It's been a while since I've done one of these. It's been a while indeed.
I've put off doing this update because I didnt really know how to word everything so I'll just go nuts and get a few things off my chest.~~
I've had a really rough past 10 or so years. Granted, the entirity of the 10 years hasn't been rough, but it seemed like every passing year there would be a new chapter to an unfolding story that would increasingly make things more difficult and things really escalated these past 3 years till finally the sudden conclusion to a seemingly endless journey of somebody else's bad choices. I suppose I didnt have a chance to fully realize how much the entire dilemma wore me down till the whole thing came to an abrupt stop and I was able to reflect on the years.
When it all ended I was so ready to just throw it all behind me as quick as possible to catch up on lost time. To jump back on a train that I felt had long past. But suddenly it all hit me. All of the years that I had lost, all of the time that had slipped through my fingers at no fault of my own but rather the situations that life threw at me. My dreams felt irrelevant and suddenly all my accomplishments felt like nothing. Yea sure made a few silly things and helped a few people but none of that seemed to matter. I tried to carry on doing as I usually did but it seemed that despite my best efforts things were just off. It was a terrible place to be. Loneliness wasn't an issue with this whole thing, I'm lucky enough to be surrounded by many many great people, but it's a grueling feeling of despair that just drained my energy.
"I'm 26" i kept telling myself. "I'm in no place to be 'starting' anything"
Then came the dreaded "younger brother syndrome." I've always felt inferior to my older brother. Having grown up where the parents always put his priorities first, where my friends would want to come over only to end up visiting with him and seemingly forget i even existed, and where everything he did seemed to overshadow anything I did. Be it good or bad I guess he's just a more enjoyable person than I. I remembered looking up to him as a kid and how he all but ran away from the family to go be cool and do cool things after dad passed away. I completely understand that it was his way with dealing with the loss so I can't hold anything against him. But i just... Of all things Why was this all running through my head?
Then probably the roughest memories were those of my poor little Jewely... I didnt mention it here on the blog but if you follow me elsewhere you know what happened. My poor little jewely didnt make it. Just before things in personal life land took a terrible turn for the terrible, Jewely passed away back in July (i believe it was july) from a terrible case of Anemia. All the time I spent with her to keep her healthy. I was devastated. I couldn't even bring myself to type about it. With everything going on in personal life land, all I wanted was to help little jewely have a good life and man oh man did I feel like a failure. Even thinking about her now has me running all the "what if" possibilities in my head. but again... Why was all this running through my head?
All of this started happening shortly after my last blog post and just kind of snowballed out of control. Then I started beating myself up for not being able to focus (again, a long running problem of mine) but I got to thinking... perhaps these feelings were justified? I did just go through literally YEARS of problem after problem. I suppose it's a bit silly to assume that even I could bounce back like nothing after all of that has happened. So I took a step back to look at the situation. A BIG step back.
Sitting around being depressed doesn't help anything, but it's a thing that's happening. So after clearing my mind a bit and letting things blow over, I began to look at the things that really make me happy. Remembered the things I've learned from creating things and remembering the things I learned from this blog and I used that to set things in motion. Focus seems to be a thing that always comes up over and over. When I'm able to focus and get things done I feel accomplished. I can feel the wheels moving and can feel like progress is being made. This whole art thing is still a thing I want to pursue, I know that for a fact so if anything is getting done. If anything can pull me out of this depression, it's building up some kind of schedule or system to keep me on track.
So the better part of the last few weeks has been to simply to work on a schedule. I wrote out everything I do, and everything I need to do (still adding to the list but I have it there) I charted out my time to have some kind of schedule that makes sense. Then even blocked off specific times to dedicate to particular tasks.
Working on this whole schedule thing alone has drastically improved my mood and has reignited something that I felt I had lost over the past few months. I've also taken the time to look into inspirational things. Speeches, books, etc. Currently I'm listening to an audio book by the name of "The Artist's Way" I'm setting myself up to hopefully kick things off in the right direction by this new year (2015). I have a lot of hope that things will turn around for the better. At least with this new schedule I'll be able to better plan things out and optimize my time. I haven't fully jumped into it this year, but from what I've tried, I am very pleased with it.
