The aftermath of giving up

I was just looking through my old morning pages journal for 2009 to find material for my upcoming FLOW class when I came along this entry, dated August 19- four days after my twenty-fifth birthday. It's pretty amusing. Here it is, unedited.

I'm super jazzed because I just drank a ton of coffee. I guess this week I'm supposed to explore my childhood experiences with creativity. (This was an assignment from The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.)
I remember when I was three, one day I was finger painting and it made me think I wanted to be a fashion designer. I'm not sure how I thought the two were connected, but the thought just occurred to me. (I think I had the idea that I could create patterns for fabric prints via fingerpainting.)
Later, when I was in the second grade or so, I remember we did a project in Art class where we created our own versions of famous paintings. I did a version of the Mona Lisa. It didn't really occur to me to think of it as special, but when the art teacher put all of our drawings out to hang in the hall, all of my friends commented on how good my drawing was. I felt very proud of that. That was the first time I really thought I had any talent for visual art.
For a very long time, all through elementary school and much of middle school, I focused on becoming a creative writer and a musician (playing the viola). Those were the things I thought I was really good at. I know I did dance classes as well but I don't think I thought of them as being a vehicle for creative expression-- I viewed them more as a sport instead.
Writing was probably the most important thing to me back then. I really wanted to become a novelist. In high school, both music and writing totally fell by the wayside as I began to focus more energy on drawing and painting. I don't think I ever made the choice consciously to stop writing, but I did actively decide to stop playing viola.
Now I feel like I probably have little to no facility as a musician or writer, and whatever skill I had in drawing and painting is quickly diminishing. Honestly I dread the thought of attempting to pick any of these pursuits up again. I feel like it would be mostly a waste of time because I think that my growth potential in these areas is really limited.
I guess I am not interested in the idea of continually producing mediocre work and never improving. To be fair, it's not like I have ever made any genuine attempt to improve my writing, so my idea that that pursuit would be futile is largely baseless.
I must admit that it is far more appealing for me to work on dance, where I can really see myself improving and I don't feel so stuck or limited.
I'm not as afraid of mediocrity as I am of stagnation.

This feeling of stagnation and continual mediocrity was the reason I stopped drawing on a regular basis. Despite consistent effort and practice, I never felt I was improving. Over time I grew more and more focused on the technical aspect of drawing-- to be specific, the accurate representation of human anatomy in figure drawing-- and less and less satisfied with my abilities as a technician. Eventually I became so discouraged with my lack of aptitude that I gave up the pursuit. I was twenty-ish when I made that decision.
I have tried several times to start drawing again, because I've started to really miss it, and I feel inspired by different things now as I was then. Unfortunately, drawing makes my neck injury flare up, just as most other crafts do at this point. I can't do it much at all any more.
Pain was the main reason I stopped playing viola as well.

Pain, sickness, frustration, self-doubt and feelings of total failure were all major factors that led me to start writing again. When I started down that path last April, I felt that my health issues were closing off all of my other creative options, including dance, or at least my dream of being a dance professional. Fumbling around in that bleak atmosphere for something creative I could do that wouldn't hurt, I happened upon writing, and by extension, the book.

It's painful to give up. Letting go of something you love is heartbreaking and often terrifying.
However, I believe that in certain situations, it can also be the only way to overcome creative and emotional blocks.

Here's another journal entry, from August 9, 2009.

Prior to finding dance I had spent the last few years feeling incompetent, unaccomplished and unworthy of attention for many years. However, as a small child, I always felt like I was special, talented, and worthy of the recognition of others. For years, as an adolescent, I missed that feeling terribly. Somehow I felt both responsible for its loss, figuring my general slacker attitude was to blame, but also helpless to change due to my inability to cope with my chronic disease, fibromyalgia. I worked hard to become a competent and respected artist, but I never felt like I accomplished that goal.
...Looking back, I remember that I was actually being praised and rewarded and even paid for my artwork, but it didn't seem to matter. Because I was constantly frustrated by my own lack of progress, I never took any of this recognition seriously. I didn't feel good about my work even when other people liked it.

