I’ve read Rollo May’s The Courage to Create about 6 times. Once because I had to in college. The second time was because I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about the first time. The third, fourth and fifth instances were all fruitless attempts to reconnect with my creative spirit in a somewhat pretentious way, only half paying attention because it was mostly to show how intellectual and progressive I was. This time felt different from the beginning. I picked it up off of the shelf in my house, where it sits with all of my other well worn, unread art theory and criticism books, and stared at the cover. A familiar ‘second year art student’ feeling of inadequacy and an underdeveloped sense of self began to creep in. Instead of letting it consume me and let it direct me to either put the book back on the shelf or crack it open just to prove something, I felt a sort of desperation to ingest and inhale the information inside, in an attempt to save my creative soul. As ridiculously dramatic as that sounds, I felt that the answers to this perpetual state of anxiety that I find myself mired in, might be in there and I needed to find out. This is not stomach pit, uncomfortable anxiety. This is throw your computer against the wall, snap at your loved ones anxiety that has the potential to be extremely threatening to my relationships and my electronics. Many Facebook friends and relatives over-post the positive effects of prescription drugs to help combat this ‘disease’ and think that numbing this feeling is the answer. This, to me, is the equivalent of putting an air freshener in landfill. It might mask a few cubic feet of the problem so that living in that box could be tolerable. It doesn’t, however, fix the root of the problem or help at all when you step out of that safe zone. 

I delved into a world of acupuncture and herbal supplements to help suppress this feeling ‘naturally’ and it actually seemed to help a little. I found that at my most idle (sitting there in the recliner with tiny needles stuck in my skin) my anxiety was the strongest… Yet at the same time, my mind started to race with creative energy and ideas. I came to the realization that  my anxiety is creative energy unrealized. As cliche as it sounds, it is literal energy that is pent up inside of my mind/body/soul and it produces symptoms of anxiousness if it is not allowed to materialize. The solution here is to turn into the skid… not combat the anxiety, but give into it completely and let it manifest itself. It is that anxious feeling that keeps you reaching for more. That idea that there is more to life, more to learn, more to understand. I believe now that this anxiety is a gift. It is an intrinsic need to create, to build, to teach, to learn, to grow, to impact, to empower, to give back, to speak, to LIVE. Who would want to suppress that? 

11.28.2016