Barriers.

I think I talk around this topic a fair bit, but I feel like writing this out. I guess maybe there's a reason I write about it so much....

There are a lot of things that I love to do. And that I'm good at doing. Like music; playing it, writing it, singing, that sort of thing. Speaking, I'm good at doing that - getting up in front of a crowd and presenting, even at basically no notice. Acting; plays, musicals, love 'em. I've done some screen work too, but it's really not the same. Writing - I mean, that's what I'm doing now. It's what I do with music, what I used to do with stories (I really can't remember the last time I wrote a story, it might have been back in uni), what I do sometimes with poetry, what I've tried a couple of times with theatre. I also love things like cooking, and languages, and board games, and hiking, and camping, and puzzles, and reading, and more, but I'm not quite as good at those things; or maybe they're a bit aside from the main point I'm making. Anyway.

Every now and then, I have brief moments where I'll get to do one or more of these things for people. Sometimes that's just sitting down to play a song to somebody; sometimes it's doing a Sydney Fringe show; sometimes that's getting up and doing a dramatic reading of something; sometimes it's doing an audition; sometimes it's people reading something I've written. And people will go, "hey, that's good!" Depending on the person, there might even be some surprise there, like, "where did that come from?" Sometimes it's more like, "we need to see more of this!" Either way, it's.....like, it's nice, of course. It's good to hear that people love it, and think I'm good at these things. But I've known that for a long time. These things are - they're what I was made to do. This is what brings me life, brings me joy. (I mean, not the only things; spending time with other people is a notable other thing that also does it, but I've talked about that in other places.) This is what I want to spend my time and energy on.

But, for multiple reasons, I don't. Or I can't.

Part of that is capitalism. All of these are things that it is very hard to get paid to do. You need to have been doing something for a long time, or know people, and also be very lucky. You need to be able to focus on this one thing with most of what you have. Spoilers, I'm ADHD, that's not happening. My brain just doesn't work that way.

I remember when I was younger, I used to write like crazy. I would be writing songs all the time, it felt like every other day. Some people might know that I've written over 250 songs. At least 200 of those are from just my time in uni and high school. But then; work happened. Most of my time, most of my energy, were out the door. I didn't have space to create with. I had become burnt out by the world; and that's been true to varying degrees for my entire working life, I think. The first year after uni, I wrote one song the whole year. It was about feeling like I was being crushed by the weight of the world, and the weight of work; Atlas.

And in this world, you can't just not work. Not if you want to be a part of the world. You want a roof over your head, you want to have food, to have water, to have electricity, a warm bed, clothes? Then get to work. How dare you think that those are basic rights, that should be free to all people..... If you can't get paid doing what you love, and you can't not get paid, it doesn't leave you with many options.

So yes. I would love to finish the queer faith musical I've been working on. I'd love to get Rainbow Religion out there more. I'd love to write the next show. I'd love to be performing more, be back on stage again, have more people hearing my music. But I'm tired. I'm burnt out. My brain isn't giving me ideas any more, most of the time. And even with what I do have, getting it out there is hard. I have to fight against burnout, I have to fight against being ADHD and autistic, I have to fight against the busyness of life. A lot of the time, I just don't have the energy for that. And so, nothing happens. I wish that wasn't true. But it is.

The other hard part about that, though - is that because I'm not doing these things as much, I'm getting drained even more. I'm losing energy faster. And I feel like the time that I have is wasted. Because I'm spending it doing other things, that feel like they don't really matter that much (read: work), rather than what I love to do and am good at doing. I have to try and not think about it too much, because it gets me feeling very depressed and hopeless and down and shitty and emotional very very quickly. It makes me literally feel like I'm wasting vast chunks of my time, just throwing it into a black hole; and that there's so much of my life that I just haven't lived. (Again, this is mainly me talking about work stuff; time with people is still great and good and helpful.) And yeah. That's hard. And I don't really know what I can do about it. But that's where I'm at. And where I've been at for a while.