I started a new library painting this morning. I’m working on a painting of Collins Garden Library and so far I think it’s coming along pretty good. I listened to Ten Percent Happier while I worked. It was an interview about pleasure and prioritizing feeling good in all we do. As someone who comes from a long line of mental health issues, deprivation, and unworthiness, I can relate to the work needed to make good choices for ourselves. I, like the woman interviewed, have been on a long journey of learning to care for myself. I know I’m not alone and it feels good that these conversations have been normalized.
When I was in my early thirties, after studying photography for decades and watching it change from film to digital, I realized I’d always wanted to be a painter. I was standing in a museum in Paris and it just hit me. In that moment I remembered being a little girl and finding a sketch book in my mom’s bedroom at my grandparent’s house. Inside were great sketches, specifically one of a puppy. Being a little girl I was overwhelmed with inspiration to not only draw with accuracy but to draw a puppy. It was a two-for-one moment. I knew I wanted to do that.
In middle school I had a great relationship with my art teacher who believed I was, at heart, an artist. But over the years I lost touch with my desires, with my happiness. In fact, I stopped believing along the way that my happiness was important. I thought other people’s happiness was important, but it always seemed to allude them and I felt powerless to do anything about it. So by the time I was in high school I had become concerned with what was going on with others to the exclusion of what was going on with myself. I was a full-time caretaker.
But I held on to art. Somehow I managed to stay creative and see creativity as important. I studied photography. I kept a journal so effortlessly that I often felt, like Joni Mitchell and her box of paints, that I lived in a notebook. And eventually I got back into drawing and painting. It’s not always easy to follow your bliss, as they say. Not always easy to make ones own satisfaction top priority. It is something I have to work at consciously. Every day.
People often ask me if I do commissions and it’s hard to say no. I can hear all these incensed voices, Are you crazy? Are you going to teach then? You’ve got to do something to make a living. No. I want to paint. I want to make a living painting. I can’t paint if I’m doing something else. I just can’t. Maybe other people can balance the two but I can’t. I’m on this path because I believe that it’s the right path. I have no idea what next month or next year will bring. I may get to a point where I realize I need to find something else to do for a career. I will face that if it happens. For now though, I’m painting. Every day. To my heart’s desire.
In order to do that I have to let go of others. I need to let go of those voices in my head. I still hear things from thirty and forty years ago and it’s haunting. Do they ever go away? Those relationships we have with our families of origin are so intense, so complex, and it’s hard to let go. It’s hard to learn detachment. I remember first beginning to understand how to be close to someone without losing myself. I discovered that what I thought was love and connection was actually enmeshment. I started to respond to people instead of react. I discovered that I am, and always will be, an autonomous individual, separate from others. At first that was painful, but after a while it started to feel right. Because it’s true.
I saw a meme the other day that said No one else is supposed to understand your calling, it wasn’t a conference call. I thought that was a great reminder of detachment. I am on my own journey, and sometimes that can feel incredibly lonely, but we all are. So, we are all lonely. We are all on these isolated journeys, together. And the only guide we have is ourselves. We only have our pleasure, our happiness, our hearts, our guts, our inner-knowing, our Higher Power. Right now I am painting. I am a professional, full-time artist. Today. That is the most pleasurable choice I can make at this time.