ManicDDaily

Bridge over River Kwai (Sort of)

I’ve written a lot on this blog about creativity and stress, and also about just plain stress. I’ve also written a fair amount about rhyme.  But what about something that rhymes with stress (sort of)?

Success!  (TaDa!)

Some people consider stress and success as opposite sides of the coin; some (particularly those who have good physical health) even seem to believe that success—I mean here, financial success, or, its great proxy in our culture, fame—will solve major problems.  We all know this isn’t really true;  we all know many successful people who are neither relaxed nor happy.   Still, if you are a creative person, success can feel like one sure way to reduce stress, especially if it means that you no longer need to hold onto your “day job”  and can, instead, devote your energies totally to your creative/artistic endeavors.

It’s certainly true that time, as well as acknowledgement, interest, praise, are great goads to creativity.  But if you do not have success, there are a few compensatory factors which it may help to keep in mind–factors other than a sense of martyrdom and/or the illusion that truly original art is never recognized in its time.

First, of all, day jobs (other than, perhaps, those that involve the postal service), often keep people sane. They tend to get you out of the house (unless you are a housekeeper), put roses on your cheeks (unless you are an office worker), keep your feet on the ground (unless you work for the airlines.)  Most people’s “day jobs” also involve some accommodation of others on a relatively frequent basis.  This interaction with people makes one more human (if more frustrated), and (unless you work for an investment bank) less grandiose.   The skepticism, impatience, and sometimes downright contempt, of co-workers, customers, students, can promote deep self-examination, always a useful pastime for the artistic.

Creative work, on the other hand, is often both solitary and unstructured, which can lead to real head-aches by late afternoon when you either simply have to (i) stop working, or (ii) get working.

Moreover, while a day job may involve a certain amount of self-discipline (i.e. getting there), it often (once you’ve held it for a while) requires little self-promotion.  Achieving and then maintaining even a modest artistic success, in contrast, seem to require vigilant self-aggrandizement; the image must be burnished; the door to opportunity propped open; staleness stubbornly refuted.   While the embarrassing failures of the unsuccessful can just sink into oblivion, the failures of the successful are known and mocked by all.  (Note, in this regard, Sex in the City 2. Even someone like me, who has never seen a single Sex in the City show ever, is making fun of it).

All of which goes to say (as was said in The Bridge Over the River Kwai, a really great film about the conflicted nature of achievement), be happy in your work.  Be glad of what you don’t have (yet.)