The Necessary Solitude for Work
I am still dragging after losing my studio access for the next two years. This is the third time I’ve begun working up there, then been displaced. I know that creativity is supposed to blossom in a pinch; that restrictions are supposed to spark out-of-the-box solutions. But that’s not happening.
Sometimes I worry there’s no fight left in me. And that makes me feel guilty. Or, or and ashamed. In this house, I am being squeezed and chased from room to room, and I forget what the advantages are of living here. This isn’t what we planned.
I am physically cut off from the paints and the papers, the screens, and the sewing frames. I don’t know why this feels like punishment. Like an opportunity lost. I didn’t make my creative work real enough: I haven’t succeeded in justifying the space I take up. Took up.
So much for my summer plans. I am not depressed. It is nice to know anger can sit in my body without settling into depression. Though I can’t really say much about the relation of anger to self-pity. I suppose I’m seeing the latter surface now and then through the anger, like some odd sea creature in the swells.
I am sad. One can be sad and not depressed.
I will drive to the doctor’s office alone later this morning. A half an hour to sing full-throated with chesty notes. To sing until I cry, and feel very, very foolish.
Not sure if just a quiet ‘I’m so sorry’ will help, but I am feeling for you. V.Woolf was right about needing a room of own’s own..otherwise it could limit our creative freedom.
Yes one can be sad, just simply sad, often for good reason but not always–and not be depressed. Took me awhile to relearn this.
Yes, sad & depressed are not the same at all, not just a matter of measure, but different in nature. And foolishness, we should be familiar by this time, like ground, like sky. Think that makes it an old friend.