I Need to Get Back to The Artist's Way

When my partner was taken to the hospital, I had finished reading and rereading The Artist's Way and was about to sign a contract to do the program for another 90 days.

I decided to take a break from it until things were settled.

Well, she is coming home Friday with an array of services including a home attendant (no schedule or time frame was specified, but anything is better than nothing) so my plan is to sign that contract on Sunday and get back to the program on Monday.

I have noticed that now that the terror and sadness have left me (my partner will definitely live another day, if not another decade), and the depression (which really had gotten into my bones) has lifted, I am back to my same old same old feeling "cranky" and resentful.

What's important to note here, is that I realize I felt much less cranky when I was involved with The Artist's Way.

First of all, the fact that I chose that as a self-help program to involve myself in, rather than, say, fitness or veganism or meditation or reading the 100 great books, says something about me.  Just as someone's wanting to lose weight or quit smoking says something about them that makes them different from other people who are overweight or who smoke.

When I say "cranky",  here is what I mean (and this is something different from how I feel when I get frustrated when I can't sing something as well as I would like to).

For good or ill, I have a number of working singers and other working artists on my friends list on Facebook.  So every time I read about someone's opera performance, costume fitting, trip, onstage flirtation, detailed character analysis, etc.  it's like a knife going into my heart.

And I feel like a failure.

Not because I am not a professional singer (very few get to be that) but because after all these decades, someone with as big a diva personality as mine (and it is huge) has ended up sitting at a desk cleaning up people's grammar, sending work back to people who don't even know what I look like and could care less, even if they did.

I did all the right things.  I went to career counseling.  I did a self-assessment.  I spent a year there.

When I was involved with the Artist's Way I brooded less about these things.  First of all there was the Artist's Date.  Sometimes I cheated and did something in my apartment, but even in that instance, I made sure it wasn't part of "business as usual" (e.g., if it involved music, it had to entail looking at music that I had no commitment to sing anywhere, which therefore would broaden my horizons).

It taught me that choosing the most beautifully colored heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market, having a bath with an expensive bubble bar from Lush, or spending time pondering which top, which neckline, and which eyeshadow color I was going to wear that day to Duane Reade made me something.  (And in fact, one day when I stood on the checkout line at Duane Reade itself, a young woman told me how much she loved my makeup and hair.)

The Artist's Way says artists (and by artists they don't just mean "professionals") are cranky when we are not being artists.  So I guess I am not that unusual.