And another, from August 12:

I feel like as long as I keep dancing, I'll still be the same person I am now at my core. I'm afraid that without that anchor I will start to wither emotionally. I am not even talking only about this happening at the twilight of my life-- I'm scared it could happen now if I let it. I think the thing is, at this point I feel like this is my life's work. Were I to stop I would feel like I was giving up and abandoning something crucial to my self.
...I don't know why my emotional attachment to this dance runs so deep. I guess part of it is that I feel like it's the only reason I'm not still totally crippled by my fibromyalgia. But I also know that I have always longed to be really good at something. I'll always feel like that moment is on the horizon with dance, and it's wonderful to always have that to hope for.
...I think my real goal is just to keep trying forever. To never let myself get comfortable or complacent. To always keep pushing myself to do more and do better.

And yet another, from August 13:

Why am I so afraid of giving up?
It makes me feel like a loser. I have the idea in my head that if I give up, I'll never accomplish anything important, thus be a loser. Also, I tend to feel like giving up negates the value of what you've accomplished in the past because the future potential is wasted. Wasted potential is one of the things I fear most.
I know you can't go through life without making decisions which prohibit you from achieving your potential in a certain area, and I accept that to some extent, although that idea still makes me a little upset.
...I think I've felt since I was young that I really could do anything as long as I really tried. This is almost certainly untrue, but I probably hold it as fact anyway. Thus, when I fail, I feel it is an indication not of my lack of ability but rather of my shortcomings as a human being.

So right now some of you are probably thinking "wow, she needs therapy", while others probably see themselves reflected in these words. My point in posting this stuff is not to elicit sympathy, but rather to demonstrate something no one ever told me when I got into the business of doing art, and that is: sometimes it makes sense to give up.

It's hard to know where to get your sense of self-worth from. Some people base it on their social lives, some base it on their work performance, some on their appearance or their participation in an organization or group.
Most of the artists I know tend to base it on their work-- and often, by extension, the commercial success or failure of their work, or the critical feedback they receive about their work, or both.
By last year I had learned that people are fickle and so is the market; you can't use either as an accurate barometer of the value of your work. So, instead, I had decided to associate my self-worth with how much I was progressing as a dancer, and by extension how hard I was working to progress.
The result was not fun, and it was not a good mental working environment. It was impossible for me to fully enjoy working with so much riding on the results. The pathways to creativity were blocked with too much baggage.
The spectre of my physical limitations loomed over everything I did. Instead of being mature about handling my limitiations, respecting my body and avoiding things that caused pain, I pushed myself as hard as I could in an effort to prove that I could overcome (or ignore) my chronic illness.
I'd devised a battle in my head, with me and my dance on one side and the fibromyalgia on the other.
The fibromyalgia won.

I don't imagine that your creative struggles are the same as mine, but still, most of us are at war with ourselves over something, placing one part of ourselves on the side of Good and the other part on the side of Evil. Some of these fights are worthwhile and reasonable (i.e. struggling against addiction) but many, like mine was, are pointless and self-defeating.

Here is my advice for self-flagellating artists like myself:

Give up.
More work is not better work.
There is nothing sacred about working yourself to death.
Your work is not you; your worth is not the worth of your work. You're worth infinitely more than anything you could ever accomplish or produce.
The things you hate about yourself could be fuel for your creative efforts if you learn how to work with them rather than against them.
None of us can do everything. We can't even do everything we're good at.
Don't be afraid to stop doing something, even creative work, when it stops making sense. The work will still be there; time doesn't diminish it.
Get used to asking yourself what makes sense for you and what doesn't; what you need and what you don't.
Look inside and figure out what you need to do and then do that-- and only that. Anything more will just get in the way.
Love yourself for who you'd be if you had to stop working tomorrow.

December recap and goals for January

Let's see how I did with my December goals! This goal check in will be in report card format.

-Promote my January classes at World in Motion. NO, FOR REAL THIS TIME.
S for Somewhat. I did some stuff to promote my classes. I probably could/still can do more. Thankfully, the enrollment isn't as slow as last session's was, so maybe I am seeing the fruits of my anemic labor.

-Update and simplify my website.
O for Outstanding. I hadn't done anything towards this goal until January 28, whereupon I looked at myself in the mirror, gave myself a pep talk, and then went downstairs and did the entire site in a single day. (The fact that my sister-in-law gave me one of her Adderall didn't hurt. True facts)

BONUS! I also made a Facebook fan page for myself on the same day! Do I need pharmaceuticals to be an effective self-marketer? Maybe.

