It's OK to Not Make Anything

At the craft store a woman with gray in her hair who looked maybe late 30s or early 40s approached me, asking “You look familiar?” “I draw comics...” I offered and it was like a dam broke as she told me she’d been following my work “for decades” and how she’d been pursuing a degree in... something. Something smart and hard and that would land her a steady middle class job, but I don’t remember what now. But then she had a heart attack and now her body can’t keep up with what she used to be able to do, now she’s on disability and works at a movie theater and she buys the supplies to make art at home but then when it's time she sits there looking at them and she just... can’t. She just can’t make herself make art now. She told me a word that means one doesn't feel happiness and broke down the etymology of it, but, again, I don't remember it now. 

She apologized for revealing so much about herself, she looked surprised she'd done it, and I tried to reassure her that it's ok, I understand-- I mean, I can't understand her personal experience, but I understand what it's like to come home from work and sit there staring at your supplies and feel no joy because you're just... you're done. You've got no juice left in you. You used it all up getting dressed and going to work and keeping yourself alive and now you're just. You're done. You're fucking done. 

I post lots of pictures of my projects, I told her, but I'm not actually always working on them every day. 

A lot of days, I come home and I'm out of juice. I mean, I'm really out of juice. And all I can do is sit down on the couch and look at my supplies and I just can't. I can't. I sit there and I hate myself or I feel numb or I feel like my head is full of angry hornets or I feel like I just fundamentally cannot feel happiness and it's taking all I have just to get up and go to work and stay alive. I don't post photos of that. 

I wish I'd had time to tell her it's ok to not make anything when you don't have the juice. It's a message I've been working on telling myself, instead of the usual guilt and anger I feel at myself for failing, once again. It's ok to be out of juice, it's unavoidable, it's life. Sometimes getting up and going to work and staying alive is all you can do and those are monumental responsibilities that take up all your resources and that is so fucking legit.  That is making something, to me. That's an accomplishment. That's art. 

Obviously, being told "it's ok to not making anything when you're out of juice" isn't going to cure anyone's depression, not her's and not mine. I wish our society had better healthcare. I wish we had better treatment for mental illness and resources for people with disabilities. I wish our society took care of its people, I wish we provided a better quality of life to those who can't afford to buy it on their own. It's all so enormously complex and I am so small and broken.   All I can offer is my reassurance that it really, truly, is ok to not make anything when you're out of juice, it's ok to just keep yourself alive right now, you're doing enough by being here.