I'm not doing so great.

I've been holding back from upload spamming once I have a batch of images. I wanted to return from this huge inadvertent hiatus with a standard of art quality and the momentum behind it to keep that standard. I have been working on so many WIPs now, even from back when I was streaming every week. I'll reach a certain point and then move on and nudge all the work I've done up to the same level. So that certain stages of art would happen at the same time, y'know? I've been trying to plan and be a real smarty pants about it.

Then life does it's thing and trips me up.

I have been trying not to play any "woe is me." I kept myself focused on the things I can do to make a difference. Art as therapy, reaching out and making plenty more connections after cutting out the lion's share earlier this year. Exercise, work, any opportunity I have to get out of the house. Why I've even lost more than a fifth of my weight the pas six months. Spending time with the people I love the best. Doing the things that I know will bring me intrinsic rewards and help me stabilize.

The last couple weeks I have had unprecedented insomnia. Last night it reached a head. Where I laid in bed from 10pm til 9am, wide awake. Thinking about the things that's happened, what I'll do next, and holding on to my sense of self and nursing it all with as much optimism and kindness I can conjure up.

The hardest obstacle I've had to face now is course correcting after my life partner and I broke up. Every plan and trajectory and habit and dependence I had in them is gone now. So it goes. Most of us have had to face that feeling. When you orbit someone and fly off on your own and you have nebulous feelings about your goals but the day to day and companionship you used to know is no longer there.

I am a codependent person. With a medley of neuroses and dysfunction. It isn't that any old attention is what fills my cup. I can count the people I have emotional intimacy with on one hand. Quite often I use more of my spoons trying to reach out and create new connections than I do giving love to myself. Because loving other people is giving love to myself. It's so very complicated and tiring. When all I want is to be able to kick the door in with all the pretty funny furry pictures I've been working on and quit being so obsessed with my own ego. My own problems, my own wishes and pulling my own teeth to try and make them real out of whole cloth. Yet I keep starting, hit a snag, and eat shit and lose all momentum or drive. I must have learned and relearned so many parts about creating art half a dozen times this year already. Because I'll pivot away and come back and be unable to intuit or put the feelings into a piece that I want to. Even the simplest feelings. It all feels like such a stranger to me.

Used to be I didn't concern myself. About things like love and loss. Life is funny. We're all fools, so let's dance, baby. That kinda thing. I didn't have anybody and I didn't care to fight for anything. So I could do anything, say anything, be anything I wanted to be. Nothing mattered. Here for a good time, not a long time- you feel me?

Then the funniest thing happened. Despite my best intentions, not to get attached and never trusting anyone, and living my easy come, easy go life... I met people who loved me, truly. Who made me see my life as one with value. That I matter. That they don't want to walk into tomorrow without me in their life. People who showed me each and every day that they remembered me, respected my boundaries, and felt loved in my company. We supported each other, encouraged each other, shared laughter, tears, and embraced life- together. In them I found what it meant to trust, and be trusted, and how that can change you in ways you never believed possible.

I don't want to forget what that kind of love felt like.

Every day I try to pull through and keep this glimmer of love with me. I do what I know needs doing. I keep on the habits I need to do. I keep reaching out. I keep the plates spinning. I start forgetting things. Things that once brought me joy run out. Focus is becoming more difficult to hold. Sleep harder to get. Appetite goes. Hope dims. It's not like it was before. Isolation doesn't feel like I've got nothing to lose and when the lights go off I know I'll still be standing, grinning to face the dark, "because I choose life!"

I don't want to stop caring. I don't want the lights to go out. I don't want to fail. And I don't want to do this alone. I miss shining brightly. I miss getting to get lost in the dazzling light of others. Playing together, holding nothing back. I want to lay down to sleep and sink into the dream of a dawn full of potential. I want to live.

Forgive me this outburst. I promise that fantastic triumphant return is not far behind. I had to get this out of my head. Some signal that I am still here. I'm still trying. I do a lot of things wrong. But I am not done, yet.