overcoming the fear of passion-induced solitude

12 Jul, 2023

I've been on a creative kick lately. I owe a lot of it to having joined a Mastodon instance that I feel I really jive with¹. It's encouraged me to revisit some old original characters and story ideas and make up some new ones, drawing and drafting with an enthusiasm I haven't had since I was in high school.

But now that I'm in this state, I find myself neglecting a lot of my other hobbies, and that makes me a little sad. Up until recently I was coding my Neocities site with a vengeance and at least logging onto Bear more actively, if not posting. I was really into a few different things I was drawing fanart for, even if just to share with my friends who liked the same things.

It's a little silly of me to want to be excited about doing all my hobbies at once, especially since I know I work in seasons, but I also know that sometimes I'll get into something for a single season only and when it passes I'll never care about it again. Or I'll be deep into something and a new thing will come before I feel the old one's wrapped up, and I end up pivoting to the new thing even though I was already in something like a flow state with the last one.

This is a super normal thing to do, but it frustrates me. I find myself trying desperately to cling onto every bit of love I have for everything all of the time, which ends up being a different kind of frustrating because it's so exhausting.

After thinking about the reason why² I fear losing interest in things so much, I realize I'm prematurely mourning the connections I've made that I believe are reliant on My Interest In The Thing to maintain. I'm insular by nature and have a low social battery, so I treasure the interactions that energize me. The friends I bond with through shared love of a video game, or liking each other's websites... If I stop posting about Animal Crossing, if I don't update my Neocities for a month, will they still care? Will our interactions still be as fulfilling?

Obviously, no one is breaking friendships citing "lack of Tom Nook posts," but a girl can be anxious about drifting, okay. (My neuroticism and introversion also have me tending to focus more on risks than opportunities, as in this post by Nana.)

This is all exacerbated by the fact that I'm working on personal projects, and not just hopping into a new thing that has a community around it. The only person as excited about what I'm doing as me is Also Me. I'm having fun playing with my little imaginary friends by myself, but also a little lonely.

I get the feeling that solitude is necessary, though. I can't not be a little weird and unrelatable and hard to reach if I want to make the kind of art I like. I'm solidly in the camp of "make the weirdest, horniest, most obscure, most iconoclastic, most personal art you possibly can" when it comes to art, and I have so much admiration for artists whose personality and desires and indulgences – no matter how ugly or gross or weird – saturate their work so much it spills over. That's a kind of fervor I want to put into my own work.³

So things like "retreating from more social hobbies⁴ in pursuit of a very solitary one," "relearning to be insane about things by myself" are just... growing pains, I guess. Maybe at some point the solitude will feel less like loneliness and more like sanctuary.

#art #insanities