Recovery and reflection
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 7:16AM With the Glasgow Design and Style Guide at the printer and the Chicago Pipe Show over, I'm trying to cross the bridge to a more reasonable schedule. Premier's Designer Meeting is still ahead, only two weeks from now, and there's still plenty to prepare for, and my daughters graduate from high school in the midst of that, so it's still a busy time. But I'd rather that than a long, empty stretch ahead.
For me, and I know for many people, there is a letdown after a sustained creative push. I want to enjoy some kind of satisfaction with what I've produced, and instead I find myself floating in apathy. I can't even call it depression, because I am unable to be enthusiastic or care much about things that normally engage me, although clinicians might differ with me. It's more like being in a spacesuit with the umbilical cord to the mother ship severed, tumbling away in slow motion, watching with detachment and devoid of emotion.
The Glasgow work is the best design I've produced in my career. I should be thrilled. But the passion that went into its creation seems like something from another life, and instead of feeling it, I'm looking at it as though someone else had the experience.
During the exhibition hours in Chicago, I spent two days showing people the Susquehanna Pipe Chest, watching them marvel at its design, beautiful materials and impeccable craftsmanship. It was nice, but I felt curiously disengaged. I enjoyed being with friends and acquaintances there yet felt tired and distant. The many compliments I heard for the chest and my drawings should have been wonderful. I did have some good conversations with old and new friends. But somehow, most of the time, I just couldn't connect with people the way I'd hoped to. Not through any lack of interest or enthusiasm on their part. I was off. It was me.
I'm sure that some of my close friends will tell me, if they read this post, that it is unwise to reveal this kind of thing so publicly. Perhaps so. A blog isn't supposed to be a diary, and it's presumptive to think that people are interested in, as a good friend puts it, "my pathetic life". Yet in a way, I think I'm looking for connection, trying to reel myself back from the empty, dimensionless void I'm floating in. I want to believe that some of you who are reading this, and have experienced similar, will feel less alone and isolated. And if there is only one thing that I've learned as I reflect on other times I've been here, it's this: if I keep moving, I'll find myself at some unpredictable and unexpected moment out in the brilliant sunshine, vibrantly happy, filled with energy, ready to charge into the next creative swell, and grateful to be alive and aware.
my familiar morning mug with a Bill Shalosky bent author, a Chicago show gift from my friend Neill Roan
Reader Comments (8)
Scott loved reading the post you are a very good writer explicit to the point a very effective communication of a dimension we all have been to or visited at different degrees in our lives. Maybe an affirmation maybe not but nice to see as you said we are not alone in this world.
Thxx
Carl
After many ups and downs including the empty nest, my sons far away, divorce moving, illness and surgeries, financial stress, menopause and drastic (sometimes) mood swings, I have found a constant. That is Michael. There are recovery processes that I invent for myself and they almost always tear me away from apathetic feelings. One of those is planting things and pulling weeds. Being very visually stimulated where it comes to mood, to see the new growth and having the satisfaction of diminishing piles of weeds.... well, that uplifts me. I know it brings joy to Dad and Mom too. The ability to see weedless soil and pulling a weed to see the entire root is a high for me. Pruning trees does the same thing. It is my form of art, though I do not possess the artistically creative gift that you have. Like a garden, my days and my life need constant attention. Synchronizing work with personal improvement fills the emptiness and balances it with the overwhelming busyness that often is a reality.
Have you thought about whether you are playing enough? I know it may sound like a silly question, but I've had the same problems when my life consisted of 100% paying, professional creative work. Everything was either looking towards the next big paying project or recovering from it. I've found that I'm enjoying the pipe work much more now that I've started my web comic going, because I essentially have something to just *play* with that doesn't have to make anyone happy or meet any standards, and it makes a nice outlet. Maybe you need a play project?
I do need to play more, Trever. I'm actually not on the whole wanting my life to be a lot different, though. There are things that I'd like to let go of that get in the way, but the ups and downs, difficult as they can be at times, are part of what I've come to accept and embrace.
Scott, don't know how to say it, except that it's depression. And you need to yank yourself out of this deep dark hole quickly. Because it can be a sucking, swirling vortex. You are talented and really smart enough to fix you. Don't wallow in this. Trever is right. Have some fun. Find it somewhere. Relish the successes of your girls. Give them a positive role model. Glasgow may be the most creative thing you've done in your opinion, but you might want to look at your beautiful accomplished children and recognize at the end of the day...? They are the best thing you'll do. Ever. But, it's a mom speaking and you know me...! Love you, darliin' and can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks! Call if you need to. Xo
thanks, Missi. Not wallowing, just perhaps "over-sharing". These gray days pass. I'm very proud of my daughters and my son, and I'm lucky to have the opportunity to be, I hope, the best dad to them that I'm able to be. Part of that is that I have to be real with them, and they always see me emerge from my subterranean sojourns. I always come back.
Like just about everything else in life, the appropriateness of the phenomenon you describe is a question of balance and degree. It's perfectly normal (what an odd and revealing phrase) to feel a let-down after a sustained effort. It's tough to expend the mental and physical energy necessary to create anything without a measure of post-partum depression afterward; and, I suspect, the greater the achievement the greater the subsequent lethargy. Work fulfills us, and its absense is enervating. In addition there is generally a refractory period of down time before we're ready to create again, even if the opportunity is there. Certainly all these things are true for me. But how much is too much? I haven't the faintest idea. If the answer to that question was formulaic we'd have apps instead of psychiatrists and psychologists.
By the way,I find it hard to believe that it's really "unwise to reveal this kind of thing". It's just about as unwise as revealing that you're human.
Jon, I was pleased to see that you had read one of my blog posts, and took the time to comment. I tend to either say too much or to isolate myself, and it has been difficult for me to decide what to share and what to withhold on the blog. But it seems that there’s not much point to it if I’m not going to be authentic. Balance for me usually means the average between peaks and troughs, which is a turbulent way to live, but it’s the way I’ve always been, despite my best efforts to be more even. And I know that there are lots of people like me who have trouble talking about it, and who feel alone, so I hope that in some way those who find their way to my site get some comfort by my putting it out there. Thank you again for reading.