The Light Was Dim

This expanded iteration of I Owe It to Myself is a chronicle of what I was feeling in real time in July 2024. I was a little more than a month out from my debut solo show, which I hosted in our home. I was five months removed from leaving my job as a director of global learning and development to pursue my art career full-time.

I had never felt more sure that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. I was walking in alignment. But I've never been as good at keeping money as I was at making it, and I was learning the hard way that a sustainable art career was a long way off for me. I was spending money much faster than it was coming in.

In those days, I felt locked into my art practice in a way I never had before. Having a daily practice that fed more than the superficial let me tap into different parts of myself. The intrapersonal work I was doing led me to see a psychologist and get evaluated.

Getting a formal ADHD diagnosis, and getting medicated for it, was incredibly important for healing my nervous system. For the first time in my entire life, I knew what it was like to be emotionally regulated. To operate from a baseline of stability.

That stability let me finally put together what I'd learned in therapy with the insights, techniques, and understanding I'd learned from my wife. Her understanding of systems and interpersonal relationships has been invaluable in helping me understand myself, and the role I play in relationship to other people and the world around me.

But as all of that came together, the financial reality of living in Northwest Washington, DC couldn't be ignored. To bring in even a little money, I was teaching art to kids at summer camps across the city. When I wasn't teaching or creating for the show, I was applying for jobs. Between May and August, I applied to more than 200 of them. I know because I tracked every application in an Excel file.

That financial distress, with no clear direction in sight, is why I called it The Light Was Dim. Being aligned with my creative self felt like a spark, a light that had been missing. But with my bank account overdrafted by $1,000 for a month, it felt like the walls were closing in. I knew I had to get a job, at least for the time being. And I was terrified a job would extinguish the light.