-Practice all of my choreographies from 2010 so I don't start to forget them.
N for Not Exactly. I practiced one choreography out of three and one improv performance. But I did start practicing daily again, save for yesterday when I was sleeping all day due to a sinus infection, so... good job sort of meeting your goals, Sara!

-Come up with some new combinations.
D- for my proximity to total failure. I made a class choreography and one four count combination for myself, which might be too short to count for anything.

-Prepare a performance for Blue Moon's Winter Hafla (i.e. avoid doing this two days before the actual performance).
Well, I decided to do an old choreo, so I cut out the need to prepare anything. But, uh, that also means I didn't choreograph anything new. Mediocre!

-Blog more regularly about things that other people may actually find amusing.
TTS for That's Totally Subjective.

Go team!


So what are my goals for January? I'm glad you asked. I will share them with you now.

-Don't get sick again
-Continue practicing as daily as possible
-Clean up Draft 3
-Write a summary of the book
-Start researching literary agents
-Work on a new choreography
-Clean my damn house
-Eat less refined sugar
-Drink more water

Lola

I had wanted my own dog for a long time, pretty much since I moved out of my parents' house, but I wanted to wait until I knew I could be a good dog parent before getting one. Last year I figured it was about time. My parents offered to pay the adoption fee at a shelter as a Christmas present. So, excited and nervous, I went out to find a shelter dog.

I decided I'd go to the Durham Animal Protection Society first. My husband had worked on their website at his previous job, which was full of charming-looking dogs. I was particularly interested in a middling-sized black shaggy dog who seemed like a sweet girl from her description. I went out to the shelter by myself; my husband was working and couldn't come with me. When I got there I was informed that the sweet-looking black shaggy dog had been adopted, but that I could look at the other dogs and see if there was anyone else I'd be interested in adopting. So I went into the dog area: a long cinder block hall of solitary holding pens, their floors slanted so that urine would flow to little canals to either side of the central walkway.

As soon as I went inside I felt the urge to cry. Some dogs barked at me, some came up to the bars and whined, some shivered in corners. They all looked confused and desperate to leave. The kennels all had placards with numbers on them, underneath which the dogs' names were posted along with a summary of their personality traits. I'd been instructed to remember the numbers for the dogs I wanted to meet one-on-one, so I started to make a list. It rapidly grew to an unreasonable size-- there was no time to meet with six, eight, twelve, all of the dogs. I had to pick three or four, even if that meant picking at random, which is what I did.

I went back out to the desk and told the volunteer which dogs I wanted to meet. They sent me to a visitation room where I met with four dogs. Two of them seemed afraid of me. One was desperate for every moment of my attention-- she'd just been abandoned at the shelter by her family due to someone's allergies. The fourth was adorable, a little timid, but smart and affectionate. She looked like Benji and knew several commands. She hid behind me when the man came to take her back to her kennel. Her name was Olivia.

I went back to the desk and said I was interested in adopting Olivia. I found out I couldn't start the adoption process on her because I was married and my husband wasn't there to cosign. I asked if there was any way to put a hold on her account so that my husband could come and meet her. I could have, but it would have prevented anyone else coming and adopting her in the meantime. I didn't want to take the chance that Dan wouldn't like her, so I decided not to put her account on hold.

I went out to my car and bawled my eyes out. Then I went home and cried myself to sleep in the mid-afternoon.

I returned with my husband, my sister and my mother two days later. I asked about Olivia at the front desk. She was gone; someone else had adopted her. I didn't really want to go back into the dog holding area, but we'd driven for forty-five minutes to get to the shelter so I made myself do it anyway. Most of the same dogs were still there, but a door at the end of the hallway that had been closed before was now open. Beyond it there was an area with smaller crates for puppies and small dogs. We went back to look, even though we didn't want a puppy or a small dog-- they're both far more likely to be adopted than larger adult dogs are.

There, alone in a kennel, was a little white dog with bug eyes, shivering and looking like the world was about to end. She was cute, but she looked kind of high-strung. Her papers said she was a Chihuahua mix and her name was Lola. Nothing was written down about her personality or whether or not she was housetrained. Her kennel number was P2.

The four of us went back out to the lobby and made a list by consensus. Dan and I weren't sure about the little white dog with the bug eyes, but my mom and sister wouldn't let us not see her.

