creative life amid the doomscroll

 

Admittedly, its hard. The endless parade of news and social media posts make it hard to spend time on the internet. However, much of the work and promotion I do, either as a freelancer or as a creative, involve spending at least some time on the internets. I have days where I am out and about and not looking at anything online, but these are rare things like occasional all-afternoon D&D sessions or road tripping.  I am not really a phone person, so always have it on silent and notifications off (I hate being interrupted. Most of my time online is in front of a desktop machine or laptop. So I know that these days I usually feel better about society and humanity. Unfortunately, this is not most days.  Most days, I am up and at my desk and expected to chug away, not only at the fulfilling and creative things that make any of this endurable, as well as the things that keep the rent paid. There are, like during the height of the pandemic, days that dissolve into pieces, and me with them. There are good days and bad. the good ones are usually the ones where I can focus on something other than the ticker tape of horrors that play out daily and seem to get worse with every turn. 

I also have the problem of being unable to dial in on what level of crises we are in. As a person with anxiety, I am often wrong about things. I will get worked up over nonsense and discover later that I was way overthinking things. The social media scrolling does not help, since many people may be suffering the same demons I do. During the pandemic I kept encountering extremes (as in, we are all gonna die and society will collapse, or at the other end, it's just a cold and no biggie.  The truth was, of course, somewhere in between. 

I keep seeing discussion online about how artists and writers function in a world that is, if not completely falling apart in front of us, in danger of toppling.  On one hand, you have those who find the terrors of everyday living have a dampening effect on productivity (even for fun things), a lack of concentration, and a lack of purpose. On the other hand, and this I see too in myself, the drive to keep on going. To keep making and loving and creating something beautiful or interesting in a world that not only doesn't seem to want it, but fights its very existence. Either through distraction or making things like art less likely in the struggle to survive (metaphorically or actually.)

And yet, art can be sustaining. It can often be the only thing which seems bearable. It may feel like playing the cello while the ship sinks or straightening the beds while the world is on fire, But it is also, in some ways, an act of persistence and resistance. 

I've been channeling my energies into the press. Into poems and plays. Into art experiments that have lesser to more degrees of success. These things are surely harder than they would be not under duress, and yet I do them in spite of a world that seems unbearably cruel and deeply stupid.  I suppose that is all we can do...

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