Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Follow-up two

In reply to a previous post 'anonymous' (and I have no idea whatsoever who this might be) wrote:

"You do a great many things on your laptop that required focus and self discipline, including learning photoshop rather well.
Is it possible that you have self discipline and that what you lack is the faith in yourself and belief that you can do well?

"I'll guess that you say to yourself that you're no DiVinci, Einstein, Freud, Marx, Newton, whoever and conclude "why try?".

"Myth.

"Logically insupportable conclusion.

"The world does not need a knockoff DiVinci. The world might well need an original Mike Carpenter.

"An artist is very rarely the best judge of his own work. You cannot be objective about yourself; it is only possible for you to be subjective about Mike Carpenter. Give it up.

"While you may not meet your own standards of perfection, I feel sure you are capable of good, excellent and/or superior."


I don't think much about the great minds of history. Mostly it's people I know.

When I worked in television, I was mostly around, to be honest, people whose goal in life was to be superficial and vapid, and they had succeeded.

I think I avoided artists and creative types in part because I didn't want to be constantly reminded that I had not done what they had done.

Now, in my AARP years, I'm hanging around with people who think more like I do, but everywhere I look, I'm reminded that it was within my reach to do more.

I have about decided there's no such things as laziness – if one wishes to define lazy as lacking effort or care. I think people who seem to show a lack of effort have probably just used up all their effort on stuff others don't see.

It was late in life, for example, when I realized that while I was very good at some things most people found difficult, there were a lot of basic life skills that others took for granted that I found very challenging. I didn't realize they were so much easier for others –– I thought everyone worked as hard at them as I did. I used up, and still use, a lot of personal effort to do small things that the average person does with much less effort.

4 comments:

mcarp said...

This is mcarp, posting a comment emailed by soartstar which I think belongs with this item:

————————————————————

Even though we might have an extra challenge using our gifts, we do save time not watching the reality survival shows--been there, done that.

I'm not so sure it's a lack of self-discipline, but chronic depression that robs us. You're right about it taking a lot of energy to do things others seem to do with ease. They're usually not fighting brain chemistry. The good news is: At least we got something to write about or we can connect the dots on our scars and see what it looks like.

Awe yes, the spiritual benefits of a painful childhood. Might as well make art because there is no lost and found, no then and now, no judge or jury, it's all energy vibrating like a scared Chihuahua in a box with Schrodinger's cat.

I think it's time for icecream. Some days thats all I can scoop up and swallow, and since I don't know what matters, butterfly flapping its wings and all, I just try to be open to the grace as I find it.

And I take my meds.

mcarp said...

By the way, that's not you, I don't think. It's blogger.com, which seems to often be recalcitrant.

mcarp said...

By the way, I mean that if you can't post a comment -- like the thing just sits there and doesn't do anything -- that's blogger misbehaving.

Anonymous said...

I know I sound like a broken record and I must say that soartstar says it much better than I ever could. I do know that children who have a really rotten childhood tend to have more depression. That is something that you cannot fix....but the depression you can. I take my meds and it keeps me from crying everyday. I don't cry at sad movies anymore, but that is a small price to pay.