Writer Twitter erupted the other day when someone declared something like anyone with a partner who doesn’t read their work should leave the relationship.
Well, that’s certainly one perspective.
It made me laugh because my life is filled with artists. I’ve been rubbing shoulders with rockstars and celebrities longer than most. You realize two things about famous artists really quick.
1. They are just people. They have families and personal problems and insecurities just like you.
2. The good ones, the humble ones you actually like spending time with… they all have romantic partners who are not sycophantic fan freaks.
While a person’s art or personal expression might be a part of what attracted you in the first place, you can not exist in a relationship if your largest role is to prop up the self esteem of the artist. It will leave you an empty vessel of potential not meeting your own needs.
I’m lucky. My partner is an artist and my biggest supporter as I find my voice and expression. Sometimes the stuff I write isn’t for him. It doesn’t land in a way he can resonate in. That doesn’t mean it’s bad writing. (Sometimes it does.)
Art work is work.
My husband and I were in the car the other day and he took a work call.
“Yeah, I can submit a 25 for 1098B and bring in the 300 at a 45/2” I completely made this up. It was such a series of codes and numbers that I can’t even remember it. I did not understand a single word he said during that call.
If he wrote code all day, I wouldn’t be expected to marvel at it in the evening hours. I wouldn’t watch his surgeries if he was a doctor, nor would I stare in awe at the shirts he pressed if he were a dry cleaner.
Just because it’s art doesn’t mean it’s not still considered work. Do it for you. Meet yourself every day in the commitment to create.
The world will not accommodate your needs.
For the last twenty years or so, I was haunted by this feeling that if only the world would create space for me, if only my life were less difficult, if only given the time and space to focus without the responsibilities of students loans, credit card debt and childcare, I could really MAKE something.
And yet. During this period of quarantine when alone time is nonexistent, when I made more meals than I have ever made before in my life (843 in nine months to be exact), when my extended family has been in more crisis than ever before, I began to create.
I made curry for the first time. I wrote more than 100,000 words toward my memoir. I journaled about the madness in the monotony of our days and the hilarity that would rise out of all the togetherness. I picked up my fancy DSLR for the first time in more than a year and captured the majestic red shouldered hawks that inhabit our neighborhood and like to hunt for their morning worms on the soccer goal in our front yard. I began to paint. I discovered I like watercolors more than acrylics. I love the way they can be controlled or set wild to intermingle and bleed into one another.
Get out of your own way.
Stop making excuses. Be your own biggest fan and supporter. All that’s in your way is you.