UNCERTAINTY

UNCERTAINTY

As well as once being asked by my Irish psychotherapist of that time, “Are you Catholic?” (apparently because she thought I pretty much had a PhD in guilt), I’ve also expended a lot of energy attempting to exercise control left, right and centre, which if it only applied to the parts of my life that I can actually control (very little of course), would kinda be OK. 

But the attempts at control have extended far into the majority area – that area being all the elements over which we have no control whatsoever. And when that has  happened, it definitely became a problem. 

It boiled down to me attempting to create certainty, because hitherto uncertainty had meant bad things could happen. Which was sometimes true, sometimes bad things did happen, a point that my trusty inner critic would happily relay to me over and over again. But conversely, sometimes a future of uncertainty offered up exciting opportunities. The opportunities specifically only arose because of the uncertain nature of the future.

Now I feel more able to quieten the inner critic through reminding it of the brilliant opportunities that have arisen as if out of an uncertain nowhere, and can also be clear with myself that the opportunities didn’t arrive entirely spontaneously, they arrived as a result of a bit of considered direction combined with a will to give that direction a go, all while the inner critic wanged on advising not to do it.

So things have changed quite a bit – I put more effort into thinking about my direction of travel than I do about the uncertain outcome of going in that direction. It feels like a much more positive way to be, even when the decision making on that direction can take its own sweet time to become clear. At those times (which happen a lot), I remind myself that as an artist I have the hard evidence of where the inevitably uncertain outcome is the opportunity - the best things I’ve produced (as remarked upon by more than just myself) have been those pieces where uncertainty became reframed as opportunity via direction and the creative process.

Jem