Hello Sarah,   You said to say something about my life just now.  

My job is quite a nice break from the intensities of being an artist and the pressure I put on myself sometimes, and it's nice to be out in the town with the other people and get cups of coffee and see the shops and meet the nice old customers. Other times it's a horrific interruption to my concentration and makes me feel trodden on, and cross with myself for needing to work at this horrendously late stage in the game.  

Also it's messing up my arthritis which is bothering me, because I'm a bit trapped. Maybe not for too much longer.   Sometimes it's nice to be helpful to customers and feel I'm being decent and upstanding, and just being empathetic in small ways.  

And maybe I've learned some lessons about patience and tolerance and all that, but at this stage I'm all... learned that, can I go now.   It is good to not always be letting it all hang out.   Personally I find myself deeply suspicious of the indulgences that seem to be given to artists... though it's often the indulgences people who are self-diagnosed artists give themselves. So that's ironic, that I feel like that. I'm also suspicious of giving myself 'indulgences', I don't feel like it's excusable to get out of my basic responsibilities.   I find myself wanting to tell people 'I'm really good!' Because I do think I'm good at art, I don't think I'm good at many things but being good at art is kind of what I'm hanging things on, so I'm allowed to think that I am. I know that you can be good without being 'recognized' (not that I'm entirely unrecognized) but really to a lot of people recognition is all there is.   But in polite conversation, you can't say that you're good. But you can show off about having a show coming up in a swanky gallery, for peculiar social reasons. I don't have a show coming up in a swanky gallery though. So I can't say very many things.   Swanky galleries have felt a very very long way way from my world, but perhaps it's time to challenge that thought.   I want to be able to say to people that there came a stage when I realised I was an artist, not in any grand way, but just that that was my category. But the word is so abused. It would just make me sound like a twat. Yet in real life it had some meaning to realise that.   I'm also quite aware that my space that I cultivate in which to feel like an authentic artist is quite small and rarefied, and I'm not like pals with lots of other local artists, and maybe I could be, I've nothing against them, neither the good ones nor the bad ones, but it's not a necessity for my feeling productive.

But it might be investing a lot of time and emotional capital in such buddyships that's how a lot of people get along and make things happen. I've always instinctively conserved my art energy for seeking solitude and just trying to filter out distractions, almost fight them off one by one with a sword, recognizing new ones all the time.   And shyness means that putting effort into social networking (other than on the internet) is hugely sickmakingly daunting.   Not that my approach is 'purist' in any traditional way... in any obvious way...   But I do tend to think I am easily distracted... even now... not by drugs and gambling and stuff but bye errant thoughts and too many ideas to actually execute...  I have terrible problems focusing my mind enough to write sometimes...   We have a friend who says that my mind is a thicket.   I have visions of trying to tackle my thicket with a sword.   I want to paint knights with swords on horseback.   I want to paint them slaying lizards.   In elaborate military uniform.   In a world slightly lacking in gravity.   But otherwise quite convincing and alive   I want to paint paintings with innocent motives and sophisticated execution   otherwise what's the point of becoming sophisticated?   And what's the point in having the liberty of artisthood if you can't paint things with simple joy?   Sometimes I feel like I would be a better artist if I NEVER worried about my career.   Instead of what I do do which is worrying about it and beating myself up and not really having one.   I'd like to be in a little pocket apart from time.