Recently, I was talking to a friend about a creative idea I had. I was telling her how I was worried about what people would think of it, and how they’d look down on me, or roll their eyes at my work. To paraphrase:
Her: I doubt any of your friends would do that. I think they already know you’re a weirdo.
Me: What!!!
Me: How dare!!!
Me:
Me:
Me: …Okay, fair enough.
Me: But before, I feel like everything weird I did was just…how I was, but now I’m doing weird stuff on purpose!
I feel like that’s where a lot of my anxiety around sharing my art, ideas, and other forms of creativity comes from. That’s when I’m most self-conscious: when I’m doing weird stuff on purpose.
“Weird stuff,” I think, covers everything that seems to me about going against the grain. It’s using TikTok to share my art when I don’t see any of my peers doing it. I’m working on some short stories now, and it’s different than writing a novel. I’ve only really had one short story published. If you count my work at the Toast, then you can say I’ve done a lot more – but the ease I had with that was that I was surrounded by weirdos, in a weirdo place, led by weirdos. No one was meant to do anything “like” each other, really. Everyone was allowed to do something different.
I’m pretty lucky that’s where I got to cut my weirdo teeth, but it was a safe space. I’m scared to go beyond that space, honestly. I’m scared to be around people, and be weird on a regular basis. It’s scary to have ideas, and follow through on them, instead of shyly mentioning them to friends to gauge their reactions.
To be fair, I still do the latter – and I’m lucky that I have good friends who appreciate my weirdness and creativity. But it reminds me of a frustration I had when I was younger. Whenever I tried to do something new when it came to art or writing or anything, I’d look for an instance where someone else did it.
I knew I was doing this, but I hated it. I was really upset at myself for not just doing the thing, for needing to know someone else had done it so I could give myself permission for it. But I just could not go beyond that fear of doing it all on my own.
Sometimes being creative is a lot of emotional work of just…trusting yourself. The pandemic kind of forced me to do this, in a lot of ways. I don’t know if it was just the particular time of my life that the pandemic captured, or my state of mind, or what-have-you. But something about that time in isolation, and the uncertainty and fear I was faced with, challenged me to be something else.
I was addicted to Co-Star for a bit during this time, partly because of one phrase that really hit me: “understand the diversity of noises inside you.”
I read that to mean: separate out your feelings like strands of hair, and examine them.
The best structure I’ve found for doing this is by looking at chakras. Spiritual chakras come from Hinduism, which is why I was drawn to them, but I didn’t examine them too closely until recently, when I wanted to separate out my feelings. But as I did so, I found another aspect they provide: a sense of what alignment looks like.
Sometimes an off feeling or anxiety or discomfort can mean something’s off in your alignment. Like maybe your gut is saying not to do something but your mind doesn’t know the reason. Or maybe you want to tell someone something but you’re fearful of how it’ll come across. Or perhaps you’re feeling emotionally undernourished but you fill that void with food or alcohol.
I feel like the pandemic helped me attain a sense of alignment after years of confusion and discomfort and not understanding what I needed. That’s what I realized when I made this drawing:
It’s all these things I want to tell myself, and others, about how we’ve grown and changed during this pandemic. Yes, I know the whole pandemic is a tragedy, and it’s been scary and weird, and it continues to be scary and weird. But I’m of the mind that resilience is something we can only really see in ourselves when we’re faced with circumstances like this. And while I hate the circumstances, I appreciate the gifts they’ve given me. If only because it’s one of the ways I find meaning in myself.
(The poop thing just made me laugh, although I did also start and stop drinking iced coffees during the pandemic…).
I hope you feel the same. Prints are available in my shop, but regardless of whether you buy one, you deserve to feel the words in the piece.
Have a good weekend,
Sulagna