Blog: The Inherent Struggle

As I sit back and look at what has framed my adult life, I am daily reminded of my constant struggle for balance.  I have found I need "mind space" to channel my creativity, but increasing I have found a pressure I find a existence in a community.  How does one coexist in both worlds? 

Creating has never been a problem for me.  In fact despite many attempts to find jobs or greener pastures, I still have been able to be prolifically productive right where I am at.  But the one thing that has eluded me has been to find a community.  I have learned to produce when I was without work, I have composed songs, written books, taken thousands of photographs, I have found a way to channel everything into products that amaze and portray a beautiful world.  While I am grateful, that all this channeling produces some things so rare, I want to reach out more.  But to this point I have been handcuffed in doing so.  

There over the years has assumed a reality...until you find your audience, your community your work will never feel complete.  In some sense in this day and age, the virtual worlds of facebook, twitter and instagram, all create forums for discussion, for people to "like, or tweet".  But I have found these sources to not replace the inherent need for face to face interaction.  For the drive for earnest discussion, for the assimilation of ideas, for new hope, for fertile ground.

I don't believe that being diagnosed with a mental illness helped all of that inherent struggle.  Sometimes I believe Bi-Polar has pushed me to be more reclusive to this point.  I think I have had more down time than most people, my introspection certainly has had more of an intensity because of that.

Sometimes a community is not a new place, a new job, sometimes community is a portal, a person. Many times I have wished that if I just moved away, if I could reset everything, that somehow I would just land in this community.  But many times, life is more complex than that.

Today, I find myself still riding this edge between the isolation of creative genius and the brink of establishing community for the first time in my life.  My life is filled with an awkward expectation, somehow things are happening differently.  Maybe its a new place, maybe a new friend, maybe I just need to see something deeper that is already here.

But its not easy, being where I am at.  There are days where I feel like everything is on lay away, like I am filling up this time and space for someone else, for somewhere else.  And I despite what I read and meditate on I don't like being on this edge expecting a breakthrough.

But no matter how this season ends, I believe I will find this community.  I will find a new source of purpose to live creatively and to share my voice with the world. No matter how mundane or the "identical" a day may feel, the hope remains.