Thanks to my friend Guylaine who lent me this book. She gave it to me saying ‘i thought of you when i read this book’, hm, what was that supposed to mean?
Having a closer look at the book later in the subway, in the back of it is written “The ultimate survival guide for starving artists, writers, performers-and anyone whose dreams can’t be contained by an office cubicle”. Well, i am not a starving artist, but yeah, my dreams can’t be contained in an office cubicle, neither does a 9 to 5 job can satisfy me.
Strange to me is that now, in reading the book, i thought of other friends of mine for whom the book would be good to read. A lot of these friends i thought about are starving artists, unhappy, living on the dark edges, and often close to depression. I always wondered why so many of the most creative persons i know are often so close to depression and need to take antidepressant drug to keep their heads up.
I somehow think that artists are highly sensitive people, like if we could sense things that other wouldn’t feel. Like if some dimension of life wouldn’t exist for them, they would only feel it thru our work (be it painting, writing, dancing…). That could also explain why so many artist are struggling so much with pain, since they can feel it much more than anyone else.
Susan, the author of the book, seems to be one of these people. She went thru different stage of crisis but made the best out of it in writing this book.
“… I felt like a failure. I began to wonder if any other people felt as hopeless as i did. I had so many big ideas but i couldn’t even get out of bed. I wanted to know other Lost Souls. I thought if only we could compare notes i might not feel so hopeless and uninspired. And then i knew what i had to do…”
My favorite parts of the books were “lost souls are hothouse flowers” where i did recognize a bit of myself in every flower, and “live like you have cancer”, this one would help more than one person i’m sure of that!
Susan also made a website to reach out more lost souls, have a look: