Is endurance enough?

No, clearly it is not. There are many other factors involved in creating something that others can enjoy. It does bruise my spirit to see others I know and respect, people I have shared creativity with, lose the thread and stop.

This has happened recently to a friend. He posted a lengthy set of words describing how he was leaving the world of the ‘author’ effective immediately and switching back to creating things in a style and manner much more suited to his preferences. He has multiple books published. He’s creative and has a vision for his work. His words have inspired me before… and he’s quit.

I think that’s a harsh word and sounds sharper than I mean it to. He’s changed back to creating in other media, not listing piles and piles of words and mashing them onto pages for others. He’s won awards in this other format, and bluntly I agree with the people who gave the awards. Fantastic work, but watching the walking away of a creative person stings a little.

Part of this might be me seeing parallels. Part of it might be that his word production out paces mine by an order of magnitude (or more). I simply don’t produce words at the pace he does, even when he believes they’re not landing. Part might be the reality that success at any level beyond your local circle of friends is astonishingly rare.

This is not the only bit I’ve noticed, but it worries me to approach the rest of it.

I’ve never been a person to indulge in ‘crisis’ activities. “Mid-life” implies an end point is known. There are so many things to do in this world, there are so many places to see and even people to meet that giving in and wallowing in bad feelings seems like time that could be better spent trying to do all those things. And yet.

Maybe it’s as simple as being a sign of age.

I was at a second hand book store and found a very nice looking collection of old game books. Being a lover of Dungeons and Dragons, it was my first instinct to pick them up and inspect them despite owning all these works twice over already. Clearly my first mistake. When I picked one up and opened the cover it had the name of a friend I hadn’t seen in a long time written inside. Admittedly, we’d lost touch over the past couple of years, but we gamed together. His smile and his characters and his enthusiasm were always a bright – sometimes to the point of being insufferable – spot in the game. Why would he, being of similar age and mindset give up these most prized of possessions from the past? I went in search of his contact information… only to find out that he had died and nobody had said anything to me about it.

I’m not going to claim some wrong doing or severed kinship here. This is not some odd missed connection internet story. It was just sad. I was sad that I hadn’t known. The certainty of never having those conversations again was a blow. I closed the cover and placed the book back on the shelf. I haven’t been back to that shop since then. I don’t want to dig into that chapter again.

More and more of my peers quit, fade away from the community we’ve had over the years or die. It is becoming more of a struggle, but one that I intend to continue. There is still so much to do and see and experience that I must go forward. I must do all the things. New goals will be set. New paths made to move ahead.

So I endure.