The Maker’s Dilemma
A little while ago I wrote a post about having an itch. Surprise! …that itch was actually a metaphor for creative hunger. The thirst us craftspeople lie slave to. I think anyone who likes to play music or design websites or draw pictures knows exactly what I’m talking about; we need to make to feel good.
As awesome as making is, the older you get, the more frustrating all these itches become (I think). Especially when you go to this thing everyday where you sit in a chair for seven hours and learn knowledge that isn’t and/or won’t be relevant to your life. Or at the very worst, doesn’t interest you. Many of you grownups out there have the same thing, except knowledge is Excel and it is almost always at “the very worst"—uninteresting. Still, all that chair-sitting does not leave too much time for itching.
Time is the least of your problems, though. What’s worse is when you don’t even know where the itch is. Or how to itch it. Then, they multiply, and before you know it, your whole body is just one big itch.
Is this itch thing getting annoying? I think Meagan Fisher summed this up nicely in a post last week called Stumbling, sans itch:
I’ve been stumbling around blindfolded, arms stretched out, looking for this thing. The Right Thing to Do. Happiness. Contentment. I’m not sure what this will feel like when I find it; will it be warm and soft, or cool and smooth? […] Sometimes the blindfold is squeezed so tightly around my head it hurts. I feel dizzy and sick and fed up with all the dark, and all I can do is lie very still for awhile. I don’t care to search anymore. If I lay here long enough, I won’t have to.
But I get back up, and I hope I always will. The search is worth it. And every now and then the blindfold slips away for a second, and a vision of the way forward is briefly clear. This makes me hopeful.
I know that when I feel all clogged up, or, as the Itch Metaphor would have it, full of unknown, unscratchable itches, it feels like blindfold squeezed too tightly. A dirty lens.
This is when I start to lay back on the scratching. It does no good to itch somewhere that isn’t itching; actually, it hurts. Instead, I remind myself: you can’t make something out of nothing. Your own person, the things you grew up with, the memories in your head, what you feel, can only fuel so much. Sometimes, once in awhile, you need to do a little consuming. You need to fill yourself up.
Because everything is a remix.