuals debating the nature of literature and truth - the reality was that there was a lot more bullshit involved. The bullshit of deadlines, colleague politics, grading, dry seemingly irrelevant works.

He was dropping out and had a job lined up in construction.

Now, I didn't know anything about this guy's life - I didn't know what would make him happy. After the party, at the bus stop, I asked Mr.Fella if he thought his friend would be happy doing construction. "No, absolutely not." he responded.

And I could sympathize to the trouble of creating something you're happy with. And I could understand the troubles that arise when expectations meet reality. I certainly didn't expect to be a receptionist for four years after finishing university.

But that's life, I think. And that's the perils of the creative process - it's so easy to get in your own way.

And some days you just have to create shit, shit, shit until you start feeling better about it.