I took our list up to the volunteer. She pulled the files out for the other three without comment, but when she got to P2's file, her face lit up.

"Oh, Lola," she said. "She's a sweetheart."

We met with four dogs. Two of them were pretty disinterested in us, didn't even respond to "hi doggie"; it seemed like they'd been strays for a long time. The third dog was a big black shepherd mix named Theodore who was heart-wrenchingly shy but still sweet. My husband eventually got Theo to let him give him a hug and we both started crying.

We'd pretty much decided that we were going to adopt Theo before they brought Lola in-- but then they brought Lola in. She looked over the volunteer's shoulder at us with her big black eyes, practically fluttering her little eyelashes. As soon as she got down on the floor she trotted over to each one of us in turn, leaning all ten pounds of her body weight against our legs and gazing up at us with gentle affection. She had a cold; she wheezed every time she exhaled. When she got around to saying hi to me, she sneezed dog snot all over my hand.

She didn't really know any commands, but she knew her name. When we decided to see what would happen if we stopped paying attention to her, she curled up in my sister's coat and started to fall asleep.

I was in love. We were all in love. Despite wanting to help Theo, I knew there was no way I could leave little Lola at the shelter, even though I was positive someone else would adopt her. No-- probably because I was positive someone else would adopt her, and I wanted her to be mine.

I went up to the desk and asked them what they could tell us about Lola. She was sweet, and she'd been a stray-- that's all they knew. Was she housetrained? Did she like kids or cats? No one knew. I asked to start the adoption process anyway. I didn't care if she peed all over my apartment. They said there was one complication: someone had shown up last week and tried to claim Lola, but they weren't able to prove that she belonged to them-- no vet records, no vaccines, nothing. They could start the adoption process for us, but they couldn't guarantee that these people wouldn't come back with proof.

I spent the next eight days-- and that's how long it took-- in agony. I went on their website every hour to check on Lola's adoption status. At first she wasn't even on the website; then she was on the website as an adoptable dog-- but she was MY dog!-- and then she was on the website as adoption pending. I called them at least five times to check on our status, and I went to bed nervous every night.

On January 7 we got a call letting us know that Lola would be ready to pick up the following day. On January 8 my entire family went out to pick her up. She seemed excited and happy on the way home, and really perked up when we turned in to our neighborhood. When we got her in to the apartment, she made a beeline for her dog bed and curled up inside.

At first she didn't eat much. She didn't really want to play, either; she was afraid of the squeaking noise her toys made. In fact, she didn't seem to know what toys were. At one point she carried them all very delicately to her dog bed and laid down on top of them as if they were puppies. She was mostly interested in finding the softest location in the vicinity and falling asleep. She never barked. But she was housebroken, and she started to respond to "sit" and "stay" when she felt like it. I was sad that she wasn't more outgoing, but she was sweet and well-behaved and very easy to care for, so I figured I couldn't ask for more.

She came out of her shell bit by bit with every passing week. We found out that she did like to play-- she just didn't know how to play with toys. She was, however, a big fan of play-biting our hands, growling and acting tough, and then running laps around the living room. She got more and more affectionate, and wanted to spend more time on our laps or burrowed next to us. We taught her how to play fetch and tug, and she started chewing on her bones and eating way more than enough food for a ten-pound animal, as well as things that may not exactly qualify as food.

We found out that she loves beer (we don't let her drink any, but she tries to go for ours whenever she gets the opportunity), she has bad back legs, and there is nothing in the universe that is sweeter than she is.

Today is our one-year anniversary. I know Lola understands what we did for her-- I can see she understands, in her sweet little buggy eyes-- but I'm not sure she understands how much she's done for us.







According to the ASPCA, two thirds of adoptable shelter dogs are unnecessarily euthanized every year.

The APS has a wonderful article about why to adopt a shelter dog. Shelter dogs are every bit as good as any dog that you could purchase from a breeder-- and there are millions out there that need your help.

If you are looking for a dog, please don't buy one from a breeder. Adopt one from a shelter or a rescue organization instead. There is one out there that you need as much as they need you.


P.S. Theo was adopted the same week as Lola. I hope he's with a family with a nice big yard.

What am I doing and why?

