Since my last post I've been reflecting, feeling anxious and hugely uncreative. Not good eh? Hmm, no, not good at all....
I'm struggling and feel as though I'm swimming against the tide - my swimming strength is not good and I feel unable to go further out to a distant shore, nor to swim back to safety and so my strength is sapped and my resolve is weakening.
My desire is for my love of creating and dancing to be able to go back to being pastimes, not my bread and butter. It's time to accept that although my creative work is admired by those who are demonstrative about such things not enough people love it enough to buy it. My marketing skills are nil - and to be honest I'd rather not force anyone to buy anything, they should buy because they can't live without it.
It used to be that my pastimes and experiments could be sold here and there and I'd be happy with that as it offered me a little extra, a way to buy new supplies and play around with new techniques. For the last two years I've needed the money to be able to buy food, pay bills and it's barely happening. Two years ago I moved out of the home I had shared with my (now ex) partner, the father of our two children and with whom I had shared 10 years of my life. During that time the children were born and because we were able to we decided together that I would be a full-time mother and he would work and bring home the money. I was happy with this decision and was able to do a little work here and there, never expecting that giving up my place in the larger workforce would be the desperate issue that it is now. Despite what you may read in the media, very few single parents ever planned to become one.
So now I'm treading water - not selling enough of my work to make it viable, too dependent upon the benefits system to live without it at the moment, so far unable to gain other employment (but still trying), battling inner demons that keep me awake at night and most devastatingly beginning to accept that what I do is not admired enough to make it worth carrying on.
Filled with sadness I have to keep swimming but my arms are tired and I don't know where to swim to.
