Imagined futures. That's my lifeline thrown to my future selves, hoping at least one of them will catch the other end. This is more than just a love story fairy tale but a life story fairy tale.
It's September and soon I will be one year into being fully employed while still holding on to my art. I have just signed up for the October Art Mart, skipping the September run because I just don't have the time nor energy to push myself to make new things to sell. Workload at the office has reached maximum limit and I'm just about managing to keep everything efficient so I don't really have to do a lot of overtimes.
"Quiet quitting" is trending and I am relieved to not be in a situation that causes it. My work remains challenging but I am gaining the satisfaction of learning, adapting, growing, expanding myself.
I have been going deep into the forest with my art but my work has opened up into a galaxy to invite me to also go far and to soar. To open not just to fold into myself.
I found myself going back to the heart of my art. I have removed the burden of income from selling my art. I took away the pressure of having to make things that will sell. What my art was supposed to do was to make magic. To cast spells. To weave unexpected twists into the old fairy tales. And now beyond the longing for what could have been is the anticipation of what could be. Imagined futures. Love in the scale of supernovas, that obliterates and creates at the same time.
A treaty is being written, somewhere in an imaginary region between my heart and my mind, where a chasm had formed through long years of war. Somehow, suddenly, peace is possible.
In my public life I have fully embraced what I used to hate and fear. I have become what I thought I couldn't be. I am beginning to understand for the first time what my work meant and what I could make it mean. I can change its definitions. I can rewrite the narrative of my present into a desired future. I can imagine and I can do what I can to make it true.
In my private life, in my art, I have gone into the space that borders chaos. I am dismantling the givens. I am stretching the seams of comfort zones. I am reaching into the dark quiet space where the hidden holds what I have been looking for.
Comments