Saved Up Brain Dump

I’m not doing the best. I don’t even know what all I’ve told y’all, but there’s been a ton of cancer garbage and other health crap going on for the past three years.

I want to say that for the most part, I’ve adapted and overcome, but I might be fooling myself. Or I might be doing an excellent job, I just can’t see it right now because it’s a shit mental health period.

My guts hurt. I had colitis a couple of times last year, and I have diverticulosis, so it could be either of those, or something else entirely.

My brain is fuzzy. I can’t remember things like I used to. I can’t use words like I used to. I can’t make connections in my head. I feel like an idiot trying to make art anymore because I’m no good at it.

I want to do so many things but I’m discouraged. I tried to tell myself yesterday that it’s okay to stay in bed all day if you feel bad, that it’s okay to take a bunch of naps in one day if you can’t stay awake. Today I’m still in bed because it hurts, but I can’t believe myself when I say it’s okay.

My brain says I haven’t had surgery, so there’s absolutely no possible reason that I should stay in bed.

My brain is an asshole sometimes.

I’m dizzy and my head hurts all the time and my vision is going to hell in a hand basket. I’m worried there’s cancer in my brain now. I want to tell myself that’s silly, but is it really? I don’t know anymore.

I’m a huge fan of the “ignore it and it’ll go away” philosophy. I feel like that’s weird. I tried to do that with my adrenal tumor and they just found lung cancer. I tried to do it with my reproductive system and it just hurt worse and worse until they took it all out. I tried to do it with my neurostimulator and they had to take that out. Maybe I’m just not as good at ignoring things as I think I am. Except my own friggin mental health. I’m super great at ignoring that.

I plan so many projects and I want to try so many new things and then I kick myself when I physically cannot do them.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying.

I tried to take a cognitive function test yesterday and I learned that I can’t do the logic puzzles that I used to love so much. They’ve become secrets of the universe to me.

I don’t even know how much I’m supposed to feel like garbage with all the hormones that are gone and can’t be replaced and all the hormones that are replaced with pills and do I even know what I’m talking about anymore?

I don’t know.

Maybe if I start writing again things will get better. Maybe they won’t.

I do feel a little better after all this though. I need to go blow my nose.

I hope you’ve stuck it out this far, because I didn’t think to say this earlier. I’m not dumping this for pity or condolences. It is what it is. I’m dumping this so maybe someone else having a rough go of it won’t feel so lonely.

Life isn’t always peaches and cream; I guess I know that as well as anyone.

I got dressed today. On a scale of 1-100, getting dressed always takes me up at least one point. I can’t sit and put makeup on today though.

When I feel better I need to make an art caddy for these days when I can’t sit at my desk and create.

Yes, April, even though you said you feel like a fraud with zero talent, that desire to make art is still there. Maybe take that as a sign that you’re not entirely hopeless and uninspired.

Oh, I make notebooks now. I would love to send you a care package of tiny notebooks and art and who-knows-what if you want one.

I think I’m gonna go catch up on my collage fodder tutorial videos now. Thanks for being here.

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New Year New Me Again

Hey y’all! I hope everyone’s new year is so far, so good.

I have a ton of resolutions this year.

Last year I learned fake lashes and bullet journaled for the entire year.

This year I’ve lost count. But I’m going to post more, I’ve started a planner and a tracking journal, and joined a gym. Big plans, baby!

P. S. I took up knife throwing, and this is to track my practice hours.

April’s 90s Alt Rock Singalong

Do you have Apple Music? I made a playlist.

It’s like a flashback to a local radio station from the 90s, but without commercials.

As a pizza driver, I listen to a lot of radio in my car, but not much actual radio. *grumble grumble* music these days *shakes fist*

I do love me some Megan Thee Stallion, though. She’s everything Gen X needed in a female rapper.


Transient

In my mission to post more in 2018, I grabbed three pages of handwritten who-knows-what from the dresser to see if I’d already published any or all of it.

I have, but oddly enough, it’s been exactly two years to the day since I posted the last page of what I picked up, Character Sketch #5. That one also has the email for Human Resources jotted on the back, the one I had to send my statement to a while ago.

Gosh golly, y’all, I gotta get back into this blogging thing. And seriously take a time out and email someone about why I’m not getting emails. I just spent way too much time reading old post and not writing this one.

Anyway, here’s Transient, acrylic on 16×20 canvas.


Valentine

It’s the first of November. Day one of NaNoWriMo. 

I decided against it this year. This year I’m going to NaNoPaintMo. That doesn’t make sense, but it is what it is. I’m going to complete (and title!) a painting every day this month. 

Here’s Valentine. Acrylic on a 16×20 canvas board using only a palette knife. 


And hey, please do feel free to suggest subjects for future paintings. 


Dreams of a Memoir

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I do not recommend reading a book on writing memoir right before you go to bed. I did it last night, and it was a mistake.

I didn’t even read that much; just a few pages, and then I was like, nah, dude, I’ll read this novel that I also downloaded when I finished Everything We Keep the other night. So I read that for a little while, and it was fine. I got sleepy, I put the Kindle down, I closed my eyes, and next thing I knew, it was five hours later and I had to pee and I had been having some pretty messed up dreams.

I’m pretty sure that every single bad decision I made in my late teens and early twenties came back to haunt me in my sleep last night. And I didn’t just dream what happened; oh no, my good ole brain had to go and make everything a thousand times worse.

Brain: you had an amicable breakup in the middle of dinner at a restaurant then finished eating together and went home separately? Not anymore! Now you’re screaming and naked and fighting for the entertainment of thirty thousand people!

Yeah. That kind of thing.

I woke up feeling the deepest darkest feelings of failure that I’ve ever felt when I’m not in the midst of a bout of depression. Miserable. Like everything I’d done was wrong.

I slept a little bit more and then I was okay for the most part, albeit still haunted by the sensations those dreams had left me.

And then it went away, as dreams and their effects so often do.

It’s funny now because I fell down an internet rabbit-hole this afternoon and ended up reading about James Frey and A Million Little Pieces. I’d somehow missed that story before.