Theme Song for My Times—and Maybe Yours

Fixing the Holes…

I tend to feel, no matter what I’m doing, that there is something different I ought to be doing. I’ve been talking to people, and as with a couple of things I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, I find that I am not alone in this.

This is seldom helpful, except maybe if I’d forgotten that I put something in the oven. In the studio, it is downright corrosive, keeping me from truly focusing and doing my best work.

These are stressful times, and the tentacles of the bad economy reach into the farthest crevices of life in ways that cannot be quantified. This is one way in which it is affecting me—beyond panic about how I’m going to keep enough money coming in, I mean. It has exaggerated this tendency to anxiety that I have contended with for as long as I can remember.

Since this is such a long-standing problem, I suspect that even if I found myself financially secure, this “old friend” would never entirely desert me, though I’m willing to undertake that experiment, if you know what I mean. By the same token, though, over time I have developed some strategies to deal with it, if not to get rid of it.

My mantra, in the studio especially, is “It takes what it takes”. I repeat this to myself over and over, whenever I feel that internal character begin to squirm and fidget, and mutter that I am taking too much time, that there must be something else I really ought to be giving my attention to.

Beyond that, I have adopted a “theme song”. This idea was popularized by the silly TV show “Allie McBeal”, but a good idea is a good idea, even if it comes from an embarrassing source. Mine is the Lennon/McCartney song, Fixing a Hole. If you listen to it, I think you’ll understand. I find it very soothing and calming, even when the “listening” is only in my head.

It is very hard, these days, to put all other concerns aside and be creative, even though that is my job. This is one reason (among many) that I love teaching. When I teach, I do not think about anything else, and that little character never bothers me. When I leave class, it is almost like waking from a dream into the “real world”. It is refreshing, though it is also tiring.

I need my studio time to be like that, too, but it is tougher, I guess because I have a choice about going into the studio or procrastinating, and about what I choose to do when I get there. Also, I absolutely certainly get paid to teach, and studio time is “on spec”. I may get paid for it, and I may not.

I share this with you because it seems to help all of us to hear that someone else suffers with the same kinds of doubts and problems that we do.

View from the Power Seat

The good news is, I am settling into my new home and my new studio, and it is a good place to be. My daughter, on seeing where I sit now to work, declared it to be a “power spot”. I hope she is proved right. But maybe I should put that song on continuous playback.

Night sky from the studio

Tagged as: art; studio; creativity; mantra; power seat; power spot; theme song; bad economy; anxiety; sharing; coping