Happy 2015, everyone! Here's hoping you all had a wonderful and safe evening, and are waking up hangover free this morning. :)
So, the time of resolutions is upon us (any broken yet??? ;) ) and it has me thinking about that sadistic inner voice we all (I believe?) have within us. I wrote a piece about it for one of the stops on my recent book tour, but it got lost in the shuffle. So I thought I'd republish it here, since it seems apropos on this first day of a new year.
Chasing Away The Gremlins
I wrote two posts for this. You know, because I like to double my workload whenever possible (anything to avoid housecleaning). The first post I wrote was a satirical stab at the pain of being an artist. Here’s the first part:
“Ever heard of the HAA? It stands for “Hypersensitive Artists Anonymous”, and I’m the founding (and at the moment, only) member, but I suspect it’s about to take off like a California wildfire. Hypersensitive Artist Syndrome is a real and painful disorder. Every year it causes thousands of writers, artists and actors across the nation to doubt the validity of their existence. (No scientific studies were done to back up this claim, but it sounds right).”
It went on to list five questions to help you figure out if you were suffering from this disorder. They included things like wondering what “it’s a bit derivative” actually means, and if your work is a prime example; and eating Nutella directly from the jar while wondering if your work belongs buried deep beneath a compost heap, where no one (but you) will have to suffer its idiocy.
I was going for funny, for that laugh at the expense of real pain. But after I put it to bed, it just wouldn’t leave me alone. It stirred something inside me in a most unhappy way. It might have been funny, but it was all too painfully true.
It was giving voice to that foul little gremlin I think we all have inside us, no matter who we are or what we do. The one that tells us we’re not a good enough parent/friend/spouse/child, that we’re too fat/ugly /dumb /poor. That we should do more, that we should be more, that we don’t deserve the things we have.
But this slithering conviction is nothing but a lie designed to hold us back from chasing our dreams. So today, instead of celebrating it with humor, I’m hauling that little fiend into the back alley in my mind, and I’m giving it my best Kung Fu moves. And when it comes back tomorrow, I’m going to do it again.
Life is too darn short for gremlins.
Wishing you all a gremlin free 2015!
xo SM