This post may meander a bit. It wanders all over how I’m feeling right now. And frankly, I’m overflowing, so some of this may not seem sensible or connected.
I’m the connective tissue here. This isn’t being posted simply because I want others to know or process this with me, it’s because I need it to come out. Because I need to review it and process it, first and foremost.
Like a kind of song, each section escalates. If you have trouble reading the shorter parts, don’t continue into the longer parts.
TW: family health, medical, mental health, denial
I’m worn out.
I’m struggling.
I’m unmotivated.
I’m tired.
I’m worried.
I’m probably sick.
I’m unmoored.
I’m discouraged.
I’m scared.
——
Carrying the weight of an unhealthy person, unwilling to accept the changes necessary to resolve their maladies is exhausting.
My art is not selling as well as I need to support myself, and I worry that the systems I’ve come to know over the past few decades are lost to me.
Seeing things flounder without reason, trends flourish without forethought but fail when executed with fastidious plans…
I can’t keep up with the weekly, daily, hourly demand outside of just trying to manage my own creative output.
I’m experiencing new pains and feeling some old symptoms that I thought were well past.
Not a single plan I’ve written out has produced enough success to drive me forward, like I’m caught in some whirlpool, keeping me locked in this same place.
The last three months have shown me just what life can pile on: sickness, malfeasance, terror, and even death.
——
My father’s condition has improved, ███ ████ ███ █████████ ███ █████████████ ████ ███████. ██ ███ ███████ ██ █████ ██ ███ ███████████, ██████ ███████ ████ ██████ ████ ███ ████ █████ ██ ████████ █████. It seems like denial and I worry that it will just be a matter of time until he slips back into deeper illness, or worse. ██ ██ ██████, ███ ██████ █████████ ██ █████. He started refusing my assistance recently, and after a few arguments about it, I’ve just stopped offering it. I can’t lift his legs for him, and I can’t take on the stress now for what I know will simply come to pass later.
Social media and internet platforms have changed. Of course they have. It’s not confusing, but it’s also not something I can approach with any level of certainty any longer. I thought I understood these spaces and the technology in past iterations. Maybe I didn’t. But whatever the case, “the internet” is something different now. It is not helping me sell my art. In many cases, it feels like it’s actively hindering me (see: algorithms, twitter, etc etc).
For whatever it is worth, it feels like a very steep uphill battle. Some posts take off and some retweets reach scores of new people. And sometimes a joke response on a tweet about Superman goes further than any artistic work I’ve ever shared. Higher than average engagement and upward trends for everything I’ve done still seem to meet resistance from the systems.
It’s exhausting to even think about needing to post at optimal times, and the upkeep required to continue growing a social presence. Knowing just enough of the system means that some input/output is expected and understood, but just as much (if not more) remains a total mystery. It will continue to evolve, and continue to slip through my hands like the quicksilver that it is.
On top of these feelings coming from my efforts to produce and sell my artwork, I’m starting to experience some troubling physiological symptoms. Gastrointestinal distress and the return of some rectal bleeding. I know that even the stress of worrying about my own maladies could be causing new/additional maladies. But these symptoms have come and gone over this past year and I still cannot afford to attend to it.
I had hoped to be on track to be in a new job (one with full health coverage) by now. Unable to afford insurance AND care costs, I abandoned the insurance that I held for almost a year. Worryingly, I still haven’t received a bill from my brief hospital stay in Florida this past summer. And despite my desire to do so, I haven’t been able to look for jobs to get things rolling. And now the bridges that I had built with my dad here are starting to fall apart. I had hoped to be out of his basement within weeks, then within just a few months. In a matter of a few days, it will have been a full year. But I’ll have to leave soon, to at least not strain the relationship to the breaking point. Maybe leaving for even an uncertain path and a part-time job will be good options to step forward.
There are sensible explanations and reasonable excuses for much of the mire that I find myself entrenched in. My father nearly died, without proper legal instruction on how to proceed with his estate. Two weeks of tumultuous hospital visits left me exhausted (but healed him a great deal). Though he’s home now, he is basically refusing to take his own health seriously. Again. One step forward, two steps back... Our interactions are now strained and each one gets worse. His dog (who is as much my own) nearly died while we were unable to care for her properly during his illness. Week after week, it has piled on. Then, in the last week of November, my grandmother passed from a massive stroke. My mother’s family came together as much as we could for as long as we could and celebrated her life. That was helpful, but I feel stripped and raw. The wounds from everything are still blazing with pain, and whether I should or not, I’ve soaked up a lot of what others have been exuding throughout these traumatic events.
And that’s just describing my own personal, internally logged experience. The rest of the world has not stopped spinning and the things happening in it are gut-wrenching, terror-inducing blows to humanity, to the people of my country, and to people I know and love. Every minute plugged into what the world is doing is like wiring yourself for electroshock. And that’s been a steady year over year increase since 2016.
There have been a lot of days with bad news. A lot of days with new stress, new fear, new pain.
2018
And y’all I just don’t think I can keep up right now.
I’m behind schedule, in debt, unemployed, not reaching a broad audience, and very very tired and sad from all the shit I’ve been through in the last three months. And I’m distraught, because I know there’s still more hell to march through.
Stopping painting and most social engagement isn’t a solution, but I just don’t know if I can keep going right now.
——
Really, it’s like surfing. There’s the momentum of all the movement all around you. There’s the frequency of the waves and the peril of what might be under you. Then there’s just you and your board. Your own strength and the quality of the plank beneath your feet.
The waves keep coming, no matter what. Even the best surfers don’t get to pick the pace of the breakers. It all hits everyone, the same pace over time.
So it’s up to us how to react.
And right now my reaction is to get the hell out of the ocean.