Dairy of a Madman

Emotional artists: “It’s not surprising that you’re tired. If you were building a house, you’d get tired, too. But if you quit, the unfinished house would stand on the road like a reproachful monument to your fickleness. You’d pass it every day on the way to work and it would mock you and remind you how you gave up because you were tired and you couldn’t take the pain, and it would cause you to question whether you’re truly an artist, because if you were truly an artist you’d swallow the pain and finish the building.

You might wish you’d never started on the house. But you did start on the house. Likewise with this relationship. You can debate the merits of having begun. But, having begun, it’s almost certain that you will gain more from seeing it through than you will from leaving. Don’t you want to see how it turns out in the end? Isn’t that what separates art from chaos, a well-lived life from a wasted life? If you leave, think of all the work you’re throwing away; think of the floorless rooms, the wires that power no lights, the roughed-in holes for windows and doors. Art is completed work. A well-lived life is a life of completed stories. You have to stick around for the ending. “