Something I’ve been thinking about for a few days now.
Just got back from Burning Flipside, a much-needed artistic vacation.
My lover and I had printed out the list of events from the website before leaving, and while we consulted it several times to see what interesting things might be going on, we mostly just wandered at will.
I didn’t see some of the things I meant to, but we did other things I wouldn’t have necessarily chosen from the list but which turned out to be lovely.
This got me thinking about life in the default world and if something might translate.
It’s dangerous to merely go with the flow of your life without thinking about it at all, because that’s a recipe for waking up when you’re 40 and wondering whatever happened to your dreams, or ending up somewhere you didn’t want to be.
But I wonder if I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum sometimes.
If I try to plan TOO much.
If I get too caught up in schedules and timelines and should’s and forget that life can take you places that you didn’t know you wanted to go until you were there?
They say life’s what happens when you’re making other plans. I don’t want to plan so much that I forget to enjoy what’s good about my life right now.
The only one putting pressure on me is me. I don’t want to feel I wasted seven years in higher education, but even if my job doesn’t match my degree 100%, that doesn’t mean I’m not using the skills and expertise I have gained elsewhere in my life.
It’s been 2 years since I graduated with my MA, and while I do miss performance, I wonder if I have such a narrow definition of what I wanted to do with it that I’m missing the other ways creativity and art could manifest in my life right now.
Am I pushing too hard in one direction, thinking that’s what I need to be happy?
Instead of going with the flow, am I trying to swim upstream? No wonder I’ve been so tired.
What if I took the pressure off myself to perform (literally and figuratively) and just went with the flow for a bit and saw what opportunities presented themselves? What if I allowed myself to wander and flounder until I find my footing?
I do want more of an artistic community in my day-to-day life, but maybe there’s more than one way to develop that.
I would like to someday be a teaching artist, and I do still want to write a one-woman show, but maybe I can work on my life for a little bit, too, and let that influence my art, instead of trying to force myself so hard in one direction that I get more and more frustrated when that doesn’t work or isn’t immediately fruitful.
I haven’t found my performance niche in Austin yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
Maybe finding a way to cultivate a creative community around me is the first step, and then see what comes from there.