It is almost enough for me to get a TV - just to get me through the election at least. Just when you feel like the entire world is CRAZY, he finds a good way of summing it up. Thank you, Jon!

There are a zillion reasons this video makes me happy. But I’m not sure I’ll go into them…

I drew these while watching a movie the other night. I was TIRED and uninspired, and had no desire to draw, but… homework is homework. So I flipped through some food porn until I found something relatively undaunting. But of course, as soon as I started drawing, even a pile of onions felt next to impossible. I think it only took about ten minutes until I started to actually enjoy myself. How many times do I have to have this experience in order to re-program myself? If I just push through that uncomfortable period when I first start drawing, then I end up getting into a completely blissed-out zone. So why does it take so much freakin’ will power to just get started? Whatever. I guess the “why” doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I just keep at it.

It’s true - I like to read my horoscope. It is just way too fun when something rings true, as happened this week, in the Stranger:

“It’s finally the right time for you to hear a piece of advice you weren’t ready for before. If I had told you this any earlier, you would have at best misinterpreted it and at worst had no idea what I was talking about. But in recent weeks you’ve recovered a portion of your lost wildness, which means I can confidently reveal the following truth, courtesy of poet Charles Simic: “He who cannot howl will not find his pack.” Love it.

I finally did some drawing the other night. I’m hoping to go to India in October, but the trip is sort of dependent on a few things genuinely out of my control. In the meantime, I am thinking positively. So…let me correct myself: I am going to India in October. How’s that?

My favorite thing to do in the whole world? Music. Singing, in particular. I have also had stage fright my whole life. I’ve chipped away at it over the years - a tiny choir solo, a choir audition, etc, but it has always been taken for granted that I “don’t like to perform”.

In the past few years I’ve progressed to the point that I could at least sing with other people, or even by myself in front of others as long as it was part of a group activity. But nothing that could actually pass as “performing”.

Have you heard how really overweight people require lots of therapy if they start to lose the weight?

Last week I performed in a bar with my brother. It was a Willie Nelson Tribute Night, with lots of local musicians doing W.N. covers. We performed one song, both singing, both playing guitar, and it definitely counted as a performance. And I was fine. Nervous for sure, but not to the point of being debilitated, and the best part was that the nerves got better as the song went along. My main issue was learning how to sing into the microphone (more complicated than I had expected.) Tons of my friends and my brother’s friends showed up for our ONE song, and it was a blast. Then two days later, we performed again at a house concert my brother had already been planning on doing on his own. We did our Willie Nelson song, as well as about five of my brother’s songs. I was barely nervous, I had a blast, and even did better with the microphone.

So here is the interesting part: after the house concert I went home to bed, at which point I had a full-on panic attack, something I have had on one other occasion in my life. I eventually fell asleep, and then I slept until 10:30 AM (also VERY rare for me). I got up, drank my tea, had my toast, laid down on my couch, and slept for another two hours. I felt well-rested when I woke up, as though I had actually needed all of that sleep, but I was definitely in a funk. When I talked to my mom later (who had been at both performances) she said, “Well, I think you’ve kicked this thing - I don’t think you can really say you have stage fright anymore.” And she is totally right. That’s not to say that I won’t get nervous, but the enormous wall that I have been hiding behind for years and years and years is suddenly gone.

It made me think about how positive change can be just as stressful as negative change, especially when the change affects your sense of identity. You hear people toss around the phrase “fear of success”, and it always sounded kind of stupid to me. But I guess it isn’t really an empty cliche. As you work towards your version of success for yourself, you have to be ready to let go of a piece of yourself - the pre-success piece. Sorry to sound so Self Help-y, and I know it has all been said a million times before, but I just felt the truth in it so profoundly this last week. In the days up to the first concert, I could feel my brain shifting. The first emotion I noticed was enormous boredom - being “afraid” to perform was suddenly so tiresome I could spit. And from there it was a very conscious decision that stage fright would no longer be a part of me, and over the course of a few days, I could feel myself sweeping it out of the corners of my brain, until it was gone.

