Sneakily off my meds and now I cry at all the things

Xmas adverts? check
Armistice day announcement? check
Thinking about homeless kittens? check
Thinking about that kid who was called a "mutt" by his teacher, and all he wants to do is help people? check
Thinking, period. check
The opening ceremony of Blizzcon? check
Certain music which previously was no bother to me? check
Being cold? check

All of these things have made me cry in the last couple of weeks since coming off my meds.

The meds have kept me in a holding pattern, not able to experience the full gamut of emotions I'm capable of and so not allowing me to deal with them either. So I'm learning now. The therapy course I was on is really coming into play now, and I'm working really hard at managing my emotions, but jeeeez it's tough, eh! Tiring.

But when I'm high, I can really enjoy it. And when the low comes, I know that it isn't going to last forever. The general low I've been on hasn't lasted as long as I thought - I was in it for all of 18 months, I think, maybe 24. So things are looking up and looking well now.

And I'm going to start journaling like EVERYTHING in a bullet journal.

Art 'n' shit.

I've been exploring the concepts of Identity and Self (and to a lesser degree, Emotion) through art since the second year of my degree back in 2002-3. Since then, I have discovered the works of a Scottish philosopher and sceptic whose theories about the self, about personal identity and about emotion all resonate with me fantastically. David Hume was an 18th century philosopher firmly in the bundle theory camp - that is, he believed that the notion of the self over time was untenable and that what we are instead is a bundle of perceptions at any given point. His work on emotion (the Passions) comes to this conclusion - that emotions are reflective (as in, internal) impressions.

Assuming both of these ideas to be inherently true, then a stunning revelation (stunning to me, at any rate) can be made: If all we are is a collection of perceptions AND our emotions are a perception, an impression of internal reflection THEN our self at any given time can be depicted as merely a reflection of our emotional state.

Emotional states can fracture people and their personalities, however. Strength can often be found in those who fight to pull themselves together, even when they fail. The Cubists fractured images and objects and reassembled them from different viewpoints in an abstract manner to further explore and achieve a greater understanding of the subjects. The Japanese view breakage and repair as part of an object's history and story, they embrace the flawed and imperfect (Kintsugi).

This ties in with my goals as an artist: to explore and achieve a greater understanding of the Self, of Identity, of Emotion by embracing the flawed and imperfect and making it beautiful once more. I hope to take the viewer on a journey of reflection and inspire in them the desire to love themselves fully for whomever they may be...

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In addition to this I would like to raise awareness of mental health issues and in doing so reduce the stigma around talking about it. I hope to achieve this through an art and social practice series of pictures, made up from images I take and images people send me together with a brief questionnaire which I will then interpret into the title and background of the piece.

5 days left on my sub.

Looks like I'm quitting WoW again.

Go away on hols for a couple of weeks and your raid team have already left normal behind and are considering mythic raiding? Yeah, and they re-did the roster and everything and I've been left off it, too. I'm not going to have the time to give to gear up (again) and research raids (again) and actually RAID as part of even team "leftovers", and my friends are all busy doing their own thing in the game, including raiding in the proper raid teams with an ilvl 30+ points higher than what I scraped together to get.... just fuck it. The game is moving faster than I am and I just have to accept that this is it for me.

I am beyond upset.

Mommy's going to be an Artist again!

I did my degree, went straight to the local psych ward to switcheroo my meds and haven't seriously done art since. I've wanted to but something hasn't quite clicked. UNTIL NOW! mwa ha ha ha ha ha

I applied for and was called for an interview for a post as an art lecturer. Didn't get it. What I did get was a renewed thirst to do art. Called in and was called for an interview to finish my degree (was a plain degree at the time, no Hons to speak of) and ended up being told that I was only fit for second year. A proper THUMP that was, but it was true. I had no aesthetic to speak of and no practice and I couldn't put into words what I wanted to say with my art.

UNTIL NOW!

mwa ha ha ha ha ha

So Mommy is going back to college to do art. Mommy has herself a shiny new fb page and Deviant Art page. Mommy is very enthusiastic about this whole thing and would very much like a shed to put all her stuff in, thanks...

Mommy will be 40 by the time she finishes this. Cuh-rikey.