Here at Rare Bits, we have the opportunity to post sketches, thoughts and rants. This will be a little bit of a rant. Short, but still a rant. Those who hate rants, please read the awesome posts below.
Ok, so I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the kind of life I’m living right now. I work from a little after I wake till about 7 or 8PM and then from 10PM-ish until I can’t draw a straight line. Normally, bursts of obsessive creativity can be forgiven, but doing it day in and day out means only one thing: I am a workaholic. Which is another way of saying: I’m falling into the same patterns of what our culture deems “business as usual.”
There are several passions and ideas of my youth that I am glad to either be rid of (nu-metal, overly baggy jeans, and my mullet), or matured in (religious/philosophical views); however, I can’t stop my 16 year old self to shut up about my work habits. When I was in High School, I swore I wouldn’t fall into the same trap of the adult rat race. I wouldn’t be someone who chased the carrot of tomorrow straight into the grave. And now, I wake up every so often just to check that I’m only “playing along” at the race, you know, in a hip tongue-in-cheek kind of way.
Yes, as an adult there are reasons to work hard, and as a teenager with ample time to watch MST3K I knew nothing of bills, debt and rent. But the ample time is what I’ve been thinking about. The amount of time I would spend out in the deserts of California (I lived in the middle of the Mojave) climbing over the corpses of volcanoes and through wind-blown valleys, staring at night from the mounds and hills at the veins of light that led to towns dozens of miles away. The clarity and quietness of that environment sank into me. The hours spent alone, or with one or two friends, seemed to have an unspeakable weight to them. Hours, that I didn’t know would vanish almost completely from my life ten years later.
It is important to spend time playing, like Jen Vaughn wisely observes in her post below. But it’s also vital to be bored sometimes. To, let the mind fill the holes of moments with musings and inventions. The fast pace of my life, even though I spend my time drawing, needs to slow down. I’ve had fleeting moments of the old magic. A day spent in the White River last August comes to mind. I still think my teenage self has a point about living the fast life. I need to slow down, and spend a little more time staring out my window and a little less at a blank sheet of bristol.
Is it wrong that I wish I could maintain a morning to night pace like you describe? I’m so distracted sometimes and all I want to do is to be able to focus, tight as a laser, on drawing – all day, every day.