Writing. I won't say I, 'wasted it,' but... I'm not living pretty off book deals...
And people. For probably the majority of my life, people gravitated towards me. They wanted my attention; but, I mostly just wanted to be alone.
Now, it seems the opposite. People seem repulsed by me; and I want to be with people: genuine interaction. That place in space/time where you aren't thinking about something, your dancing verbally, with others, laughing, experiencing, maybe losing some, but mostly winning; enjoying yourself.
Paradoxically I still prefer to be alone; but, I also don't want to be alone.
If I could figure out what I wanted, I'd probably already have it, heh.
You write wonderfully. It's just, that there's not much of a career outside of academia itself for the brunt of liberal arts. While yes you can make a career out of it, to do so is very niche and if you get creative and feel like going a different direction for a different audience, than yeah, sales are gonna rock and drop down some. It's rough.
I dropped $10K in Music after 14 years of playing and did a couple tours around the U.S. where I live. All and all I played for 17 years. I stopped playing, sold all of my equipment except my bass, due to a combination of it costing significantly more money than it was making, and that it started to feel more like work than art, which was gradually slowing me down as it was.
I did the tours I did because I wanted to experience what it was like before I quit. So much of it was premeditated. But during that time I was struggling to write, struggling to find a genuine joy in playing anymore, and slowly, gradually got to where it just lost interest to me. The last time I played I think was in 2019. I still have my bass, but no amp anymore, as I sold it.
Likewise, my friendship with my old bandmates began to falter as time passed and we spoke less and less. I continuously told them I'll never be able to pursue it professionally again due to the cost and the fact that I'm poor, which I think was probably the hardest part of it. The point is that I've been through 35 states and I did what I did as a means to an end.
I've had fleeting moments where I've wanted to play hither and dither over the last 4 years, but they come and go, nothing really sticks that compels me to go back to it like I used to.
It took me some time and some struggling to realize that just because I don't play music anymore doesn't mean I am any less creatively-minded. Rather, my mediums and outlets for it are just different than what they used to be.
Hawking Radiation, and Leonard Suskind's formal challenge to debate with Stephen Hawking in which Hawking conceded is what made me realize that, actually, and Stephen Hawking then had to rephrase/reformalize his theory for Hawking Radiation.
Originally, Hawking had argued that Black Holes eventually stop once they are full and that the remaining information ceases to exist. Suskind pointed out that that notion goes against one of the founding laws of physics, which is that information does not cease to exist, it simply changes form. And he demonstrated this once by dropping colored dye into a sink of water. After each drop the water rippled, and eventually that ripple will calm and cease to be visible to the human eye, but the information of that ripple is still resonating beyond that on molecular level and particle levels because of the law of physics which states that information does not cease to exist, it only changes form.
So I didn't stop being a creative, I just stopped being a musician. I'm still just as creative as I always have been, my outlets for that creativity are just different than what they used to be.
