No More Starving Artist

    I thought I knew so many things

    

    I wanted to share a few

    Before, back then, I had some ideas and hopes

    They did not sprout into fruitful seeds

    My sowing and planting were perhaps laid in wrong rows and furrows

    Perhaps I dropped a few seeds and bulbs in some hopeful way, thinking positively in their futures,

    While these little buds of promising life were actually being tossed into swamps and streams

    Places where the seed had no chance to take purchase and purpose 

    Where there was no realistic way to actually grow the fruit

    Of the germinating plants and flowers

    We can be starving artists.

    Full of sound of fury, like Shakespeare's character quotes, signifying nothing.

    Is it all that bleak?

    No, for most of us, not entirely. We are not that forlorn and stunted.

    At least in the living, breathing world of our shared existence, we move on.

    The art and craft may not bloom, but our organs and cells move on...

    Many, or even most, work and succeed in some fields of profession,

    We work, and make money, and pay bills,

    We date, and most of us marry, and most of us beget offspring

    We love them: our babies, growing into little persons, and then they become adults!

    Our contemporaries.

    The big world of big people in which we find ourselves

    We live in environments of hard workers and successful achievers, and others not so blessed

    Some of us can be less ambitious

    Lazy, or not quite good enough, to be included among the best and brightest

    The wealthiest, or the economically comfortable, many work harder than the rest of us.

    They study hard, they prepare well, they train and accomplish great things

    They become financially stable, or better, and do all the things that successful folks do.

    Some of us can be jealous, or resentful, or worried, because we feel we will be left out. 

    We may be among the poor, if not now into the future. We might have a harder future, as we become more aged,

 

as we see some do as the years gather around us, creating health obstacles and concerns.

    And that is only about money (and health)! What about the other ways that us starving, would-be not quite artists

    Can be sowing frustration, fear, and dread

    Instead of happiness and joy?

    Real concerns, real worries.

    Sour grapes disclaimer: We cannot complain too much: those of us who do not achieve our higher hopes and dreams.

    We are the marginal artists.

    We look and feel without real inputs or outcomes.

    Perhaps we slowly starve, us non-budding artists.

    We must continue to work and create.