Lost in the Chaos

"Chaos" ©CherieElaine2017

There exists a wicked war, fought between living as a starving artist and starving the artist. Another between serving and doing. I am a warrior fighting in both battles.

Two things I am passionate about: Loving the unlovable, and nurturing creativity. Sometimes the two passions compliment one another, other times they collide. At all times, they are at the core of who I am.

Once upon a time, a pen and paper and a camera traveled once a week or so to forests and mountains where creation poured into my spirit, and when my cup was full, flowed over into others in the form of stories and photographs.

Loving the unlovable oftentimes means people I know, but many times means people I don't know. In both cases, it means serving the hurting and hopeless.

Not long ago, I was employed part-time in Boulder, Colorado. It is a town that fuels my being. Art is everywhere. It is an eclectic society. It was a place where I felt completely at ease with who I was. I met beautiful people there. I had many opportunities to extend kindness to the masses that few are kind to. I made friends who are living as pieces of art themselves, manifesting their abilities while encouraging others.

My part-time job gave me some consistent income while I waited for art to be enough to support me.

It wasn't enough. I knew I was going to have to choose to work full-time. It meant reaching for a promotion, but leaving the town I had grown so comfortable in and the people I worked with and those strangers that I had developed such a fondness for.

I meant becoming a suit.

I like my new position. I like the people I work with and for. Its just different. And I'm tired. I'm tired because its different, not because its harder. The learning is exhausting. And although I'm still serving people, it is a different kind of serving. They aren't unlovable. Okay, so yes, some of them are very unlovable. Most of them just need a job done for them and its my job to do it. I get to solve problems, but I don't get to love them.

My artist me is feeling left out. She is screaming. I look west as I drives to work and crave being in the mountains I see in the distance. For an hour to, and another from work, I am wishing I were elsewhere. While I am there, I am busy. Happy. Learning. Meeting new people. Getting to know my coworkers. But I'm also tired. The drive perhaps. Not enough fresh air. Not enough......rest or freedom. Its new.

Its chaos. I feel out of control somehow, even though I am working very set hours in a controlled environment. I feel the work is owning me, and the passions are failing, diminishing.

Last week I took a couple of days off to be with my dad at the hospital while he had some tests done. One wall of the waiting area was all glass with a fireplace feature built into it. The opposing wall, also glass, was lined with windows. The reflections and mirrored images in the glass somehow made me think that was the state my heart was in. Reflections of who I want to be, bouncing off the surface of who I am being.

I felt lost in the chaos. The photo above is the image of what I was looking into.

As I sit here tonight, putting words and meaning together with that photograph, I realize that my creative, serving heart is going to have to be creative in finding a new way to serve. Its different now.

I am mourning the eleven months I had in Boulder. I am celebrating the new life I'm building at my new location. And I'm confused about how to be all of the elements of myself in it.

I love the images in the photograph. Its intriguing and colorful and full of different elements all contained in one room. And it encourages me. I am not lost in the chaos at all. I am just in the midst of many different elements all contained in my one being. And I have to learn to fuel the flame that keeps the color constant.

The fire within, that creates. The colors that collide to make one image, just as the people I've loved and served all mesh into one population. It is seeking a new way, making a new plan, organizing the organized so that it is just a little bit gypsy. Finding my way, committing to my purpose. To love. To create. To serve.