The Brain Fog Rolls In

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I've seen a fair number of people react about their reactions to the changed psychological landscape of the pandemic. So little is available; so many people are staying home, by requirement or choice, and we're having to MacGyver structure into lives that, by employment or routine, have had structure provided them; old lingering dreads have blossomed into new stark terror or opportunity, depending on what you had going on when the balloon went up, three-point-five seven million hundred five thousand weeks ago.

We habituated art supply stores, the library, and Powell's; books and art. Those are our treasures. Being in these places recharged; we are now, with respect to the psyche, running on stored charge. It's dilating our psyches in a way that's still difficult to define, but I feel its tectonic effects on the head.

It arrives usually around 9:30 AM or a little after. I have gotten home before 8:00 every day; and with no other reason to go out, I have all this time to do art, right? Except I don't. It settles in heavy, kind of like an umbra, the feeling of a dark gray cloud; I become drowsy. What animation I had toward creating anything is displaced by this at a 1:1 ratio. Yesterday ... in my studio I have this low desk we call the kneedesk, and it's next to the drawing board where I was turning out a minimum of one acrylic painting a day, and I sat at it trying to write in the diary, and I laid my head down on the desk, and I don't know how long I napped there, but when I next opened my eyes I found that I felt as though I had been asleep a very long time.

I have, for aeons now, been a 3rd-shift worker. This puts its own color and shape on the biological processes that regulate ones' diurnal cycle - you wind up struggling against them but you can usually work out a sort of detente. This is an unwelcome guest that invites itself. And while I can't exactly say how, I know it's because my intellect has been cut off from exterior power, and it apparently consumes a great deal of juice, because I go low about the same time every day.

Like many people, I'm giving myself the guilt about not grasping the opportunity I have, but there's also a movement I see that reminds us that this all is not normal, this is like nothing we collectively have ever experienced before. Maslow would have it that we are on the lower levels of the pyramid, so what you have to do to get through the day is entirely proper.

But I do want to use the time. Increased blogging helps. Writing this prolix har-de-har helps. Diarizing helps. I also have a small book about small meditation practices-to-go by Jan Chozen Bays at my side and there's some things I can try here too.

So I'm evolving a way to deal with a changed environment and an attempt to find a new, if temporary, equilibrium. I guess I'm impatient that I can't do it instantly. Perhaps grasping that observation will help me help myself. And help me get that painting of the elephant done.

Five more works in 50 Small Paintings. Just five.

In the meantime, a day at a time. Steady as she goes.

And so it goes.

[Liff] This Is How You Coffee Cup

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This is an oooooooold warhorse.

[art] Step One: Dream Big

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Our text is The Artist's Guide, by Jackie Battenfield. The homily should become apparent, I hope.

Dreaming big has always been somethingI've done really well. But effectively? Nope. I always go into something, like my two stints at Community College, thinking that if I just do my lessons with enough diligence and sheer sincerity, the rest will take care of itself. In as much the last course, at PCC, despite me graduating in graphic design, has gotten me exactly no closer to my goal of working in the visual arts than I was when I started (never mind how long I've been trying to figure it out), just working hard and earnestly, apparently, don't cut it.

That's a sad thing. The way I was raised, you worked hard enough and honestly enough, the way opened for you. Wouldn't be the first thing in life that turned out to be a bit of a lie (yeah, that's a harsh word, a sharp judgement, but sometimes you have to call it the way it looks. Life makes little hypocrites of us all, I've become convinced).

So, welcome back to the beginning. I've begun again so many times, I should rename myself Finnegan. Ahhh, Square One … we meet again. But what other alternative do I have than trying to figure it out again? Otherwise, I'm already dead … just waiting to be buried. So, we turn the puzzle on its side … for the however-many-th time it is, and try to figure it out again.

On page of chapter 1 on The Artist's Guide, then, we see this:

I always have done this. But maybe I need to try another time, and vary the angle of attack.

Dream big? Okay. Nothing I feel confident to put down on paper just this moment, but what's the best way to dream?

Today, why … I'll sleep on it.

[art] The Artist's Guide, By Jackie Battenfield

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The Artist's Guide is a book by Jackie Battenfield that I've just acquired. It's a book subtitled How to make a living doing what you love, and is one of the many that you can find that claim to be able to show you a path from being a tyro artist to one that lives on what one makes.

This seems to be fine art. I'm looking to become an illustrator of some sort.

If anyone has read of this book or has used it and got any sort of result, I'd like to hear what you have to say. Leave a thumbnail review in the comments and later, when I'm done, I'll post again with my own thoughts.