I'm here again, tired, annoyed, teary, and slightly smelly too if I'm honest. The baby is on my lap, happy, the girls are downstairs only fighting occasionally, and I'm sitting here feeling, too much and not enough. Feeling like I will never make art they I way I want to, like I will never even understand what kind of art I should be making, or why I want to be doing anything that even remotely has anything to do with art. I feel like I gave all that up to have kids, and lately I've been feeling like I'm a hanger on, one of those people who enthusiastically shows you their mediocre work and you say nice things because you don't want to insult them, or crush their cute pathetic dreams. I'm left here to my own devices only able to express myself as fast as my one hand can type.
I don't want to be that person, no one does, and I feel like I should just give up. Give up on art altogether, except that I also care too much that it's a part of me, I create things, I'm good at making things, it's the only thing I'm good at really, but I've fooled people into thinking I'm good at lots of things by diversifying the things I make, Halloween costumes, bathing suits, mugs, fairy houses, science experiments, cookies, gardens, people...I'm good at that shit, I make stuff and it's fun, but art is something else. Art is serious to me, I feel it, I love it I read way too much into it, I put way too much into it. Except I can't anymore, because I have no time for that, because I have no time when my own thoughts are running through my head, it's filled with the voices of my children, constantly talking, repeating things, making noises, signing songs, perpetually asking for snacks. And I know I should enjoy it, it'll be over someday, and I do honestly, this is not about not appreciating my kids, I enjoy them plenty, I just also want my own inner dialogue, sometimes.
And when I feel like this, like I'm no good, like I should just stick to Halloween costumes, and snacks (I could literally have a full time job preparing, inventing and researching snacks, I bet I hear the word snack thousands of times in a day) I tend to say it's probably just hormones, (and it may be, the post-partum body is a wonder, and my six month old is probably to blame, she's easy to blame too because she's so sweet you forgive her immediately), but that also feels like a cop out, like it's ignoring that there is something wrong too, that this angst needs to be examined carefully maybe, and gently, to figure out what needs to be done about it. Maybe it'll take more than a shower to fix, maybe not. Time will tell- but right now I wish I had something more than the recent purchase of a wheel and kiln to tell myself I'm a real artist. I wish I was as proud of my art as I am of the costumes I made for the girls to wear to the medieval festival (they are Susan/Merida style archers, they even have leather wrist guards, I'm in awe of them, and the girls are wearing them all. the. time.)
Anyways it's probably just hormones, and dehydration, or summer vacation or something...
