Previously Unexplored

There are a lot of things that I should probably be writing about right now. Explaining what’s been happening in my life for the last month, thanking every person on the planet for making that happen, telling you our plans for the next few months, but I can’t. I’ll work on getting to that later.

Right now the urge to create something is bursting out of my fingers, and I am so incredibly frustrated because the only thing I can do about that right now is write about it. I’m at work, and while work at an agency is great because there is a lot of flexibility, I’m still at work.

I want to draw, I want to sew, paint, sing, anything, and I can’t. I don’t have the time. When I get home from work, I have things to do. Some cleaning, cooking (which I know can be art, but it isn’t mine), dealing with the cat and then dear sweet lord, I’m exhausted. Cats, man. 

But on top of this frustration, comes new perspective. How many kids get home from school and grumble (or at least think to themselves) “My parents just don’t get it, I’m an artist. I need to create. They just don’t understand.” And they do. Maybe they don’t talk about it, but they do understand. But they also understand the bills and the billing system at work and the need to put food on the table.

And that ladies and gentlemen is why I support the arts just as much as I do the military (not that I have much choice on the latter.) Because yeah, everybody needs to put in their fair share, but who says that creating art isn’t just as valid as crunching tax numbers or going to war? You save someone from bullets? They save someone from feeling nothing. You keep me from fucking up my taxes and they keep you from wandering through life without seeing and understanding beauty.

Right now, I’m going to turn around and finish the deck that’s due Monday. But after work? I’m heading to the craft store.