The Big Nothing
Picture this: Your book has been launched. Or your art exhibition. Or it’s the closing night of your show. Or you have finally put that design project to bed.
You are standing in a gallery or foyer or bar among a group of well-wishers, champagne glass in hand, accepting congratulations, slapping the backs of your co-creators, thanking people for their support, thanking people for even bothering to turn up because, before this evening, you nursed a private anxiety that no one would.
How do you feel? There’s a great sentence In Pride and Prejudice where Jane Austen writes of her heroine, Lizzie Bennett, who has just accepted a marriage proposal from the man that she loves and is feeling overcome, that she “rather knew that she was happy than felt herself to be so.” You look around your launch celebration or wrap party and know that things are OK – people are smiling, the booze is flowing, the AV equipment worked when it should have, and no-one has locked themselves in the toilet to cry. You may have even received good feedback about your creative project; people are being very nice and even your dad hasn’t said anything embarrassing yet. You know that things are good, right? You might not feel it because in between getting your creative project across the finishing line, event-managing this shindig, and surfing your exhaustion and / or adrenaline well enough to make coherent conversation with your co-creators and supporters, you haven’t had time to actually consider how you feel.
But things are going the way you planned and everywhere there is a happy buzzing of conversation and clink of glasses, so you know it’s all good. Right?
Now. If you’re anything like me, you’ll be able to picture this: You wake up the morning after. No hangover because you were too busy chatting to drink and, anyway, you didn’t want to make a fool of yourself so, physically, you feel fine apart from a strong sensation of exhaustion, which is hardly surprising given how hard you’ve been working the last few months.
As the subsequent hours and then days pass by the feeling of physical exhaustion is no surprise and, after a while, it does start to ebb. But you notice that you feel… weird. Flat. Jaded. Discombobulated. Out of sorts. Maybe a little tearful. Maybe a little cranky. It’s hard to focus or find enthusiasm and the world seems to be out of kilter, as if you’re viewing everyday life through a lens that is not quite in focus.
And this doesn’t make sense. Why are you feeling so yucky when your creative project is finally FINISHED and when, moreover, you have fielded some nice feedback about it. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you find some pleasure or contentment instead of slumping?
Welcome to The Big Nothing.
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