Autoportrait

May 13, 2010

I drew my face the other night. It’s not an easy task, not for me anyway. It was hard, frustrating, challenging and delightful. I stared at my face in the mirror, stared at what was supposed to be my face on the page, at lines, shapes, curves, shadows, highlights, at the marks my pencil made on paper. I looked, and looked, and looked. And as I looked, thoughts were running through my mind. “What are you doing?!” they asked, “why are you wasting time on this? There is no value to this, you should be working now, doing something that will bring some money, stop goffing around!”. I listened and thought: God, how brainwashed I am! How controlled! How well trained I must be to believe that nothing has value unless I can get money for it, that doing what I want, what feels right, what feels good, is a useless waste of time. Because I can’t sell it, because it won’t make me known, famous, important. I listened and thought: no! I will not obey. This is not who I am, this is not how I will live my life, those are not the ideas I will follow. I will do what I want because I want to, I will do what feels good because it feels good, I will do what feels natural to me because I am me. Important or not, wealthy or not, famous or not, I am me, and that is a reason enough. I was telling my husband about this today and I realized that I am growing up. I am remembering what I wanted to do, who I wanted to be as a child, and I am being it, doing it. I am growing up. I remember what I wanted to create when I was ten, and I’m creating it. I remember what I wanted to accomplish when I was twelve and I am accomplishing it. And when my mind says: “no! Stop this foolishness! Stop wasting time! You should be working now, no one will pay you for this!” I choose not to listen. I choose to ignore it and do what I want to do. I am growing up.

Previous post:

Next post: