What To Do When You’re an Artist and You Feel Like Sh*t
Way back in 2013, I googled “self-esteem” and here’s what I got from a site called Psych Central:
Have you wondered about what self-esteem is and how to get more of it? Do you think your self-esteem is low? Do you know how to tell? Do you know what to do about it?
We’ve been gnawing on this bone for a long time. Writers have churned out mountains of books and articles on self-esteem. It’s made careers and filled thousands of therapy hours. Television heads and bloggers have droned on about it. Torrents of anxieties and adorations, they all whirlpool around the holy grail of liking ourselves more.
But for all the wringing of hands, the burning of cash, the talking and the toil… the search has come a cropper. People aren’t wiser or happier for it. Except for maybe the advice peddlers. They’re richer anyway.
But what about artists? Now there’s a career where getting your self-esteem pummelled is pretty well the norm. When artists aren’t being ignored completely, they get steady parades of rejection notices. Aside from those, the attention you do get — unless you’re a commercial success (not many of those) — often takes the form of rancorous questions and insinuations about the utility, if not very point, of what you’re doing. And speaking of money, unless you chose your…
