Wednesday 13 April 2016

It's okay

    Recently someone close to me said that they felt ‘worthless’; the definition of worthless is as follows ‘having no real value or use’. This person is one of the few people who mean the world to me and despite them being blind to this fact they are also one of the most amazing and most talented people I've ever met. So when they declared their feeling of worthlessness I felt pained and saddened to hear them say those words. The reason for this sudden declaration was due to them not having spent much time working on moving toward their main goal in life. You see this person, like myself, has a very creative mind and so I understand that when there isn't time or when I've felt too tired or just haven't been able to get into the swing of things it is easy to feel deflated, worthless and useless and very often I've found myself wondering if I'm even going to reach my goals and make my dream a reality. This feeling is even more worrying and nagging if a few days have passed or even a week and no words have been written.So when he said this to me I replied with something along the lines of ‘but you can’t always be doing it’ a crudely put together sentence but the meaning was clear; no matter how much we try to deny it adult life always takes over. Gone are the days when we can spend hours on end doing what we want to do, we have to earn money to pay for bills and food and everything else we need including the nice laptop or expensive software we need to fuel our dreams in the first place. Unfortunately one thing that creative minds often struggle with is the knack of being patient because some of us, like my friend, are competitive and others are just worried our time will run out before we realise our dreams . I'm the latter, in general I'm a very patient person but even I still find myself panicking at the thought of not yet having realised my dream and I become irritated with myself for not writing every day and every spare second I have. Life has a way of producing events that stop us from doing what we want to do but what I have come to realise is that if these events are here for a reason; to keep us sane, we need people and pointless things in our lives to fuel our creativity.
    If ever I'm struggling and I'm finding it hard to write there are a few things that I remind myself of; firstly ‘after every low moment, the only place we can go is up’ something my friend declared moments after saying he felt worthless and secondly as long as we are doing what we can, we will get there. Sometimes I find it hard to write and it really is a simple as that, today I was determined to spend my day off at the laptop writing away but instead I tidied, I painted a bookcase, I watched Miss Marple and I napped and I ate far too many pringles. Sometimes the words just don't want to come no matter how hard i squeeze my little grey cells. As a writer I find myself feeling not only worthless but guilty as though I were neglecting my child but what I've come to realise over the last year is that it is that if we can’t write, or create, we shouldn't. If we don't ‘feel like it’ then have a night off. I used to think that I wouldn't achieve anything by not writing every night, I once heard that if we don't dedicate every second we have to our dreams then we will never achieve them but I believe that there could be nothing farther from the truth. Creative souls draw inspiration from the world around them and the people they hold close, we are who we are because of the connections we have made, we create what we create because of the experiences we have been lucky to have and the people we have been lucky enough to meet; I can speak to my previously mentioned friend and instantly feel refreshed and driven to write for hours.

    I took a step back from my stress and my fear and realised that I am lucky to have something I love, something I enjoy, I am lucky to have a dream and a goal in life for some this is having a family or buying a house but for me it’s writing, to have my words read across the world in every language, to have them inspire dreams and creativity in others. I may not be a success yet but I work hard and sometimes I come home from work and I crash, sometimes I just want to snuggle in and watch a film and what is important for us all to remember is that this is okay. Even if all I write is a quick quote I heard that day that will inspire me in the future or a ten word sentence then that is good enough. To anyone who is creative and reading this it doesn't matter what you do, how much you do it as long as you’re doing it. A good idea is to set a timer, don't pressure yourself, set 20 minutes and I often find that I end up writing for hours. It doesn't matter if you sit and stare at your respective canvases and achieve only 10 minutes or even nothing, that's okay. it's hard to escape the feelings of panic and worthlessness but even if you’re planning what you are going to do next time that’s okay, it's all good and it's also good to give your brain a rest every now and again.

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