I Am Lost

May as well be clear – I’ve had a read over my posts this year and I am doing a lot of alluding to but not being clear about. My daughter has been very up and down with her health all year, which resulted in a hospital stay about a month ago. It has been completely and utterly heart breaking. How do I best support her?
Navigating the medical system is a skill in itself. I feel like we have stepped into this whole new world and we are still trying to get used to it. At first I thought it was a matter of finding our way back, but I don’t think this is the case, I think we are meant to be heading in a different way.
She’s pretty amazing, my girl.

It has been building up for a while and also, running parallel this, my self confidence has taken a few big blows this year. So I don’t feel like making work or when I do, I don’t feel like sharing it because I am riddled with more doubt than bravery. When art making is so tied up in your identity, as it is with mine, it is very difficult to be objective about rejection and feelings of being left out of everything.

What do I do to make things move forward? How do I get into / involved in things? I thought it was just a case of make work and it’ll happen but I am making work and not much is happening and maybe I am just shit and this is all just shit. WHY doesn’t this come with a handbook? I am so stressed.

I am overthinking everything to a point where I can hardly interact with anything at all.

Is it because I don’t blur my personal professional lives together? Is it because I am a woman and I am thinking about femaleness and this country hates femaleness? Is it because I am similar to others maybe and that there can only be one? ( There’s room enough for us all, right? ) I don’t know. Art pathes are not linear. I went forward last year and this year I just blurred right out. Slipped through the cracks.

I am trying really hard to walk these paths and do so with some grace and keep making despite it all. But I am feeling lost, I am feeling rather disparaged. The people who have reached out to offer support mean so much and I hope my accumulating failures are not too humiliating to watch!

OK, back to drawing. I only have two more hours today.

One thought on “I Am Lost

  1. Rebecca on said:

    I can’t imagine what you must be going through with a sick child, let alone all the challenges that come from being an artist (and woman) in this country. At least the access we have to medical help is good.
    I wish you could see your art the way your audience does – incredible, raw, vulnerable, so so skilled. It is important. It matters.

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