Turn to face the strange....
Life changes, people change, the world
changes...change is a constant, and some are grand, some are minute.
The sky is always a perfect sky, but it is never the same (or
something like that – from Illusions by Richard Bach.) Change can
prove to be for the better or the worse, and what is minute can feel
monumental or vice-versa.
In my previous posts of the blog, I
talked some about the wealth of changes I've been undertaking over
the past number of years. Or maybe that I've been overtaken by. I've
moved house, and moved from urban back to rural (which makes me very,
very happy!) Gone from taking the TTC to my theatre job to having to
commute in from rural Ontario, often stay in the city for days – or
sometimes weeks – at a time, and have a split life of home and
“away”. This would be made easier and less of a change, perhaps,
if I had a place to stay in the city that was my own. Then I could
just be moving from Country Mouse to City Mouse and back...but anyone
who is currently renting in Toronto knows what those prices are like
and supporting 2 places on my budget is an absolute no-go...as it is
with most people in my situation. (Also another change – with the
city to country thing...I am finally living (almost) within my means.
So the idea of adding an expense that puts me back in the cycle of
being unable to afford my life is not an option I want to take, if I
can help it.) And again, in hindsight, Country Mouse/City Mouse is not all that easy either. It is still a split, and there is never quite the thing you need, or the sense of home. At least not for me, so far in the versions I've tried...but then, I'm difficult.
I've moved from being single – for
what feels like most of my life – no offense to previous partners,
some of whom were quite long term – to being someone's significant
other, and to having a significant other. From living as a
single person to living in a shared household. I've gone from
someone who had only rarely been out of the country – or even the
province, to someone who has been overseas multiple times. What
else...oh, it turns out that I've gone from being part of a very
small family to realizing what it means to have a LOT of relatives -
in Scotland. (I always knew about them as a theory, but it is a
different thing when the theory has you come for tea.)
And most importantly, I've realized
that in order to make this work I have to get serious about making my
business and the work I produce more viable. I have to make an
actual effort to sell some of it so that I can continue to live in my
rural paradise and still eat. And maybe choose how much I commute.
In the city I always got by, in part by taking lots of little jobs
that were as diverse as a piece of string is long. Over the past few
years – or, I suppose, over the past decade those jobs have slowly
started to go by the wayside. Some because I let them go, some
because they had run their course. And now, the few I have left are
coming to the natural end of their life cycle.
My first thought was, I can get a
part-time job up here. That, it on more careful thought, requires
either a commitment I'm not yet ready to make, or decisions I'm not
yet comfortable with. Not to mention jobs up here are scarce, as
they are everywhere. Mostly though, I am stopped by the fact that I
can't get a “conventional” part-time job unless I am willing to
give up my theatre career (which is also, by nature, part-time). And
I am not there yet. Strangely, employers are not keen to hire
part-time staff who need about 6 weeks off, three times a year or so.
Oh, and those are usually evenings and the ever popular weekends.
And then there are those fantastic trips over the big waters I've
mentioned.
All of this makes me not so much the
most desirable employee prospect. No matter how hard I work when I
am there. And all this time away from my new home means I'm not
making the kind of contacts I had the luck to find in the city –
people who needed casual help when I was not otherwise occupied and
yes, odd hours – sometimes after midnight – with long gaps was
fine. I know how rare and special those contacts were and are, and I
have loved each of them for what they have allowed me to do. I think
the likelihood of any of them appearing in my current whereabouts are
slim, so that means getting down to business. Which is why I'm here,
at this moment, writing this blog.
I mentioned that I am a sporadic
writer, and a sporadic artist/maker. It is not that I don't have
discipline...there are certainly times when my discipline is
questionable. But I work from inspiration, and from an overwhelming
need to work. That can, I expect, be nurtured to some degree, by
being disciplined. It is something I have been learning about as I
begin to understand the way artists in the UK particularly seem to
work. But, like all of us, I have to eat and keep myself in a home,
and frankly, if I'm not inspired or at least intrigued then my work
is not worthwhile doing. What comes out is junk. (I know that there
are those who will think it is junk when I am
inspired....sometimes I'm one of them.)
So
the way I had structured my life left me less time and energy for
making stuff, inspired or not. And now, all these years in I have to
try to learn some new tricks. This is all part and parcel of
nurturing that creativity...the part of me that questions and
examines and is filled with wonder and awe at the world around me. I
have to become less sporadic and believe that what I produce might
not be junk. And if it is
junk I need to make it junk I can learn from and grow from rather
than going into that desolate spiral that tells me that I
am junk, therefore all I produce is junk and so shall it be forever
more.
It is the journey of a lifetime for most of us to realize that we are
not failures. We fail sometimes, sometimes often, sometimes
seemingly endlessly. But if we persevere we are not failures.
It is a strange mirror – once my writings were fueled by sadness
and turmoil and struggles and they helped me to make space inside
myself for hope and quiet. Now I am writing from hope and quiet
(sometimes, at least) and my writings are fueled by creation and
missteps and the ability to hold that quiet and look at the things
that cause ripples in it and see my reflection rather than just the
ripples. And to know that they are ripples, rather than tidal waves.
A great deal of that comes with age I expect, and experience. I am
lucky to have and grateful for the ability to be able to turn and
face what is before me, and to know that however rough the terrain is
I have a reasonably comfortable seat to ride it out in.
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