Balance

Growing up, I was taught the ideal of the "well-balanced" person.  It was important to eat well, get regular exercise, and sleep at least eight hours a night.  Playing sports was rewarded.  The well-rounded person was smart, too.  We were expected to read and write and to maintain an academic excellence.  Our education was divided into disciplines, and each day we learned history, geology, math, biology, physical science, astronomy, etc.  We were instructed to be clean and well-groomed.

What happened to all that?  I can't find where that is promoted any longer.  Certainly not in the work place.  My job is designed to make me sick, out of balance.  I am not given the time nor the resources I need to be "well-balanced."  The food they serve at the factory is designed to make me sick while lining the pockets of a corporation with a benign name.  They expect me to be there early and to stay late.  There is not talk of long walks nor bike rides nor exercise of any kind.  Leaving the factory, I think, one needs to be exhausted to have satisfied all the requirements.  At least, that is how people talk.  People speak in joking tones about the heaviness of their workloads.  Insane work loads.  And then they revel in the fact that they put in long, loathsome hours and got it accomplished.

What happened to all those high ideals?

So I continue to squeeze what life I have left into the margins of hours.  After I take my tired psyche and its carrier carcass to the gym, I try to both consume and produce art and literature.  I am nuts, of course.  And I feel a deep sense of failure and guilt most of the time.

Last night, for example, after the gym, I went to the studio to try producing another encaustic.  I wanted to try something and didn't know if it would work, but there was only one way to know.  Having already prepared the boards, I waxed them and let them cool, and then torched them smooth.  Then I attached an image I wanted to transfer over the entire surface.  I tried, but it was maddeningly slow, and in the end, there were too many tears and rents in the image.  Those hours weren't wasted exactly, for it was necessary for me to learn the materials, learn what I can and can't do, but they were in a material sense unproductive.  I packed up my gear and went home to shower and eat a very late meal.  But I was too tired and didn't want to cook.  So I snacked a bit and the liquor hit me hard.

A bad night's sleep, and now I must do it all again.  Poorly.

In contrast, the fellow with the studio across the way has a wife who makes websites for companies.  She works from home.  And she is doing well.  He is a full-time artist.  He comes to the studio in the late morning and and begins making things.  He goes to lunch with other artists and then comes back to the studio.  He talks to gallery owners, book publishers, and fills out applications for juried shows.  Sometimes he takes his work to one and comes home with thousands of dollars.  When he was working as in photography, he made large, mosaic Polaroid transfer pieces, some of which were bought up and included in the Polaroid Permanent Collection.  Then he switched to working in encaustic, huge pieces that were bought up by corporations and hotels for display in their giant lobbies.  Now he has decided that he will work in glass and has bought a large kiln (or whatever the thing that cooks glass is called).

When I come to the studio, he is working or thinking or talking on the phone.  He is in t-shirts and shorts.  He shows me what he is working on or what he has done.  Lately, we've been looking at the things that I've fucked up.  And I think, "What if I had the time to. . . ."

I want to be well-rounded again.

But not today, I guess.  I am nervous and late.  I have to hurry up and get to the factory.