The Artist

I've said it before, most of the time I feel more autistic than artistic.

Lately, one of the reasons I haven't written much, of anything, is because I imagine myself to have some sort of potential which of course I also imagine that I do not live up to.

I don't know.

I believe that art is what you do when you intend to make art. Whatever that may be. However that idea expresses itself through you. In doing so, you are an artist. You are the only one who can do it that way.

I guess it's not so much a "becoming" as a "doing."

I fear failure and the process and making ugliness and, you know, being laughed at and shit.

On the other hand, if I mope and believe I'm a mediocrity and do nothing, then I was right: I am a mediocrity and a do-nothing. At least I have that.

So, speaking of fear and anxiety. I was reading last night about angst. Or rather, The Angst. Existential and everything.

One sentence in one of the pages I scanned in the light-hearted way I tend to pursue new information and enlightenment stuck out at me. Basically it said that acceptance of fear and anxiety is a step on the way to gaining pleasure and enjoyment from life.

I have been fighting fear and anxiety a long, long time. I'm so tired of being afraid. I just don't have any words for how afraid I am of really feeling fear. Sometimes getting myself to work in the morning is all I can do. I've been white-knuckling my way through life forever. As long as I can remember. I'm afraid of failure, doom, conflict, expectations, destitution. I'm all tied up in knots all of the time.

So I have to feel the fear, right? That's the way through?

If you promise you'll be there on the other side, then I think I can do it.