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Blogs by Bill Brent
Creative Achievement 7/9/2005 9:38:54 AM
I wish I had a better sense of direction and purpose at this point in my life.
I’m 45 in 8 days, and I still don’t really know what I’m working for. Just moving again soon, and what do I have to show for it? What have I really accomplished since we moved to Sonoma County?
I’ve done a lot of writing on addiction and recovery. I suppose I should try to get that edited and published somehow. If I don’t do it soon, I fear that, as with most other large-scale creative work else I’ve started, I’ll lose my passion for the project and it will just lie on my hard disk, unfinished.
That seems to be the biggest creative problem for me. Completing really large projects is a challenge, and getting even harder than it used to be. I seem to have less energy for it. Maybe I’m getting older, and I really have lost my edge now.
I’ve been avoiding writing about this because I thought it would sound inarticulate and whiny, but it doesn’t. Big projects take a lot of work, and I’ve been spending a lot of my energy over the past several years losing my shirt on Black Books, declaring bankruptcy, dealing (or not) with long-term depression, getting addicted, getting clean, and then dealing with the consequences of all that. I’ve also put a lot of energy into creating a home with my life-partner, which I suppose should be my proudest accomplishment for this phase of my life. But is it? Is this really all I’m about?
Well, maybe it is. Despite myself, I’ve managed to build a lasting relationship with someone I truly love. Nowadays that’s quite a lot, considering how the failure rate is so high.
Also, I can decline to take part-time grunt-work since, between my disability payments, my book royalties, and the profit from a bimonthly event I host, I can actually make ends meet. So I guess that’s about as close to independent wealth as I can get for right now. I should be rejoicing in that. And I guess I am, on good days. I should also see it as a creative act valid on its own terms. Not everything I do with my creativity needs to be about producing a book or a CD, something people can hold in their hands as a record of my existence. Yet that’s what I want, above all -- more of that.
So I’ve created an ongoing bimontly scene that people enjoy (in cooperation with others, despite my tendency to D.I.M. ["Do It Myself" -- see 12/27/04 blog entry below for full explanation]; I’ve written one book that is actively generating real money for me three years after the fact; and the Feds are now, in essence, giving me a $699 monthly grant to subsidize my creative work via SSDI. In other words, I’ve achieved a degree of financial independence, if not wealth, that many creative workers would envy. Who knows how stable it all is, but for now, it’s working. So I am grateful for that.
I just want to be more directed now. Maybe I need to find a life coach, a business manager, an agent, a mentor, a creative support group, or some combination of the above so I can evolve my authorship to its next level. But how do I do that?
