I’ve been disappointed since summer break started. I can’t figure out what to do with my life. I’ve unintuitively become far less enthusiastic about my hobbies as my workload has decreased. I haven’t been drawing, reading, writing, or going outside that much. I think the reason why has to do with feeling like there’s so much to do in the world, but in the end you have to choose one path and hopefully not regret it. Even the most promising directions are filled with caveats. It’s almost a meme to hear things such as “Artists being replaced by AI”, “Doctors are overworked and miserable” or even “The country is going into a recession”. It’s not shocking anymore.
This anxiety for the future seeps into all facets of life. Many people take hobbies as a spectacle now, not really to do for fun as its primary motivation, but for potential future income streams. Even those who have no intent to make money off of their passions are questioned by people constantly. I think this kind of tendency has made me adopt a very perfectionist mindset. When I draw I assess the technical prowess of every stroke, when I write I ask if anyone would care at all, and when I read I wonder if the information is worthwhile enough not to drop immediately. I can’t say these questions don’t help me improve at all at the things I enjoy, but I can’t help but wonder if this consciousness has divorced me from feeling why hobbies were ever important in the first place. It is as if the artist and process doesn’t exist anymore: now a means to an end.
I went to a community event in my city a few days ago. The historic main street had recently undergone renovations and were throwing a festival to celebrate. They even blocked off traffic so people could freely walk on the entire street. While I definitely enjoyed the lively atmosphere, something about it made me feel uneasy. This feeling really started when I learned that the event was apparently sponsored by a handful of corporations, on a poster located right next to a closing business that had been there for more than a decade. Furthermore, the event was filled with improptu pop-up shops and not much else. The message sent was that the historic street wasn’t really the purpose of the event, but rather an opportunity to buy and sell products. The next day, cars would be let back into main street and the noise would continue.
The event really made me think about the limits we have over our own lives. For all the platitudes such as, “You can become anyone you want with enough effort”, it does seem that even if one vehementally disagrees with something on a fundamental level, you still have to play along with it anyhow if the world forces your hand. Artists today cannot survive without perfectionism or changing their work for audiences. Larger scale community events will also be commerical events. You will be a little bit disappointed with your life during a recession. These unfortunate phenomenon are all created by an indifferent reality, and that is a little bit of a scary thought, I think.
This entry has been tagged with: