I feel like I’ve wasted this summer, which could be interpreted a number of ways. On the one hand, I did an obscene amount of “chillaxing” (which my students inform me is actually not in the lexicon anymore and thus reaffirming how blatantly out of touch I am with them). But on the other, I feel like I didn’t accomplish a lot. There’s some argument that I coulda/woulda/shoulda done more with this free time until the grad school textbooks hit the fan, but then I get queasy at the idea of all those books that I paid for being shredded. Money wasted. Almost like a summer wasted, amirite?
But I think I accomplished enough to make someone happy. (Not me; I’m never happy with anything I do.) The sum total of my accomplishments can be summed up with this: “This is where I am right now.”
It’s something my dad told me to keep reminding myself when I get a bout of the depressive crazies over whether I’m doing the right thing right now, or when I doubt everything I’ve ever done, or discount a lot more than last summer’s swimsuits. Nothing is permanent; we’re fluid creatures on a fluid continuum, like the gas bands on Jupiter. We drift through a changing world and hopefully we change with it. (Example: I heard the Great Red Spot doesn’t exist anymore! What the hell, man?)
I’ve been feeling pretty punk about my lack of artistic endeavor lately. So when a friend had a similar problem, I gave her advice I should probably listen to (because, weirdly, I have some pretty good ideas): Art reflects the artist’s “now”, where she is in her life at this moment. Therefore, she must evaluate herself and her life to understand the direction her art needs to go in. And do it.
Here are some things I discovered about my “now”:
- I’ve come to terms with and accepted my social anxiety. (How to correct it, or if I even want to, is the new mystery.)
- I may or may not still be depressed, but I’m not as bad as I was in high school (always a plus).
- My writing is my focus right now, though I still love photography and graphics/drawing.
- Saying of photography, historical buildings are my current muse.
- I’m a “realistically optimistic cynic”: If it looks good, it probably will be, but I still have my doubts.
- …and all of that is okay, because things internal and external can and will change, for good and bad, and so long as I can roll with it, it’ll be okay. But I still have my doubts.
Ultimately, who I was in undergrad has combined with who I was in high school (the more tolerable extreme) to make the person I am now. And she’s pretty cool, I suppose, if you can get past her self-deprecation and her dark humor. But I don’t think she’s gonna change anytime soon. With grad school around the corner, I don’t think she’ll have time for anything.
