an artist’s way of living

sometimes i wonder if i was always a little too sensitive for this world. not in the “i cry at commercials” kind of way, but in the “i can’t walk into a room without sensing the emotional weather” kind of way. there are days i feel like i live just slightly to the left of everyone else—half in the real world, half in some imagined one, always half-a-beat behind in conversations because i’m still processing the texture of what someone just said. i used to think this meant something was wrong with me, that i was slow or distracted or emotionally inconvenient. but lately, i’ve started to see it differently. maybe that’s just what it means to live like an artist—not professionally, not aesthetically, but emotionally. maybe an artist’s way of living is simply a commitment to feeling everything a little more than you’re supposed to.

the artist’s life is not about painting or poetry, though it often spills into those things. it’s not even about creativity in the conventional sense. it’s about attention. it’s about allowing yourself to live life in detail. it’s about noticing the way shadows stretch across the kitchen table at 4:12 p.m., the way someone’s voice cracks when they’re trying not to cry, the way grief can sneak up on you at a supermarket, how joy often shows up uninvited in the middle of a disaster. it’s a soft, slow resistance to the numbing pace of the world. an artist’s way of living is about allowing life to touch you before you move on to the next thing. and that’s a dangerous game to play in a culture that rewards speed, productivity, and emotional convenience.