A Punch to the Solar Plexus

As I trawl the internet in the library, I tap in a search for artists in the Scottish Highlands. The results come back with Shelagh Swanson (see links). Wow! I knew her at school! I click through her website, and am flabbergasted by her work. It's fantastic. I am so impressed.

And there's another, stronger emotion flooding my insides. I'm not sure what it is. It feels almost like a punch to the solar plexus, my heart is beating rapidly, and my head is almost spinning. For goodness sake, what is this?! It could almost be... Panic? Regret? It's a realisation that the things I privately dreamed of, but put away as childish, unrealistic, or not practical - they're do-able. Not only that, but real people out there are doing them.

An empty, hollow discomfort niggles me as I walk back home for lunch. She's living my dream. The dream I packed up in a box, and shelved for a myriad of reasons. The force of the emotion I'm feeling surprises me. I thought I'd made my peace with my decision, such as it was, made by a daft 17 year old in the throes of a slightly late teenage angst. Not to go to Art School, or to pursue other creative avenues. I had a whole raft of explanations and justifications for it - good, genuine, true and accurate all of them.

• If it was meant to be, I'd have got my arse in gear and done my portfolio instead of mooning about, getting drunk, and going off to do other things.
• If it was something I'd truly wanted to do, I'd be doing my own creative work, regularly, in my own time. And most of the time, I'm not. So I clearly don't have the dedication for it.
• I probably don't have the talent for it either. Sure I was good at school, but that's 'big-fish, small-pond' stuff. I'm probably rather mediocre, and thinking otherwise is embarrassing, and has the potential to be humiliating.
• It's just as well I didn't, because there's no jobs in it. It's not realistic to think I could've made a living out of it.
• I love many of the things I've done instead - languages, travel, teaching, health.
• There's a future to think of, hopefully involving settling down and having a family one day. That'll make home ownership, pensions, security so much more important. So I can't go swanning off on half-baked plans to follow dreams of art, or whatever else.

There, see, loads of good reasons. So, why the emotional upheaval? Is it the realisation that all the negative, pragmatic and 'realistic' voices I've listened to weren't necessarily right. I did give in and accept, at some point, the message that I should put away the childish arty-farty nonsense, and buckle down to a real job. That there was no future in anything I might dream of. Shelagh's website makes me realise - that wasn't necessarily true.

But then, seeing Shelagh's website has shown me that it's possible! I've not missed any boats, and it's not too late. Everything I've done in the meantime isn't wasted, because for all that I have found myself buckling to expectations and trapped in wage-slavery at times... other times I've done the right things that I've been passionate about. I can develop those things, enrich them. I feel a fizzy rush of excitement. Adrenalin. I visualise fragments of my dream life, and I see they're all do-able.

Living and working close to the outdoors.
Running, walking, hiking, cycling lots.
Being largely self-employed and self-directed. A life of late nights and early mornings, working hours fuelled by passion, discovery, creativity.
High intensity stints of work, followed by periods for travel and meandering.
Being part of a community and network of people with similar passions and principals.

It might well be 'unrealistic' but its worth striving for.