Shit is a Fertilizer: Growing Pains

Do you ever find that it is terribly difficult to take your own good advice? I reassure my friends again and again that it is better to try and fail than to not try at all...

And then the rug is yanked out from under you.

Everything falls to little steaming smithereens and suddenly big-mouthed-lion-heart is a wet kitten.

I feel that as a writer and an artist that it would be dishonest to focus solely on the glittery exciting parts of creation and ignore the ugliness of failures--big ones. It feels insincere to tout that a creative life is simply a wild rainbow river that carries you though the day:

There are icky times. Times when you hate everything and one more person assuring you that it's okay or that your efforts are just not that important makes you want to slap them with a brick.

Times when you doubt your worth.

Times when Growing Pains take on new meaning.

"Growth is scary because you're a seed in the dark
and you don't know which way is up--
and down might take you down
further into a darker place." --Tom Waits

I won't bore you with the gory details so here's the gist: my studio and gallery space are gone, my band family broke up in the middle of making a record (within two days of each other) and I am struggling with my new professional life to the extent that it's causing health problems and serious relationship strain on all fronts of my life.

When it rains it fucking pours.

But seeds need rain.
Shit is a fertilizer.

Seeds also need winter sleep, time to incubate and stretch. Lots of interesting things happen in the dark. In the quiet. Seeds also manage to grow anywhere: in between jagged rocks, on the hot cracks of a sidewalk, in the back of a gloomy refrigerator...

We manage to grow in places with bullies and no natural light. In places with no nutrients, no where to climb, hellbent on bringing you down.

We're going to be alright.
Because after a cat nap and a good cry
our tendrils will sneak out of the bedrock,
grab a hold and sprout in some impossible spellbinding way.

Yeah, That's nature.

We're just that good.