443. Doubt Is Not As Powerful

According to most, her life isn’t going very well. She lives alone in a tiny apartment. She knows almost no one, except for a few close friends. She has no career that promises advancement. Money is always tight and she is unlikely to have more in the future.

She works constantly, an astonishing number of hours, almost every day. She has been doing so for years. It goes without saying that her efforts do not bring in much money. She reminds herself that this is just part of what it is to be an artist. Isolation and poverty are the cost of doing what she does.

She doesn’t judge herself as harshly as others do. She knows she is doing something important, even if they can’t see it. At the same time, she knows she isn’t all that special. She knows this because if she were, she would have found some recognition by now. But her work is still largely ignored.

The importance of her art is not found in its social value or anything of the sort. It is important because she knows she must do it. She must create the things she creates because there is nowhere else for them to be made. The idea that she could simply do something else feels impossible in the face of such necessity.

It’s this sense of necessity that pushes her forward, despite the doubts she has. And there are always doubts. Almost every day she doubts something about herself, her life, or her art. Still, she always ends up pushing herself forward because that feeling of necessity always returns. She knows she absolutely must do this.

There is no point in analyzing the pros and cons of her chosen life because it is not really chosen. This is the only path she can take, the one she must take. At the same time, she also understands that she does choose it. She chooses it even though she would probably be more comfortable doing something else.

Sometimes she doubts herself so much that she begins to doubt everything, including her deepest feelings. But even then, doubt does not win. Even then, she finds a way to keep going, to keep imagining and creating. In the end, doubt is not as powerful as it seems.