My hands and wrists and arms looked more like an art store after some great explosion than the limbs of a high schooler. It was some time o’clock in the day and I was once again somewhere in the hallway taking whatever scene in front of me and attempting to capture it on paper or canvas. I didn’t have the attention span to capture all the details, but in lieu of that I found I had a knack for capturing the emotion of whatever stillness it was I was drawing or painting with each rushed stroke.
I never saw myself as an artist, just someone who made art that occasionally was considered good by those who didn’t know any better. I knew GOOD artists—many my age who participated in a once a week arts high school program that I somehow was accepted into. My “art” was not like their art. I don’t know how many of them went on to be great artists but I assume none because statistically it’s still likely they all decided a life as a starving artist is far less desirable than one in law or medicine or even after years of art school settling for teaching art to the students we once were who would repeat the same pattern.
Or maybe some of them went to art school and lived that dream, perhaps showing in galleries in Chelsea and hob knobbing with the who’s who of I don’t know who is who because I’m not a who at all. That world is so foreign to me, as are so many worlds. I don’t fit in any world which might be part of the problem. But the art world was never a fit. I had the luxury of attending summer courses at the great art and fashion schools in NY in my high school summers, and there I spent time with kids far wealthier than myself with far more talent and far more confidence. They would speak names of designers and artists and walk in a way I never could. I couldn’t imagine myself to be someone who found art the most important when the world had so many other issues to solve. Not that I was doing anything about those either. I was a depressed loner who didn’t fit in there, and I didn’t know where I’d fit in, though a little bird in my head reminded me artists often are depressed loners so maybe this is where I belong after all.
I participated in choir and the school play and attempted to find myself on stage making others laugh. In college I had a massive auditorium cracking up to my rendition of the dominatrix monologue from The Vagina Monologues which required me to go through a series of orgasms to show the variety I encountered in my profession. It was in those moments—far and few between—in making people laugh when I felt most alive and at peace. A stint as Jeanie in HAiR post college similarly gave me a day when something came over me and my monologue was particularly hilarious, as my fellow actors noted. Most days I felt disconnected from it, but on that day something clicked. Even one of the original Broadway cast members who our director had conned into coming to our show asked me what I was on that day because it was so good. Probably not like the performance a few days before where I forgot half of the lines to my song and half played it off as my character is always high therefore how would I ever know what I’m saying or when a song should end?
But theatre also never felt entirely right. For starters, I never had talent for it, from my inability to mimic accents to finding it impossible to be in the moment and get out of my head, all while remembering my lines. It became something I did for fun—because it gave me something to do with something to look forward to that was meaningful enough to distract me from my depression and meaningless enough to generally offer a heaping dose of drama outside of my personal life that checked the box for my unfortunate need for crazy or at least a heightened state of being where things seem more important than they really are so I feel energized in the mornings to experience whatever is to come vs being swallowed by the monotony of most any life.
There were years I dreamed of making a career for myself in Hollywood—perhaps not as an actress—but a director, cinematographer, something. Screenwriter. Designer. Producer. Something. But this requires fitting in there with people who generally view themselves as highly as the moon and spend more on Botox than I do on my rent. I briefly had the opportunity to interact with some Hollywood folks in my 20s in a tech job that collaborated with A list creatives and I was both star struck and envious and at the same time wondering what makes ME different from THEM outside of they clearly believe wholeheartedly in their ideas and themselves and I have not one ounce of confidence. I got to participate in some of the creative brainstorming (honestly I’m not sure what my job was at the time outside of social media promotion of the project so I tried to make myself useful.) I thought what fun — this is the world these people live in. One where budget and reality doesn’t get in the way of bringing ideas to life. Where you can take over the River Thames for a live action boat chase that fits your storyline. Where people say yes to you because they believe whole heartedly in you and your vision. Wouldn’t that be nice.
