Today is one of those days when I think what am I really doing? Do I seriously think that sitting around, going for walks, chatting with friends, watching tv, blogging, doing doodles, making things – doing all the stuff that has filled my days for the last five weeks – is a legitimate way to spend my life? How is this a constructive use of my time on this planet?

But then I think what else would I rather be doing? What is a better use of my time? Slaving away in a career that doesn’t mean anything to me isn’t any better and doing things for other people doesn’t contribute to my own life.

So I guess what I’m feeling at the moment is a combination of a few things; trying to reject the idea that I should have a full time job to be a valuable member of society, can I call myself an artist when I don’t produce any art, feeling guilty about ‘wasting time’ and ‘wasting my potential’ and feeling guilty about the fact that my life is built around what I feel like doing. All of these things are starting to weigh on me. Oh – and the feeling that my money is going to run out soon.

I know that in my first post I said that I would have days like this. Days where I doubt myself, where I think that I’m just kidding myself thinking I can be an artist, days where I really feel the pressure to do what society thinks is normal, days where it seems so far away and so hard and so foreign and so scary that I think maybe I can’t do it and I should just go back to being a drone in the factory of life churning out whatever they think is a good use for my ‘potential’.

I feel a bit like I’m ranting but it’s hard to see how this is going to work from where I am right now.

On the plus side I ordered a book called ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron from Amazon. A couple of friends recommended that I read it and do the course in it and really try to reawaken my creativity. They said it would change my life, and I believe them.

Maybe after doing it I will feel like my art is more valid. Maybe I will feel like my path is more valid. Maybe I will feel like I deserve to dedicate my life to feeling good about what I do – to being able to live off something that actually makes me live, that makes me feel alive to do, that doesn’t just suck away time and energy, but gives me energy and fills my time with joy. Maybe I will feel like I have a direction to go in, a direction that means something and creates something and gives something back to me and to the universe.

Days like today are hard, but hopefully they will be in the minority. Days like today I just have to be gentle with myself, remember why I did this, remember how unhappy I was, how I used to fill up my days trying to get them out of the way as quickly as possible because I hated my life, because I was afraid of stopping, because I was told I was a good girl.

Days like today are hard, but nothing that’s worth doing is ever easy.