#53 | purpose?
my friend told me about the concept of 'queer time' or queer temporality that illuminates how queer people's existence outside of institutions like marriage and reproduction can lead to a feeling of non-linear growth, which can be challenging. with birthrates and housing affordability dropping across the board, along with people generally breaking free from heteronormative expectations, I feel like a lot of people are 'queering' time.
I go through a lot of phases where I lack direction and purpose. I'm trying to recollect the things that have held me over the years. in the first couple years of college, I was so lonely and aching for something to pour myself into. back then, I coped by writing a lot of poetry and blogging and podcasting. as my career started to take off, I put most of my self-expression and meaning into that; sometimes I still do. during the pandemic, I did a lot of creative writing again, but mostly fanfiction. as my last relationship developed, my meaning became entwined with that of someone else.
I think love is a cheat code to meaning. you take good care of each other. it feels amazing to look after someone else and receive that love back. ideally, you keep your sense of self and continue to develop yourselves together—and we did. I got fit, fell more in love with cooking, took various art classes with her, watched dozens of movies. she encouraged me to write more and take up chinese classes. I encouraged her to play more basketball, do more sketching. now that we’ve broken up, I have to rediscover the role I want to play in the world. it was never just to love.
my default activity lately has been friends. friendships keep you afloat, but they can't answer questions for you about purpose and what makes you happy. at the end of the day, they don't know what will bring me fulfillment. the problem is that I don't really know, either. I have to learn by doing.
what have I learned so far?
- being in a restaurant is too stressful and intense for me.
- I enjoy having a positive effect on people, whether through service or creation
- I don't think I need a 'new' hobby. I thought about doing woodworking or chinese classes again, but that would only become burdensome.
light interests of mine:
- cooking, in a more casual context (a potential creative, lighter involvement role I found)
- volunteering with queer advocacy groups or queer archives
- writing
the only activity that has been with me most consistently is writing. this is obviously not a very thought-out example lol, but I do feel like I'm proud of my devotion to writing and storytelling. it's the one thing I can bring myself to accept compliments about: when people say I'm eloquent or good at putting thoughts into words. but the thing is, I don't know if I really want to "be a writer." when I was younger, yeah, I did. but now, I have negative interest in the idea of being a public figure. I'm a hobbyist; I'm focused on having fun while writing and caring less, in order to do it more consistently and freely express.
I don't always think about writing in the sense of sharing it with people, but I used to. when I was younger, I wrote a lot of poetry and openly shared it with friends; I did a few creative writing workshops and loved exchanging feedback and ideas with peers. I stopped sharing my writing with friends because eventually I overthought about how their perception of me would change. after all, everything I write about is so personal. I've never gravitated to fiction. this blog is just a quiet place to practice, and once in a while, sure, a coherent thought forms that I send to my closest friends, but it's not often, and due to the structure of bearblog, I know none of them are getting notified of my posts in their inbox.
though in some ways, that's just what making art is, isn't it? it's for you, and you only, and when the time is right, it can become for others. in Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, there's an artist who details her creative journey and how she was privately painting and studying the form in her spare time until someone saw her, noted that she was a painter, and gave her a chance—but when that chance came along, she was ready, with a body of work ready to put into an exhibition. things are about luck and money, but to a certain extent they're still about private devotion. to be creating and doing what makes you happy and building yourself up to be ready when the moment is right.
the problem is that I don't know what my medium or artistic practice really is. my friend applied to art school this cycle and told me she had to do a lot of self-reflection on her art in terms of the themes and media she gravitates toward. that's HARD! I like to write about my day-to-day and my feelings, I like to document conversations with friends, I like to take photos... the idiosyncrasies of daily life are what I'm interested in, but how to express all of that is hard. and lately everything is so numb numb numb. anyway idk what this post is really about, I'm just blabbing because I don't feel like I have a purpose right now and living is so exhausting lol. I know I'm a deeply devoted and passionate person, and that I'm actually pretty disciplined too! I just don't have an artistic vision, yet.