Personal Challenges are Personal Reasons (for action)
Why I want to undertake the Printer-Paper Challenge
Introduction: pt. 3
It may sound,
as if I am inviting others to participate. I am not.
However, I am not not inviting you either.
The challenge of clearing a ream of printer-paper, with drawings, has a personal significance to me. I won’t presume its status of import to the next person come upon it.
Inasmuch that it is possible to interact with what I’ve heard called, “a younger self”, or perhaps “the inner child”, I’d like to make an honest attempt with this effort, now, for the purpose, and if nothing else, but to “open a door” for that younger me to walk through into this moment, and integrate with the person I’ve become, as of this writing.
Then, perhaps the “both” of us may be granted a greater sense of completion after all.
Somehow it is conceivable to me that what was dreamed up by a younger me, but also proved too daunting for him, can be overcome and fulfilled by the one I happen to be currently.
It could be, in some sense, as if I were having my own back when no one else was.
In this way, whatever “damages” having inhibited otherwise wide-open potential could become clear still, and a greater quality of life may embolden us yet.
We shall see.
In a local sense, this challenge offers me the opportunity to draw and get clearer on that which still inhibits my ability. I look forward to addressing the many blindspots and weaknesses that hinder the overall result of my artistic efforts.
Doing so in a public way, by sharing the progress (whatever may come of it) is a component to this process that I feel may actually benefit me.
I have recently come to a place of greater openness when entertaining the possibility of actually having some degree of ADHD.
Among other tendencies, folks with this condition can actually thrive in intense situations, under pressure, and with high stakes or risks involved.
A commitment to exhibiting, in a public forum, the result of this process, which inevitably will include blunders and failures, and other unforeseen embarrassments, might in fact, check the box, albeit in a modest manner, of the aforementioned conditions of pressure, and subsequent advantage that it provides this type of disposition.
I have labored in the dark for some time now,
and believe one of the central challenges of working like this has been in the inevitable wrestling match with a voice inside me that says, “This isn’t important, no one cares, and no one wants to know.”
One must acquaint themselves with this voice if they wish to continue on, is what I have found. Although the idea that it gets easier isn’t totally full-proof either.
With each new day, we must climb the hill to get to where we would like to be.
Though because I am personally disposed to seeing the good logic in the words of that voice, whispering to me in the dark, I find myself in a situation, with some regularity, of having to sustain stubborn pursuit of something, beyond the aforementioned good reason, and thereby operating under total conviction that I am verifiably insane or worse, really stupid.
This, as one can imagine, keeps my spirits very high.
So high in fact, that I can just about all but manage to carry on,
very quietly in my labor,
in the dark,
and virtually removed.
As it has been, I’ve wondered if I could not manage then to play toward the possibility of greater ease, by placing this seemingly immovable process out of the dark and into the light so that a greater motivation to achieve better results may take the place of what preceded it -a circumstance, of lesser ideal to this man’s disposition.
Thank you for reading.
This has been the 3rd and final part of the Introduction to:
Printer-Paper Boy: My Introspective Journey Through the ‘Printer-Paper Challenge’ (That isn’t the official sub-title but could be for its effectiveness of description).
Part 1 briefly introduced the “Printer-Paper Challenge”, my commitment to completing it, and why printer-paper.
The 2nd part summarizes the other art-challenges that have existed before this one, and have subsequently informed my concept of “art-challenge”. I also describe the finer points of the “Printer-Paper Challenge”.