5.21.10 – Stuck in place

I feel I’m continuing to have to fight to get out of the place others have stuck me in. It’s unfortunately natural to view people you know in a certain light and continue to want to see them the same way (i.e. the same style, the same profession, etc.). When I embarked on my early midlife crisis and left my career as a non-profit fundraiser, which I never consciously chose, to become what I always wanted to be – a filmmaker – I came up against resistance that I’m still experiencing.

At the time I made the leap, my therapist told me that I might not be able to maintain all of my friendships, as some of the people would have problems dealing with my changing life. Somehow I convinced myself that she was referring to my “normal” friends, not the artists I knew, assuming artists would understand what I was doing and be happy for me. It ended up being the reverse; many of the artists kept forwarding on fundraising jobs to me or not taking what I was doing seriously. I still feel this way among some of them and have had to let go of a number of what had become toxic relationships. It gets hard continuing to fight to get into the spot I was meant to be in.