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Paul Geneson
Correspondent
| 
There’s a niche reserved in society for artists, writers and performers. They’re free to be who they are, existing somehow differently than the rest of us. Performer/teacher/songwriter and former television reporter Monica Gomez, 58, admits that she too feels wired differently, and says her life has been a continual voyage of self discovery.
Ask her today how she feels about aging and she has definite ideas.
“Perspective is everything,” she says. “I’m grateful for every day that I gain perspective.”
Self knowledge and perspective, for her, were hard-won qualities. A Burges High grad, she realized shortly after graduation that math courses would ultimately prevent her from obtaining a college degree. She came to terms with this problem by refusing to beat herself up.
“Now I realize that’s the way I’m wired,” she says.
From that acceptance came a new way of thinking for Gomez.
“If I continue to agonize over what I can’t do,” she says, “I can’t celebrate and enjoy and capitalize on what I can do.”
In raising her children, Gomez reports learning a lot about herself and who she was. She came to see herself as a person with artistic sensibility, and all that itentails.
“Living as an artist, you have to have a certain tolerance for disarray because you can’t maintain perfect order and be creative at the same time,” she says.
She sees people close to her age being content to settle into retirement, but says she still has much to learn.
“I struggle to be comfortable in my own skin,” she says.
And as an artist, she reports, there is the matter of living with chaos. As she puts it, “Creativity is inherently chaotic.”
It was, perhaps, her sense of perpetual angst that was her undoing when she worked as a news reporter for KVIA, the only job in her life that lasted as long as six years. Leaving that world, she tells of being “exhausted.”
A part of her wanted to slow down, but always, the question, “How do I rest?” echoed inside her.
“And being afraid that if I disengage, what if I can’t get going again,” she questioned.
Gomez credits Tai Chi for pulling her through that stressful time and helping her find herself.
After leaving the station, she worked part-time with the city learning about what she calls the “bureaucracy of the arts” and she came to the realization that she too was an artist.
Once she saw her kids in a good financial situation, she found herself free to live the experiment: making a living doing what felt right.
She began to write songs and worked up the courage to perform. From early on, she’d listened to records featuring singers of the 60s. Having now recorded three CDs and performed her songs, she knows what it feels like to communicate to others through music.
She’s blossomed on her terms. She’s been a member of the touring roster of the Texas Commission on the Arts, been a regular at the Tumblewords Saturday readings at Memorial Park, conducted workshops for retiring professionals and does a weekly Saturday morning radio show on the arts on KTEP. She’s also performed with touring artists in China and she’s been elected to the El Paso Women’s Hall of Fame.
Over the last 10 years, Gomez admits she’s been involved with a job where she instructs incarcerated juveniles in channeling their anti-social tendencies into poetry and stories. These kids, she finds, are both teachable and creative.
Finally, it’s where she feels she belongs. Her songs, she’s discovered, leap generations and have a special meaning for these kids.
“If something is straight from the heart, if it’s one person’s truth, then it has integrity for everybody.”
So is Monica Gomez in a “live happily ever after” frame of mind these days?
Being an artist, and having to live with chaos, it doesn’t seem terribly likely.
Monica Gomez’s CDs are on sale at monicagomez.com
Comments or questions about this story? E-mail swsenior@elpasoinc.com
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