This morning, I watched the wonderful documentary "Exit Through the Gift Shop." For those who don't know, it's a movie that is both about graffiti artist Banksy and a goofy, lovable Frenchman from L.A. who films him and many other street artists. The latter then tries to become a street artist himself.
This movie inspired me to change my life. Everything in the movie is pure passion -- people are just churning tons of energy into their art. Not to become famous or to make money, but simply because it's their reason for existence. I am primarily a writer and consider myself to be an artist, but I have neglected the creative part of my life for years. Especially during this time. Watching this movie, I realized that plugging into my art would be a fantastic way to pull myself out of the hole that I'm in.
I have spent four months in the fall-out of my sitch. Every day since, I have obsessed about either my W or the sitch in general for at least a half hour. Sometimes many hours. I have devoured literature on relationships, poured hours into prayer, and surfed the internet for information on infidelity and R/M break-down. I understand it to be a normal response, and much of the information that I've found has been incredibly helpful, but I realize that it has come to the point where I'm just spinning my wheels, digging myself deeper, going nowhere.
Watching "Exit," I realized that I've been wasting tons of my energy focusing on my sitch when it does no good but makes me depressed, angry, and hopeless. I'd much rather pour that raw energy into art and expression. I imagine it would be incredibly cathartic and give me a new reason to be. I would become an artist with a purpose rather than somebody waiting around for his old life to come back into being. That life is dead. Time for a new life, with or without my W.
In addition, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is coming up in about a week. I did it last year and had a blast. No better way to kick off this new version of me than November. Plus, there will be local meet-ups of authors. A pretty good way to meet people like myself and GAL, I think.
