struggle

for the first time, i feel like my art is finally going somewhere. it's not like i was never confident about it before, but it's more so balanced now. not like a boat tipping up and down in rough seas. one of my favorite professors, kevin moore, once said "you can't just keep riding this roller coaster, the trick is to find that perfect balance between loss and defeat."

i feel like i'm at a very strange time in my life. i've just spent the last four years honing my craft, everyday, day in and day out. thinking about it, dreading it, loving it, devoured in it, sick of it. i've watched all my peers outside of art climb the social ladder, getting promotions, going to grad school, working day in and day out with the benefit of a paycheck. of security.

maybe i should have just gone to law school. maybe i should have just stayed at a regular job. sometimes i wonder if i made the right choice because really, sometimes it's hard to justify what i've chosen. i suppose i just don't yet know what success is. or how to achieve it.

but in my heart i know i have to keep doing this. to just keep pushing and pushing. day by day. hour by hour. because there's no rationale or reasoning, i just know i have to do this because there's nothing else that i would do with this sort of love and dedication.

sometimes i feel like i purposely chose this life because it was probably the hardest thing to do, that i just want to struggle. other times i feel like it gets to be too much and the payoff too small.

i've been thinking about moving away lately with the dog. maybe to oregon, maybe to arizona. just for a change. for a few months, maybe years, maybe i'll never go.

even so with just the daily routine hum of life going on i know i must keep going. because there's no direction but forward.