What it means to be human

Beyond anxiety. A poetics for my blog.

I love knowledge. I love art. I love knowing stuff about art.
I love interpretations, ideas, poetics. I love finding the bigger picture…

When I got the opportunity to do a PhD programme, I was very keen to start. As usual with big projects, after a while your enthusiasm fades away and you’re left with just enough motivation to help you get to the finish line. Some people even fall flat along the way or decide to take a completely different route in life. Not me… ‘I do not quit’, I told myself. — Instead: I got completely lost.

I had the road to a successful PhD planned out quite nicely. I could finally do what I always wanted to do: help fill knowledge/research gaps on a topic that I liked a lot. So I started diving into the theories, the artworks, the artists… Of course, I was new to it, but it wasn’t a bad start at all.
I worked together with very nice colleagues, who helped me a lot and gave some suggestions to make my work better. Needless to say, I was happy with those comments, because they made me learn a lot of things in a very short period of time. Nonetheless, the people I worked with kept helping me but at the same time they were protecting me against failure. After a while, I didn’t seem to contribute valuable things to the project.
First, I just had a bad, restless feeling during the meeting. Then the feeling stayed a bit longer. Then it came back at night, and after a short period of time, anxiety was my 24/7 travel companion.

I only realized I was anxious and uncertain when I had lost a big, self-assured part of me. Before I had questioned things because I wanted new points of view and new insights; now I questioned things because I was certain I was a failure and couldn’t come up with good ideas. Instead of questioning my work, I started questioning myself.
Realizing the cause of it all were the artworks and my disability to come up with a coherent and inspiring interpretation, I started not only hating my job, but art in general and myself as well. I felt as if I made the wrong choice. As if it just wasn’t meant to be and after a while I really wanted to quit.
I hated meaning making and interpretation and even thought about switching my PhD topic to something completely evidence based. So at least, I wouldn’t have to rely on myself and my subjective interpretations.

But then I realized: meaning is more than just an interpretation that’s coherent with earlier claims. An artwork can also mean something to me as a person and I can reflect on its meaning thinking what I want to take from it personally — be it something philosophical or just something that I think is beautiful. It can help me to reflect on what I value in life and on what it means to be human.
Of course I cannot put all these personal reflections in my dissertation, but I can save them for myself and share my thoughts with the world on this blog. This post isn’t only about how I lost my way or how I lost myself, but also a poetics on my blog posts: a reflection on what I think is important in life.
Since there’s no right or wrong there, I feel empowered and reassured; I dare to think again, I dare to speak again. And since a couple of weeks, I even dare to write again.

There’s been quite a long time in which I hated the arts and their subjectivity. I hated the facts that there were many possible interpretations and that none of them seemed good enough. I just hated all of it.
But it’s changed. By putting myself first for what seems to be the first time in my life, I can slowly get back to my original travel plans to see what still fits me. Instead of finding the bigger picture of the arts, I’m on my way to find out the bigger picture of my life. It’s still a long road, but I’ll get there… Artwork after artwork after artwork.