I’m finding myself in this same state of “frustration V desire”. I’m a teacher and I currently work with ‘at-risk’ youth teaching short film making and radio broadcasting. As well as this I’m currently doing a course in 3D animation and games design. On top of this I’m also trying to get a photography career started. Hmmm… now that I write it down it looks like I’m doing a lot, creatively speaking. LOL

Each of these aspects of my life have a major frustration attached to them. With teaching I facilitate the learning and creativity of others and not myself and by the time I’m done with them for the day and all the subsequent paperwork the last thing I feel like doing is getting creative.

With my course it’s ended up not being what I was led to believe (to the point where I made a 3 page complaint to the Head of School). I would like to point out that I had a number of other students also frustrated with the course approach me and ask me to make the complaint. As a teacher I knew they weren’t meeting minimum requirements for the students to pass the course (no curriculum in place, lack of communication between teachers, poor quality teachers etc). This is a battle that’s been happening for a few weeks now (they’re now in the process of fixing the issues) but this whole scenario has been building for the last 18 – 24 months now and it frustrates me that it’s been allowed to get this bad (especially since the students are paying $11,000+ per year).

In regards to my photography stuff we had our house broken in to a bit over a month ago and the person stole all of our cameras, laptop, jewelry, etc etc etc… We finally got it all replaced as of yesterday (yay for insurance!) but it’s really stopped the momentum in regards to my photography.

Everything has sort of fed into this frustrated malaise that I find myself in now. This year it’s followed this path: “I’m not keen on teaching but I’m doing this course so I can be creative there…” Then it became: “Well, the course isn’t going well but I have my photography to be creative with and I can push into that arena…” Then, since the break-in it’s been: “Well… damn… I’m in a job I don’t enjoy, doing a course that’s turned into a real battle and where I’m slowly sliding backwards, and I don’t even have my photography now…”.

I shouldn’t complain because I HAVE a job that pays well and the cameras have been replaced (finally) but trying to pick myself up from the last month and a half is difficult. The best part, though, is that I have a wife who believes in me (god knows why LOL) and I’ve learned enough that I know what I DON’T want to do (it’s a start).

I apologise for the rant. I wasn’t intending on doing that. As well as this I feel like I have this creative energy bursting to get out and I’m finding it hard to find the outlet for it. Is it 3D? Illustration? Photography? Concept design? Animation? Which one am I best at? What will be the best fit for me? Am I good enough? Is my lack of confidence the biggest thing holding me back? How do I deal with that?

These are the questions that keep tumbling through my head and because I feel like I can’t answer them satisfactorily then I freeze up and don’t take the chances…

Have I made any sense or has my comment just reflected the mess that’s going on in my head??

My desire to be good at drawing has only just kicked in and even if its just one sketch in the evening when I have put my little lad back to bed is one step closer to me becoming a pro someday.

I even started a blog charting this progress.

http://chibijanine.blogspot.com/

I used to dream of being good at drawing but thats what it was a dream as it was in my head a daytime fantasy. The reality is some pretty hard graffting is needed to become good at drawing and the dreams become a real thing (though it can take a while).

I personally have many passions and am currently getting ready to launch/re launch three blogs on my site that will all be updated on an almost weekly basis. It will create accountability also to keep me doing what i love and at the same time building it into hopefully a living eventually!

And i can atest to the fact that frustration, depression, and struggle with my day job are a big part of my motivation to be productive on my website!!!

Thanks for this update Chris!

Even more challenging than the above is depression, that emotional weariness that numbs you to your desires, encourages you to subsist on what’s immediately available, and nothing more. Seeing the world as little too solid, a little too real.

To me, there is only one thing that helps when I’m in these states of minds, and that’s absorbing a good story. Good ol’ fashioned escapism. Visions of worlds, not as they are, but as the could be, as the should be. Stories of frustrations that unmake empires, and hopes that oblierate war and poverty. Tales and roadmaps not of the logical or practical guidelines to acheving yoru goals, but of the emotional fortitude and downright chutzpah it might take to really change things.

Looking inside such stories, finding that core, it’s almost incumbent upon me, as a listener, to shake off bonds and break through walls. And to realize that even if I, though my desire, increase my frustration by bringing my life crashing down around my ears, it is only so that I can rebuild it with a clearer vision of what it should be, using modern construction techniques. It is to live flexibly, to deny the rigidity of the world, for my actions to be predicted only by my hopes and not my fears. To wander, to love, to live. To never look up at the moon and realize you’ve only seen it from one angle. To die and to have lived bravely.

And I will begin to live this way, I promise myself, just as soon as I catch up on sleep.

Ah well. If we could cure ourselves of sleep we would all be lawyers by seventeen, artists by thirty, and divine on our death beds.