when the wind takes the muse away

awhile back I read about graduate students and how when they finish their dissertation many of them become depressed. you would think that it would be the opposite—that after finishing something you’ve worked so hard on for years and years that you would feel a sense of satisfaction but that doesn’t seem to be what really happens.

We all know it—the journey is the important part, the struggle. no one charters a plane to the top of Mount Everest, they climb it for the climb.

But lately, I feel that I’ve lost even the joy of creation. the muse seems to have vanished and I am not sure why.

This doesn’t feel the way I sometimes feel, in that I am too troubled to create. But rather that I might have said everything I am able to say.

And part of me wonders what else is there to do now?

I’ve created such a large body of work but with no outward success that I really feel like a sort of ghost. I have an air of pride for the work I’ve done but at the same time I feel like a complete failure.

The only thing to really do from here is to keep creating.

But I don’t know how.

the world is changing so quickly and it’s frightening.

It’s hard to know what’s worthwhile in this new world.

I have lived my life by the idea that art matters, but as the artists I love come under scrutiny in this increasingly visible age it’s hard not to wonder if maybe it was all a complicated illusion.

But I don’t think it’s that simple.

People are complicated and full of nuance and I think that this is important to remember.

there’s a Bukowski quote that always stuck with me about having the ruthless desire to live and not the means and how that poisons the soul.

I think that this is where my creative block comes from.

I long for the summer in which there was so much life to live that you barely had time to create. And now, it feels that I’ve used up all of that summer and it’s still cold and the wind has taken the last bit of life and flung it away.