In the days after my panic attack and sleep-a-thon, I continued to feel a little off, with my brain firing in truly bizarre ways. But at the same time I could feel myself settling in with this new version of myself. It has been interesting too, to think about the purpose stage fright has served for me - it allowed me the hugest disclaimer in the world, for the thing closest to my heart - it allowed me to not take my music seriously (”I’m not a musician; I just sing in my living room”). Once you put yourself on a stage, you are inherently making the statement that you believe you have something worthy of the audience’s attention, and you open yourself up to judgment. My stage fright protected me from having to take any of those risks.

So anyways, here I am. My goal is to get myself on a stage again soon. I don’t care where or what, I just have to exercise this new freedom, so I get used to it.

PS - the photo above is from a recent trip to Victoria, BC. It was taken in Beacon Hill Park. It was one of those days when the colors are so over-the-top that everything looks fake.

Almost every free moment I have had the past few weeks has been spent in one of two ways: 1) Purging my apartment, getting rid of every single thing that I don’t really, really need. My goal is to be able to see under and around every piece of furniture without having something stashed there, and to have clean closets and no boxes filled with mystery contents. 2) Doing music.

I found myself feeling sort of bummed or guilty for not doing anything creative lately. I fall into this trap all the time when it comes to music. For some reason I don’t count that as a creative activity. Hence the reminder to myself.

These pictures are from Thursday. I’m not sure why I didn’t post them right off the bat.

I’ve been reading a novel that I found in the lobby of my apartment building. It is about a village in England during the Plague. It is dark, doesn’t make for very good bedtime reading, and isn’t doing much for my propensity for insomnia. I am already prone to laying awake thinking about the various diseases that one can acquire. Luckily, I am almost done with this book.

Thursday started out pretty blue. I was mopey and anxious and gloomy. But then I found inspiration here. I dragged myself outside for walk with my camera, and went to a park that I have visited a million times before. My goal was to find something new or interesting that I hadn’t noticed before, and the picture above is the result. (For the record - it was taken from the water tower at Volunteer Park.) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have taken this photo if I wasn’t reading that depressing-ass book.
Later that evening I did this bird. I kind of liked it better before I painted it, but whatever…I can never resist playing with colors when I get the chance.

I got to go on a mini-bike ride, it was almost warm, and the cherry blossoms were out in full force.

Every year I attempt to take pictures of them, and to paint them, but nothing ever seems to come close to the real deal.
Last night I had the worst insomnia I’ve had for awhile. I read from 10:30 until 3:00 AM. As a result, I called in sick today.

The weird thing is that after not sleeping at all, I got up at 6:30 and spent the whole day cleaning closets. I ended up with two huge bags of stuff for Goodwill. As soon as I got my bedroom closet in order, Trix curled up with my tennis shoes, and didn’t budge the rest of the day.

This evening I drove my bags over to the drop-off site in Ballard. That’s when my lack of sleep hit me. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it home in one piece. But here it is 10:45 PM, and not only am I still awake, but I have my annual attempt at painting cherry blossoms finished!

I watched more of the Wire while I painted (which I still have mixed feelings about), and ate cinnamon toast. Now I am going to fall into bed, and hopefully SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP.

So…they’re not MY art supplies, but they got used. I didn’t get a picture of what I did because it irritated me. The picture at the bottom was a picture Ruby drew recently. I LOVE it.

I was going to do some art last night, but two things interfered. 1) It was too freakin’ cold. It has been snowing every night for the last four nights. WTF?! Any-hoo, even my apartment, which is usually a sauna, was COLD. 2) The movie I chose to watch turned out to be too high-anxiety and gut wrenching, which prevented multi-tasking. (I Am Legend).

We babysat for a little while today, and we ended up painting.

This isn’t a use of art supplies, I know. But still. S picked me up at work yesterday, just to give me a ride home. He had also brought me this Trophy Cupcake. He does stuff like this all the time. ALL the time. It’s really no wonder that my pants are so tight.

I have three days off. I have a zillion plans that have to fit within that three days, but more than anything I want to do SOMETHING that I can post about here. We’ll see how it goes.