Far away from the beginning

and just getting started.

Photo by Yang Hsu on Unsplash

A check-in: Everything is overwhelming inside and out and so I’ve not a whole lot to say because it’s all very crowded inside. I write for hours every morning and paint for hours every afternoon. I’m questioning my entire belief system from the ground up. I belong nowhere, I trust nothing, until I’ve pried it open and seen its underbelly for myself. I feel stripped to the bone. I’m exploring myself thoroughly without deciding about anything. It takes its toll. This is not a flaw!! Humans who engage with life get beat up, drained, hurt, confused, and otherwise messed with. It’s just how it is. No martyrs, no prisoners.

I’ve been really, really angry. Justifiably, but also it’s caught me off guard. I am good with it. It’s something I can work with. I lose my entire shit on ‘God’ and yell-write at the great beyond in my journal using very very nasty language. I do not hold back. I want a fight. I need to unload extremely toxic shit that is no one’s fault and everyone’s collectively all at once. Blame gets me nowhere and yet I let fucking loose and it feels like the first step to getting wherever I need to go. Messy writing, messy pages, messy irreverence. God never yells back. I wear myself out and laugh. I slash more cuts in my paintings than I did last week. Fuck everything. Amen.

I am finally calling myself an artist. I am finally believing it because I’m doing it. That makes it all very real. I don’t have my phone on me all day. I work from 5am to about 4pm, on things that I find endlessly fascinating. I show about 1% of what I create on Instagram, but christtt I HATE INSTAGRAM. It’s so degrading to be on that platform as a creator anymore; it is incessant, overwhelming, merciless, loud, chaotic, and murderous. It’s a waste of time and energy and crushes my soul like a bug. It’s a pusher of products, self-harm, and addictions. It’s an enemy to artists.

But I want to share my art and I haven’t figured out how to do that otherwise in such an efficient way online. I guess it’s mostly a digital journal right now, I can post what I’ve made that day, for better or worse. IG shows my art to barely anyone. I have 8K+ followers and IG shows my stuff to like 14 people! I frequently ask myself: is this even worth it? (It could very well be that the answer is Nope… I’m still deciding.)

Creating art and giving it away for free costs me. I invest my time, tools, money, spirit, and limited energy and attention. I put my whole being into whatever I make. I have to take way more time to restore my deficits after I share. Recovery from alcoholism has taught me that protecting, nurturing, and caring for my inside self is paramount. This is my focus now, for my creator self. Life drains us. We have to reconnect to our sweet inner spirit. We need so much rest.

Random note on life: Remember your dignity as a woman, artist, and human. How is it that this gets so trashed inside my own mind? Sharing art is vulnerable as fuck. We live in a society that just wants to milk us ALL for content and expects everything free, fast, and constantly new and streaming. It is SO ABUSIVE. It’s a scam culture with human collateral damage and social media in general has been totally fucking with my recovery and my sobriety lately. Not sure what to do about that, but for now: awareness, vigilance, and serious self-protection are the name of the game.

Everything all around us—fucking EVERYTHING—has stats attached, along with ratings, comments, and feedback from every Tom, Dick, and hairy armpit out there with a thought in their brain. It is Too Much Muchness for me. I can’t go on the way I used to. I can’t explain it and won’t because I don’t have to, but maybe you are noticing it as well? In your own life or art or recovery, or just all of it? I don’t know what to do. Creating physical art is vulnerable like when I first quit drinking. I didn’t know what to do, I just knew to not drink, so all my energy went into that. Now I’m doing art and awakening to new dreams, maybe my first real dreams? I just keep making things without judgement. If I created art that day, it was a successful day.

Good and bad do not exist. Only did or did not create.

Original painting | Allison Taylor Conway | Acrylic & charcoal

I have got to be so careful. I have got to be so, so protective of my energy, spirit, and mental health. I’m 2.25 years sober now. I can handle a lot. But I’m also far enough away from the beginning of my recovery from addiction that I run the risk of neglecting the basics and thereby turning everything new I touch into a new addiction, like Midas only instead of gold at my fingertips it’s potential budding neuroses. I don’t have to watch out for the old drinking stuff anymore but I have to watch out just the same for a million new things. It never ends. I am learning how to make peace with that. It’s an ongoing process.

Good news: I went on a mini-two-night-vacation to the beach, and then attended my family’s big annual Easter party. It was a lot more back-to-back events than I would prefer. But I did not think about drinking at all. I did, however, need to take four days (and counting) to recover myself from all the socialization and being out of my routine elements. I’m like a tiny baby chick right now (probably like always, I just didn’t allow myself to actually be the real-sensitive me ever before—I was more like push, push, push, produce, achieve, produce, produce—fuck that).

I need way more incubator time than regular people. The best news is that now I have it! Home in my warm nest, alone with my soft, soft, softness. Oh—and a knife to slash into my art because art, like God, can handle it. x