I've been thinking a lot lately (not unusual) about the dire and sweeping problems humanity faces (also not unusual) and wondering how tiny individuals like myself fit in to times like these (all right, so, full disclosure, this is really something I've done all the time for a while. It's not a new thing at all). Within the larger questions I have about life lie many smaller ones, stacked like fractal nesting dolls.

One I've been stuck on lately is:
what am I doing with my life and why?

I know what I want to do for myself. I want to be paid to write novels (a dream) and also to teach the stuff I already do-- ESL and dance (a reality). But when I look at the rest of the world, at those dire and sweeping problems-- climate change, the growing divide between rich and poor, our disintegrating global economy, the increasingly insane political climate of the United States, not to mention all of the other senseless acts of violence that we humans commit towards one another and our world on a daily basis-- what I want often seems petty and selfish.

I vacillate between feeling
1. that my ambitions are not actually selfish-- they may amount to positive change in the long run and it will all be okay;
2. that it doesn't matter that my ambitions are selfish because I have no idea how I would change anything anyway;
and
3. that I am a self-centered asshole.

I can't seem to console myself with the idea that I am an artist and therefore my work is important. It's not because I don't think of myself as an artist; I have learned to think of myself as one without feeling self-conscious pangs of anxiety. However, I don't believe that art is inherently worthy of our time and energy, nor that art is always a force for good. Art can be a vehicle for pretty much anything, for blessings and for curses, as well as for pretty much nothing at all.
I know I can dance until my spine collapses and my toes fall off and it will do just about nothing to fight the problems I've just enumerated.

What am I doing and why?

I have some mildly convincing arguments which, at times, me feel kind of better about my life choices. Here are some of them.

#1
One of the problems that I have with American culture is our rabid and insatiable desire for more stuff. If nothing else, what I am selling (experiences) doesn't take up any space, and won't hang out in a landfill once you're done with it.

#2
I am empowering people to find meaning in their lives outside of the relentless pursuit of more crap. We are all capable of producing our own beauty; we don't always need to purchase it at a store.

#3
I hope I am helping to undo some of the damage that the mass media has wrought on the minds of the women that I teach in regards to self-worth and self-image, without making glamour into a dirty concept (glamour being one of the things I hold sacred).

#4
I know that the artistic work of others has added more to my life than I can possibly understand. I'm not sure I would want to be alive were it not for the work of some of my favorite artists. I don't flatter myself to think that I am what keeps people going, but who knows? I might at least make life more enjoyable for a few people, to make some of us feel a little less alone in the world.

#5
Who am I kidding? I can't stop. I've tried to "grow up" and be a normal cog in productive society, and it sucked. Art is probably the only thing I'm good at, and without it I will shrivel up into a husk of a person.

#6
There is a glittering mirage I can see far, far in the distance-- a beautiful dream, a vision of having influence. Perhaps at some point, I will have conned enough people into listening to me at once, into taking me seriously, and I will be able to force them to do my bidding, and we will start a zero-impact commune in the mountains somewhere-- wait no this is sounding like a cult.

Never mind that last one for now.

I'm not going to change course. I'll keep working, and I'll keep feeling conflicted. I'll probably still feel conflicted on my deathbed, looking back at my life and wondering if I made the right decisions, if I maximized my potential, if I made any lasting difference in the world.

I'm sure that many people would tell me to stop thinking so hard, to stop feeling so guilty, to let things go and let bygones be bygones or whatever. But it seems like I'm made to ruminate just as much as I'm made for anything else. From my perspective, it feels right and sane to ask myself these questions, and to hold on to my questions more dearly than I do to my beliefs about the world or my place therein.

What I did in 2010

I found a tiny white dog, my sweet Lola Bee.
I developed a new kind of hip scarf design made of recycled materials, and I sold a few of them too.
I choreographed three new solos.
I made a new costume for myself without breaking my ban on buying new craft supplies.
I wrote a novel about vampires.
I played too many roleplaying games.
I met a giant octopus.
I went to England and California.
I started this blog.
I hosted a workshop with Mira Betz.
I went to lots of doctors.
I drove out to Sanford more times than I care to think about.
also,
I figured out what I want to do with my life.

I face 2011 full of hope and excitement.

New Year's Playlist

It's probably time to get started on your new year's resolution, which is to shake it. And if that's not your resolution, it should be.

GO!

A NEW WEBSITE

Please visit my 100% non-outdated website, now available at SaraBeaman.com!