Crashbox

One of the most difficult balances in life has to do with the strain that exists between duty and proper leisure, particularly the leisure that is creative. For most of us, the responsibilities that are part of our own personal lives encompasses enough to keep us perpetually busy if we let them; but to allow that would, of course, be a great tragedy. What of good books, sketching, walking, thinking? What of the cultivation of the mind, the solace in creativity, prayer?
Perhaps part of the reason I find this to be a dilemma is that at my current stage in life I have many aspirations that require an amount of time and freedom that are not usually available to the normal working person---I want to be 'settled' with a house, work a job that I am at least reasonably satisfied with, and I want to be living in a location with the intention of staying there for the foreseeable future; I want to put down roots: something I have never experienced, even as a child. I also want to finish my graphic novel, write comics, publish my children's stories, read an innumerable list of books, actually work at becoming better artist---how can all this and more fit within one (happily married and children-ed) person's realm of waking hours? There are only so many directions you can go at one time. Seems an impossible balance sometimes---still, there are always ways to make room for what you really care about.
The most interesting part of all this is how a person's own perspective changes constantly, and the importance you place on your various desires and pursuits wheels constantly across the whole spectrum of possibilities, often opening up new previously un-thought-of areas of wonder. This is, however, one of the best parts of life: warding off stagnation and narrow-mindedness, when all those new and wonderful things that stir and affect you from day-to-day are rummaging continually through your soul, bringing so many profound and beautiful treasures to the front. I suppose that it is really a matter of a certain kind of creative discipline if you wish to preserve any of these moments. I suppose too that if the artist within has something to say that is important enough, it will be said eventually no matter what the circumstances.
After all, it isn't about being heard or recognized, it is about participation in a beauty and the description of some certain truth of which we are particularly aware of at that moment. And that is why the artist or writer will stay up all night even to the detriment of health and relationships just to struggle to put down to paper that ever elusive whisper of something he can't quite describe out loud...