Life and work and writing have forced me to pause on the breast beatings about my mom and the continuation of the story of the story that I’m working on—but something I read this morning has prompted me to interrupt for a sidebar.
Every now and then I check in at Alyson B. Stanfield’s Art Biz Blog. She concentrates on visual arts, but I like her go-do-it-ness and much of her commentary applies regardless of creative pursuit.
This morning she posed a question that made me laugh:
What do you wish you would have done differently before the recession hit that would put you in better standing right now?
In my case the answer is pretty much “everything.” Everything that I’ve done in the past year-plus has been a bad idea from a financial point of view. Across the board, Bad Idea.
But in starting to respond to her question, I came to realize that despite every stupid, foolhardy decision that I have made since May 2007 that has made our financial lives difficult, I don’t regret any of them. I regret a few mistakes that were genuine mistakes, errors made that ended up costing us more; but as far as conscious decisions made that have affected our standing goes, I can’t regret any of them.
As I mentioned in my response, pre-bad economy, I spent a little over a year chasing a dead band around and working on a project that cost me a small bundle in both money and time. But it made a lot of people happy all around the world, and it made me happy. I traveled, made new friends, gained new experiences, and now I’m pursuing a new creative direction that I never would have had the guts to take. Those experiences cost a lot—even pre-economic downturn they cost a lot—and weren’t the most clear-minded things to have done.
But they also changed my life.
Not in one of those “oh my god, I’ll never wash my hand again” ways; not in one of those “I swear that from now on I’ll do X” resolution ways. As a result of the last couple of years, my life’s whole direction has changed. My mother’s death was a contributing factor in getting that ball rolling, and a dead band and a flag gave that ball somewhere to go. Every decision made that had a negative effect on our checkbook also had a positive effect in maneuvering my life in a new direction.
Over the past few months following the end of the Police tour, a lot of friends who were wrapped up in the tour have lamented how they have had to go back to their normal lives. And while I miss the excitement and the music and the travel, I haven’t suffered the depression or deflation that a lot of my friends have.
Part of it probably has to do with this writing project of mine, which involves reviewing and (in a way) reliving much of that time that others now miss. But what I hadn’t really realized until now is that, unlike most of my Police friends, my life didn’t return to normal. With the tour my life took a sharp turn, then another, then another, and has been zigzagging in strange ways ever since. My friends have gone back to their normal lives; the band has gone back to their normal lives; but my return to normal is to a whole new brand of normal. The everyday life of the Husband and the making of dinner and the dropping of packages at the post office has remained the same, but the things that I concentrate on and stress over now are enormously different than they once were.
Without question, Husband and I would be in a much more stable position financially had it not been for that one anomalous year—had I saved instead of spent, stuck with a stable job rather than worked on that project and decided to pursue writing, traveled less and earned more. I’ve done some stupid stuff.
But I don’t wish I had done anything differently. I should, but I don’t. The economy sucks, I’m sick of eating beans, my brain has been spinning for weeks, and I fear that this book that I’m writing will remaining theoretical forever.
But stupid as it may sound, I feel pretty good.