The years have gone by quickly and despite making a life for myself in California I managed to make that live on the other side of the state. And like most here I have been swallowed by the tech industry. I work in tech. For many years I had trouble saying this because I’m not an engineer or support lead or anything like that. I’m a marketer of tech products. Software, to be specific. Software in the cloud which now is somewhat the norm but I witnessed coming to be in my now long 15 year career, from the early days of my peers reporting on SaaS in 2006, back when I too for a blip of time was a reporter. I didn’t realize how revolutionary the cloud was, and thus when it came time for story assignments I requested a thing but SaaS. I preferred to write about hardware innovation and green technology and new social sites and mobile. Nothing seemed quite as boring and uninspiring as business software.
The tech world never felt home either and it still doesn’t. I am grateful it has welcomed me with half opened arms. As a reporter at 22 I failed miserably—unable to go up to those who matter at conferences and mingle and get scoops. I felt maybe there was a place for me in tech in creating products. I liked giving feedback on UI and features. I wanted to work with CEOs and help them make their products better.
But no one was interested in a writer’s ideas on product. So as I needed a job and I was at least on paper a writer I continued on that path and found a job writing copy for a startup. I thought maybe it would be a stepping stone to product. Maybe someone would give me a chance.
Instead, 14 years or so later, I’m still writing. Marketing, to be exact. About software, no less. I find it much more interesting than I did at 22 and I’m grateful for my job and feel like my weird background actually allows me to think about how to solve problems differently which sometimes is appreciated. But long term I wonder — is this it? In our society we are defined so much by what we do and it seems like just yesterday I had so many dreams of being an artist or some creative person that makes something meaningful and that petals culturally can outlive me. Little me with my little time left as life goes ridiculously fast once you pass 25 and I hear it gets even faster as time goes on. To think I’m almost 40 is like a jackhammer dancing on my brain. 30 I could handle—it was a sign of making it through my youth and extended youth. But 40–isn’t that when all dreams of the past are laughed at as memories that will never become reality (with the exception of the few who we invest themselves in mid life or old age.) When you have a family and need to pay the mortgage your dreams must be laughable, you are now an indentured servant to the life you created for yourself. Dreams are for your children, not for you. Your dreams are reserved for paying off the mortgage early or affording a nice hotel at Disneyland or a trip to Hawaii to distract yourself from reality for a week or so before being flung back into it – until you retire, if you are lucky enough to do so, and then you leap at those dreams and realize there is far too little time or health left to make any of them a reality.
But we all know the grass is always greener. And I admit I never felt like I fit in anywhere, especially in those ridiculous dreams. All which made me more important than I am or ever will be. With our current morbid existence in a pandemic that kills the unhealthy but can also take the healthy without warning, the amount of time left to dream feels all the more truncated. And yet, on the other hand, this upside down world makes everything practical seem appealing, anything that enables one to survive each day. If you have a job, you are lucky. Those artists you longed to be are now possibly actually starving. People are unable to go out and pay to experience art or theater. The same artists who seemed immortal are no more safe from this virus as any mere mortal like myself. And even unrelatedly many celebrities have lost their lives recently—some of old age, some of drowning, etc. In a godless society our celebrities are our gods that make everything somehow seem ok. Yet they are just as vulnerable to all the things that make all of us human. And perhaps the desire to be an artist or creator of some sort is to find a false sense of immortality. Of some transcendence beyond being an ant like everyone else who may get squashed now or in 100 years, but eventually.
And I wonder if it is healthy to still dream, or if the greatest plague of all is desiring something that isn’t real, or that doesn’t make sense anymore, and that perhaps never did. If anything has changed in terms of my sentiment I used to want to be known as I felt even as a loner and outsider if people knew me and respected me for what I did/created, I’d finally feel like part of the world. Now, that all seems far too exhausting. I embrace my anonymity. And so maybe being a nobody is where I belong, in a sea of everybody else. Maybe they fit in somewhere, or maybe they are faking it better than I ever could.
life with interest 