YKWIM #105: Showing Up

For some of us, it’s the whole battle

I saw the movie Showing Up last month and I need to talk about it. It’s not really a movie you can spoil, but consider this a warning.

It’s true, I drew this while watching an old episode of Drag Race.

Here’s Showing Up, summed up: Lizzy (Michelle Williams) is a sculptor and she’s trying to get her artwork ready for a show while dealing with the bullshit of life— career jealous, troubled family members, no hot water in her apartment, an injured bird. It’s a slow, character-based movie, the kind that feels like a short story.

It has the most accurate depiction I’ve seen on film of what it’s like to work a day job and while trying to balance a creative life. Lizzy is as an admin assistant at an arts college, the same one she went to, the same one her mother still works as a dean (brutal). I spent many years as a program assistant in an English department, so the scenes of Lizzy at work, dealing with other artists’ drudgery while processing their expense reports, were all too familiar.¹ I used to work on my writing in spurts when the office wasn’t busy, but unfortunately as a sculptor, Lizzy can’t get away with that.

Showing up is so hard. In my version of this story, there would be at least one scene of Lizzy disassociating in bed after work. And to be honest, it’s easier for me to show up for other people than it is for myself. Give me a deadline and I can make it work— emphasis on give, because if I create it myself, that deadline is probably going to pass like a fart in the wind.

The same weird, ugly fear that keeps me showing up with people shares its roots with the same fear that keeps me from showing up in my creative work: it’s the fear that what’s there isn’t good enough. Infected with perfection, like a flu on the brain. The only cure is to push through and *dun dun dunnnnn* show up.

On that note, I’m sending this out on February 5, as I promised I would. It’s my way of showing up on a Monday night, even though it’s definitely not perfect.

Now, it’s time for disassociating in bed (or as most people call it, sleeping).

Take care, darlings!

xo Andrea

1. I had a literal nightmare when I started my current job as a radio producer that I slowly became the department admin assistant. Thankfully, it has not come to pass.