2-16-25

Some days it really is more difficult to get up and go. But I think the pressure of school time always got me to show up. Unless I’m just romanticizing my high school work ethic, which is entirely possible. But the illusion of infinite time with adulthood allows one to postpone and delay things constantly. You are master of your domain, so there are no immediate repercussions for failing to do what you set out to do. But it will catch up to you when all you have left is to think about the things you once said you’d do.

But the vastness of the world and the amount of responsibility one has over their own life (nearly 100%) can be arresting and overwhelming. So instead, we curl into fetal position and wish for it all to be over. But, while curled in a ball, time marches on. And when we feel confident enough to look up the world has gone on without us.

I’ve been finding this journal, now just on my fifth entry, a great way of communing with myself and being present. 

Right now Deirdre is downstairs making chili and listening to Ziggy Stardust. The combination of Bowie and working alone at a desk in my home take me back to high school. Transported specifically, or at least drawn back to repeatedly, the honors studio art class where Jess Gass and I seldom talked. Strange how many aspects of that class are still relevant to my life. Not just Gass family members, but pursuit of various artistic mediums, the feeling that I would successfully pursue art (and others in the class would not), yet all the while (for a bit) being more focused on something else (the musical). 

I think in all of that why it is so cemented in my mind is because of how in my mind I was. An hour of near silence pursuing what I wanted. Yet funnily enough, I wouldn’t point to anything produced in that class as my best work from high school. I was simply just playing. So why not take an hour every day now to play? I try. Between this and my daily page I am loosening up, taking myself less seriously. Trying to prove yourself when there’s no one to prove it to gets exhausting.

I don’t know if I’ll ever paint glass as well as Abbie Rugg, but I can have fun. So why not do that? Wow, what a concept- make what you want… AND THEN I’LL BE SUCCESSFUL!!

MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- (dies).