A Week of Undisputed Wasted Potential

My blog site is criminally underused. I'm putting forth the effort to make a show of this whole "life" thing. And, being honest, a lot of my energy and attention goes into caring for others. I'm learning to take care of myself. Sometimes, the days I need care the most, are days where my depression seems to take the stage. I'm a "creative", someone who's whole life revolves around artistic merit, seeing the world from an analytical view, and repeating it through art. My art? Film. You know this, most likely, if you're here reading this. My audience hasn't reached too far outside those I know. And, for you, know that every conversation we have about my writing, it empowers me. I'm so thankful for you!

I wouldn't have been able to properly prepare my mind for a pandemic. Although, I take pride in knowing I last five months before I really started to feel the effects emotionally. I've sensed a restlessness in the world, and how people have been behaving, for much of my life. It can cause me a lot of confusion, because I often get what I'm seeing wrong. I can tell there's a divisiveness and disorientation in the world, or at the very least, in the people media are lampooning on about, more now than ever. I'm making sure to take steps to not end up tap-dancing on the roof of a patrol car outside of a nail salon (someone in Branson, June, 2020).

I pride myself on my faculties, and knowing when the majority of my emotions are wearing thin. I saw a woman describe to me recently, what she called the "effects of" wearing a mask. What she described, might as well have been verbatim from a nursing book, was general anxiety, not usually brought on by wearing a cloth over your face for the two minutes she claimed to "last" while wearing before she removed it as a display of ill-formed protestation. People are fucking crazy. Let's just chuck 150yrs of doctoral science out the window for an opinion we found on YouTube.

I felt bad for her, to a degree, because, just six months ago, I felt the same effects from my own body, when driving in traffic, long before the pandemic became an actual thing. I didn't know what I was experiencing, only that I could barely last a 45 minute trip before I was gasping for breath, swamped with heightened emotions, and the understanding at the time I probably had heart problems. I didn't have heart problems; I had anxiety problems, exacerbated by not knowing I had anxiety problems. I also had depression.

Low-dose depression is still depression. For some dumbass reason, I've been having loads of anxiety the last two days, with no causal effects I can see, other than poor sleeping habits. Depression isn't totally the shit you see on those commercials, where they posit a grey aesthetic as being depression, and then dropping a pill and all those greys have color. It's a solid metaphor for some types of depression, but isn't the whole story.

I can still see color, obviously. There may even be cause to study my use of color when I'm depressed. I tend to be flashier when I'm feeling bad. Though, I also tend to be flashy for the show of it. Depression gets all of us, sometimes. Being self-aware is the best you can do to combat the effects. I still feel like making funnies. I'm a bit punchier when I feel like this. My comedic side tends to flow well into anger, though it's not something I'm desirous of maintaining, because anger is exhausting.

And, I'm trying to actively move away from being sad about my career and my artistic side seemingly disappearing during this fucking pandemic. It's run its course, for me. I'm lonely, tired of being fearful. However, nothing I've done to preserve my health, and my family's, is going to change.

I will need to find a way to balance a workflow that helps me relearn art. For fuck's sake, I have to relearn what I already know, in an attempt to spark my creative mind. My art is going to pay me in droves, some day. But, my God, it's all in the air. And, I've lost my connection with my creative voice. My therapist keeps telling me it'll come back, and I agree with her sentiment. But, the time has since passed that I've considered this "break" to be beneficial. I need my time, energy, perspective, and ability to scope ideas, back.

And, I need it now!

And, while we're here, can you please educate literally every person who says "THE 'meeeeeedia'" when they rant about whatever conspiracy they've unearthed from 4chan? There are like 30 types of media.