all i want is to be your sunflower

It is infinitely easier to consume and read than it is to create something from nothing, especially if you’ve been out of the creative business for a little while.

That’s more or less where i’m at right now, being a sort of erstwhile writer, posting the occasional ‘what i did today’ blurb on my blog or some regurgitation of that day’s browsing experience. I find myself focused more on the generalities of what happened in a day than in the small life lessons one can learn from those events. My excuse lately has been that I haven’t really had much happen to react and write about since I’ve settled down, stopped hitting the clubs and drinking every other weekend, begun to exercise restraint in my practice of making things more difficult for myself, gotten past the idea that creating emotional drama is some glorious form of personal expression and cut back on spending time with people who are still stuck in that mode. These changes began two years ago when I started seeing Jer, and to be honest, I find the peace I have with my life far more liberating than the “liberated” lifestyle I was living before. So while ‘nothing happens’ in my life nowadays, for the most part, I’m also content that nothing really needs to.

But it doesn’t make for particularly moving or relatable writing or art in the least bit. I’ve long been enamored with the archetype of the suffering artist. Growing up in the age of grunge rockers like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder and living in the fiercely idealistic San Francisco bay area, a region with boasting quite a few prominent suffering artists itself, it’s not hard to see why. And, the emphasis on emotion — to be so young and to put so much faith in one’s emotions and believe so deeply that in this great wide world of falsity and deception and money and fame and sex and corporate junk, emotions are the one true thing in life. It really is a beautiful thought, and to be honest, a part of me still finds the romantic notion deeply alluring and compelling. It’s why I loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so much. I can’t say I’m completely past being a victim of my emotions, but I’ve learned the hard way that even those too can be betrayed.

So here I am now, quietly going about my existence, the hazy memory of me as a ball of energy and ambition slowly fading from public view. I miss it sometimes, and a part of me still yearns to be that artist suffering in the pits of despair and flying high in the throes of ecstasy. The highs really were so very high.. but the lows were similarly so very low…

Why all this self-reflection? I find myself in this state as I go through the process of looking for work, assessing my skills and hireable qualities and figuring out what to highlight in a cover letter. This cover letter business is really daunting. It’s like writing a personal statement all over again, and we all remember how much fun that process was. And because a letter is focussed much more on the practical “what will you do for my company” rather than the open ended “what can you bring to our campus?” the priority in it isn’t just you, it’s how you make yourself a saleable product to a complete stranger. The very act involves trading in a shred of holier-than-thou idealism for a slice of practical materialism. Maybe I’m a little late in coming to this conclusion — I’ve been spoiled and lucky so far in that most of my jobs can from personal referrals and people seeing me in action and being impressed with what they saw. And boy, it’s much easier being sought after than being the one seeking. I’m slowly coming to grips with it as I’m going through the hunt now. But at this point, I’m pretty much accepting that I’ll need to do whatever it takes to find something. I need to keep my mediocre-quality mind from turning into low-grade mush. I can simply feel the brain cells dripping away…

Speaking of dripping away, I think my mind is about spent. Maybe I’ll continue this tomorrow…

One last thing: I don’t want to lose my creative energies. I don’t want to fade away and become a consumer in the crowd. I still want to create, give rise to schools of thought, change the world for the better. But I must remember that it is a daily pursuit and requires a certain vigilance. I must resist the urge to be complacent, even when things seem so happy.

Wish me luck as this wilting flower figures out how to sell her seeds to the corporate world.