To Every Season...

Here's the problem: I want to be brilliant at everything I do. Not just competent, but brilliant. When I was younger, I not only believed this was possible, I believed that everything I did actually was brilliant. Ah, for those halcyon days of self delusion.

As I grow older, I've come to accept that mere competence at an array of things isn't all that bad. But I also realize that had I really focused on one thing, I might have been brilliant. For me, parts of different things come really easily to me. For instance, with singing I open my mouth and a sound comes out. I've been told by enough random people that I have a good voice to trust that. And when I was in high school, the chorus director brought in some musical specialist who ran me through a bunch of vocal tests and I was deemed "promising." I was strongly, STRONGLY encouraged to pursue a career in opera.

The problem was I couldn't read music. Still can't, really. I've made stabs at trying to learn, but the minute I hit a key change, I'm done. A "B" is a "B," unless all the way over there on the left of the page there are some symbols. And then you have to count, you can't just "sing along to the piano." So, when I have to sing something, I just have to listen to it and figure out my own formula. I get there somehow, but I have no idea how. That may be talent, but even when I was seventeen I knew that wasn't going to be enough to sustain a professional career in music. I may have had the intellect to learn how all those black dots on a page added up to a song, but I didn't have the patience to figure out how.

Acting was different. I actually went to school, got the degree, and then pursued it as a career. Acting is every bit as demanding as any other profession and requires every bit of discipline as any sport or art. And it was a discipline I understood, a commitment I could make. But because acting requires so much of a personal investment -- at the end of the day an actor only has himself to work with -- I had difficulty separating "professional" from "personal." For me there was no separation, and to be successful I think there has to be. Ultimately, I burned out on acting and it's the only artistic art form I've never been compelled to revisit. I know I'm a good actor, but I don't know how to be a professional actor.

Writing and photography are two art forms that I'm feeling different about. At both, I feel like I have some talent, but not as much as I might have had as a singer or actor. I don't have the passion for either that I had for performing on the stage and I think that might be a good thing. I feel like I can be a little more objective about my work. I don't take the flaws as personally. I recognize a learning curve, and I can live with it. But with that lack of passion come cycles of inspiration. As an actor or singer, even when I didn't feel like it I could get up on stage and give a credible performance. With writing and photography, when I'm not feeling it, I struggle mightily. At least with photography, I have come up with a formula or a routine and fall into that and come up with saleable products that aren't great works of art, but client pleasing. Writing isn't possible at all. If I'm not in the mood to write, then there's nothing going to happen. For the past few months I haven't been feeling the writing thing. This blog is clear evidence of that. But I have been feeling the photography thing, and I think I can see some marked improvement in that work. So, for the past few months I'd given myself permission to allow the writing to sit while I worked on photography.

But this week, as the leaves change, so have my passions, and I'm feeling a return to writing. I'm feeling a little fresher. I have one short story to complete for the collection and then it's time to go back with a critical eye and see what can be done about making the collection a solid, coherent piece. It's a little daunting, but exciting. As I feel the surge for writing, I'm feeling a waning in photography. I'm still interested in it, and I'm not going to give it up -- I do expect to make it a viable business at some point -- but it's time to let that field lie fallow while I cultivate other crops. I'm sort of expecting all of these things to be ready for harvest at about the same time.

My fear and dread in all of this is that because I have this wandering interest, the best I'm ever going to be able to hope for is competence in writing and/or photography. I won't be brilliant in either, but I have to come to terms with competence and can let that be enough. I think it just might be.