My current knitting project is in pause mode until the hole in my finger heals.
What can I say? I am an extreme knitter.
In the meantime I have been scaring myself silly playing Silent Hill: Homecoming and working a new pencil drawing.
Those little cut away scenes are freaky!
On a less twitchy note, this is my work in progress pencil drawing
I also made cake.
Who does not love cake when they fighting off the darkness.
It is based on a recipe by Add a Pinch's recipe Grandmother Verdie's Strawberry Cake
Not quite the image I was going for, but you get the point. It was delightful! All I have left are the crumbs and bits of buttercream icing cemented to the plate.
We are currently experiencing a cold snap in my neck of the woods.
I hope my little crocuses fair well. The tulips were just beginning to make their appearance.
I guess we wait and see.
I hope you are well.
Have a good day!
The year 2016 might be remembered by some of us as the year we lost so many of our muses and popular cultural icons.
These deaths have left me to question many things about my own life. Mainly addictions and insecurities.
Many people suffer from mental instabilities, but I hate that term. It is not accurate. I don't view it as a mental disease, instability or some other form of psychosis. My brain and a lot of other mere mortals just think and process differently. For me, it is all the time. My brain just refuses to shut off.
It seems to be a common thread with people who are artistic. These arts are not solely limited to the fine or visual art communities. Art is everywhere. It is found in the maths and sciences as well. Just look at the images we are now able to acquire from the outer reaches of space.
With all of these colours and images, is it no wonder the cosmos has influenced films, television, written words and led to discoveries for our current way of life?
Which leads back to my original thought, how do we deal with all these images and sounds that keeps our minds in constant motion. It seems impossible and overwhelming to continuously follow the threads to reach a conclusion. You end up suffering from insomnia as well frenzied thinking. When your plans do not follow the path you are creating to maintain order, you get discouraged. There are no words or sympathies spoken to calm you down and keep you grounded. How can other people comprehend what you are experiencing? Even if you successfully bring a project to fruition, is it your best? There are always those little errors you perceive no one else notices. People tell you, no it's great. I couldn't have done better.
You know you could have done better. The cycle then emerges. This cat and mouse game. Your brain pumping out all these thoughts, some intelligible, others not so much. At least it is recognizable when those odd thoughts running amok are just distractions. You start chasing after the ideas that good. The ones that will be something. Maybe not great, but they will have conclusions, an ending. Will it be good enough?
How do you overcome that sense of not being good enough? Or not having enough time? Or not having enough resources? That overwhelming feeling. That is the demise of so many talented people. Psychosis develop in people who are most vulnerable be it physical or mental. If you seek personal help, medications are prescribed. If those fail to keep your brain at it's best behaviour, there will be other medicinal options. Now you have a medicine cabinet stocked better than the local pharmacy and a list of medical practitioners not communicating with each other.
That is rather tedious. To seek out medical help. They might judge you, affix a label that will follow you as along as you breathe and then some. You might end up in a medical journal or tabloid with a fuzzy photograph of you visiting a late night pharmacy to fulfill a prescription.
It is so much easier to self medicate. The drug of choice in my family is alcohol. So easy to come by. So much more accepting by society. Alcoholism has cute little phrases. She can drink like a fish. She likes her drink. Social drinker. Pills are also easy to come by. Cold medications are over the counter. Also socially acceptable. They have these warnings, do not mix with alcohol. I wonder how many consumers follow those instructions?
Do these solutions aid the mind? Slow it down a little so you can function within the norms already set out by society? You have to go to sleep at a certain hour so you can wake up and be at work on time and earn money so you can sleep with a roof over your head and put food on the table, make the minors are clothed and have lunches and sleep............
It is exhausting just writing all that down.
If we do not want to be labelled and just live our lives without worries, how do we do that?
We need a source of monetary income.
We need to feel safe.
We need to be able to relate to other living, breathing creations.
We need to feel fulfilled.
We need to feel we make a difference or at a contribution.
To feel like we matter.
Quite the list.
At the end of the day, I am ok.
I have a support system.
I did not always have one.
I was lost for a very long time. Not too many people were aware of my circumstances. They might have suspected, but I was always able to maintain a good facade.
I am lucky.
I do have a roof over my head.
I know people love me.
I do not need them to prove it, I just know.
I wonder if more people realized that they do matter, make a difference, people love them, if they would feel so overwhelmed by the surplus of ideas that do not give them peace?
Unfortunately, too late to tell for some.
