Kiara Shanay Lee
Regret and comparison always seem to linger in the air to a certain extent for you. Obsessing over what you ‘should have’ been, regretting past decisions, comparing yourself to idealized expectations and stressing over fictitious benchmarks may have become the norm lately.
The bottom line? You feel like you should be further along.
Well, I’m here to agree with you. Hell yeah, you should be further along. Way further. You should be further along in the way you view yourself and treat yourself.
Consider this a reality check.
Stop wasting your energy and your time. You’re draining your creative reserve by ruminating over how you think things are supposed to be. Go work on your craft or take a creative rest instead.
Start living in the world in front of you, not the one in your head or the one from yesterday. The delusional thinking that doubts your progress and questions your process stems from a mental mismatch.
Okay, so you didn’t produce all that you had hoped to recently – but you had some time to deeply consider your intention and even get inspired from other places and spaces.
Sure, you didn’t take the opportunity that came up a couple of years back – but you were not in a space to succeed in that endeavor at that time anyway.
But we creatives don’t just face the anxiety of feeling like we should be farther along. In fact, general mental health struggles are quite common for creatives. Artists are much more likely to experience substance abuse and a host of mental health disorders than those in other professions; Dr. Alana Mendelsohn finds the ‘tormented soul’ artist trope deeply concerning. “We have lost too many talented artists to suicide and substance abuse, and what’s more worrying is the extent to which we’ve normalized this phenomenon.” Dr. Mendelsohn is the co-founder of a non-profit that supplies NYC creatives with free mental health services.
You should be further along in your thinking for your sake, for your mind’s sake and for your art’s sake.
I hope these words help push you along, even if just a little bit.
Whether you’re a writer, a painter, an actress, or if you don’t consider any fancy titles for yourself – you are a creative. No matter who you are, to some degree, we all create and we all need space to take care of every part of ourselves. I hope The House of Psalm Magazine inspires you to take good care.
Dr. Kiara Shanay Lee | Editor in Chief, The House of Psalm Magazine
IG: @thehouseofpsalm @kiaraleewrites | kiara@thehouseofpsalm.com
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At first I thought you saying that we should be further along meant like more work should be accomplished but you mean mentally and developmentally. Never really thought about it that way. Suffered for years thinking I was a failure and slowly have been crawling right out of that hole. It’s about looking at the big picture of the world (my world) again.