Hm. The amount of crying I've done last night might have damaged my eyes a little. Normally a good bawler has a beneficial effect, particularly when I am working with pigment, but so far it feels more akin to when you get sunblock in and the damn things just refuse to focus for the rest of the day. I've tried washing them out and already wasted half a bottle of drops trying to salinate and hydrate them properly. No luck so far. Am tired as fuck as well. The toothache is becoming interesting. Explaining to G burnt through the rest of my energy. Somehow telling a lover that you feel indescribable, profound and overwhelming sadness FOR NO REASON is not good enough. You have to spend three hours translating emotions to someone who then hammers the last nail in their coffin by asking if there is anything they can do to prevent it. No, for the love of fuck, it has nothing to do with you. Stop making it about YOU. 

     But then he went and did that washing dishes thing and that really undid the ugly spell. It seemed to be too late for the eyes, though. I couldn't really sleep much, but they did have a chance to rest, so it's not resting them. Reading is not an option - I just can't see. One's not strong enough and one's just a mess. I am fully aware of their size and weight in my skull. I wasn't going to draw, but I was going to write. Just saying, being able to adjust the luminosity of my screen is the best thing ever.

What a weird occurrence - I am out of town for a few days and at some point I just became super sad and depressed and kind of overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness and passage of time (it happens like twice a year or so, often completely unwarranted and without heads up, although it has to do with accumulation of negative thoughts and encounters (I did walk past the oncology clinic yesterday, so ...), so when talking reason or just pep talk didn't have any consolatory effect, the General stopped talking, picked up the phone, crossed the house, set the phone down in the kitchen and started doing dishes. No conversation, just a video of him doing dishes. I could see all my mugs and coffee and cats and him and could hear the dog and that was it. Suddenly of all the wonders of the world, that was the most comforting and home-like recreation of a soothing embrace he could possibly send me via skype. The brain really is the weirdest thing. I once half-drowned and passed out and they couldn't revive me until the village doctor's wife brought a plum pie to the people helping me. I woke up like *that*. Priorities, you know? :D

Continued lessons on Nini's prompts

I might have been a bit rude today. It wouldn't bug at me, but yesterday I cried because someone was dismissive, flippant and rude to me in a store. And today a woman called about a photo of mine and I asked her to contact me via an email, so that the correspondence remains on 'paper'. She asked if I can drop by their store and I repeated, that I prefer to have these things negotiated by an email, especially since the shot was already used in a book by another publisher. (I have a similar one I was going to offer, but they never wrote back.)

Okay.

I am not saying I was rude rude. Or that I was wrong. But I was flippant and dismissive.

Here are my reasons. First off, I get defensive when people ask something of me but would not agree to my terms - such as please, not over the phone, I prefer things written down. Second, don't talk to me like you're doing me a favor. You're not. I doubt they were willing to buy the photo, they just wanted an OK to use it for their promotionals. *Mental note to check a little if they just stole the damn thing in the end, like it usually happens.

    Third, I have a toothache and am freakishly tired from wrapping up this week's orders. 

    Fourth, it's my off month. Don't talk to me on my off month. Yes, YES, I understand people can't know that and she at least made an effort to look up my number - where the fuck did she get my number?! - but because she got me while I was busy, my brain didn't switch to customer service mode as it should. 

     Or maybe it was the whole 'come to our store so we can discuss it'... Are you joking? If you think I'm weird and defensive on a phone, how the heck do you think I would be in person? At least when corresponding via email, the General approves of the wording before I hit send. 

Attempting bullet (messy) journaling. Noooot there yet,lots of gaps still, but, getting slowly.

 

The word of 2020

Drej and I had this conversation earlier, while she was telling me about the month spent outdoors, on a Christmas fair. (I wanted to register fairs as one of my future occupations, but the General said he rather has me inside and for himself than outside and freezing. He doesn't get the appeal :D ). I doodled with an old photo of her, learning the ropes of the watercolour photoshop action, and of course, because she's hot, she got a ton of Likes when she put it up as a profile pic. Simultaneously an editor of a local photo magazine posted a long bitter rant about what shit pics on Facebook get Likes while the quality stuff - like his - gets so little. A lot of responses he got were, hey, man, listen, this is Facebook, not a National gallery - we Like mostly the photos of people we know and like. 

        I remember the time when suspecting such a rant was about me would break my heart. Because I would really want to be featured in such a prominent magazine and the opinion of the editor would mean the world to me. It wouldn't have occurred to me that these role models I aspire the respect and approval of are bitter old fucks who hardly ever got any respect of their own, dreaded the talented young competition, hated the better Liked and resented the taste of the general public who will vote a thousand times Yes on a hot ass and tits in the least original lighting, than their artistic view of the political now. Or some shit like that. 

        They would have shunned me and I would think it was me. 

      Creativity - and until you get this, you will suffer loneliness and defeat - is like a religion. It is between you and the Gods. Not the church/gallery, not the psalms/reviews, not the preachers/editors and critics. It is you, sitting down, to create and ten years later to create a lot better and 25 years later to create a legacy. If you want to sell and be famous and recognized, that is an entirely different strategy, you can learn that as well, or hire someone game-savvy. But you are not creating to impress or compete or compare with drunk old farts. They need never know the poetry under your fingertips you are tuning in in secret. It's not about them. It is about pulling on 

BIG GIRL PANTS.

I really should at least try to watch the latest Star Wars, shouldn't I ? 

I feel like I'm having a grown-up date with 2020

... pulling up my big girl pants.

January plans - finish Kasia, make a strategic plan for the rest, come up with five new product ideas

and in the book, send the guys off to a losing war. They need to die. That book needs to end. And never stop bleeding. No pressure.