Finally Showing Up

I wrote my first post for this blog more than five months ago. I did not show up for this blog, but I'm showing up now!

Reasons why I haven't posted in awhile: I've been living in London, enjoying the ability to travel and I've been working on my own writing. I've also been helping the London affiliate of a terrific organization called Dress for Success.

This past weekend I traveled to Amsterdam and visited the Van Gogh Museum. The museum boasts a collection of over 200 paintings and more than 700 letters by Van Gogh (most of them written to his brother Theo and to the painter Paul Gauguin). What struck me more than ever was Van Gogh's very real and deeply felt self doubt over his talent as an artist. He really believed he was producing crap most of the time. And just as he began pushing himself as a painter, using brighter colors and choosing subjects that he cared about--he killed himself.

He truly was The Tortured Artist. Walking past canvases vivid with sunflowers and city landscapes, I couldn't help but think about how often the plight of the artist coincides with a writer's own journey. Often, we think we are total excrement and we abandon our pure, honest talent for things we feel might sell or be more marketable.

While Van Gogh was living in Paris, he began to paint cherry trees because he thought they would sell better than his other work. Alongside a vibrant, well observed depiction of his bedroom and those glorious sunflowers, the trees pale. They don't say anything other than to tell us Van Gogh was looking for immediate gratification--and that he felt the way many of us feel no matter what our profession. We're unsure of ourselves. We don't think we matter. We're not sure we'll make it.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have these feelings while wandering the Van Gogh Museum, but I was genuinely moved and I think the experience will be with me for quite some time.