I finally got past the middle of the page on this stage of my drawing, and I flipped it over to start on the other side. Instead of going from the bottom up I decided to do it from the middle and work my way down. I spent two days straight helping Jim put in some underground wires and pipe for his gate/security system. He wasn't going to go into the office, so he offered me as much work as I could handle. I put in 11 hours digging the first day, and about 8 the second. We were pretty much finished by the end of the day Tuesday, so I didn't go over there yesterday. I was completely shot anyway, although surprisingly I'm really not that sore today. I guess working out has paid off. I thought I was going to be in tremendous pain, because at the end of the day Tuesday I could barely hold a shovel anymore, my wrists and hands and forearms were so sore.

I should be getting my tax return soon. I'm excited about that, because I'll be able to take another huge bite out of my debt in one shot. The next few weeks I'll be making quite a lot, because I've been working extra hours for Besim lately. There's really not much to talk about since I've been so busy. I've thought more about it, and I do want to be careful what kind of outside influences I allow into my life, but I'm starting to think that it might not be a bad idea to join a dating site. I think that pretty soon I'll be as ready as I'm going to be to at least start talking to new people and maybe go on a few dates. I'm not looking for anything but a serious long term relationship, and I have no interest in flings or random sex. I just have to be careful that I don't get sucked in too quickly. Any relationship that I get into is going to go very slowly, so that I can make sure I'm dating someone that I actually want to be with, and not just settling. It's obvious to me that my feelings aren't going to go away, and it's just something I have to bury. Just move on and lock that hurt away. It was a waste of time and energy to keep trying to fix things.

I still have to find a day to go talk to my GP about medication. I know I'm putting it off because I'm nervous about it, partly because I'm afraid it won't make a difference. It may take a couple of weeks for me to get around to doing it, but I'm definitely going to give it a try. I've made that a firm decision. Nothing else new to talk about, just work work work.

And so we progress...

The camera lens creates the distortion on the right side of the page making the lines at the top appear to slant, but they don't in reality. This area of the drawing is taking a lot more time than the rest because it's so far up the page. It's hard on my back to work on this section, but I have another half inch on the right section at the top and then I can flip it around and go the other way. I have three new sketches for drawings, just very rough ones, but there are some intriguing possibilities.

Pretty much sums it up. Some people would do well to learn what some of these things really mean instead of just succumbing to confirmation bias.

Lol.

I've been talking with my psychologist and thinking myself about my interest in physics and astronomy, and it's strange, but I feel more free now than I have in a long time to do what I want. The more I think about going back to school to get another degree, the more the idea appeals to me. Even if I wind up selling drawings and being an artist, to me no education is wasted. Besides, I've always been so interested in the inner workings of the universe and I can never get enough information about it. It would be daunting to have to go through calculus and basic math again, and I'm sure there would be a lot of chemistry and calculations that I'd have to learn, but I want to explore the idea anyway. My therapist suggested I go to Brookhaven National Lab and talk to the scientists there. Apparently they have what is essentially an open house at the collider they built there, and it's free. I could at least find out what I'd be getting into, and if that's not enough of an explanation there's nothing that says I can't send an email to someone who works at an observatory or at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I was watching a show called "The Planets" the other day, and the episode was all about the Mars missions and Voyager and Galileo, and there was a scene with a room of scientists, right at the moment where they recieved confirmation that their first probe had successfully landed on Mars, and they all cheered. I wished with every fiber of my being that I could have been part of that, to be in that room and share in that excitement. It sounds a little far fetched even to me, but I think that I put myself down unnecessarily in college by thinking I wasn't smart enough to be a scientist, or that I wouldn't like doing the math and that would ruin it for me. I think I'd even enjoy something like being a paleontologist. Next to the universe outside of Earth's atmosphere, the biology of living things that existed millions of years ago is the most exciting thing I can think of. I can literally eat up any and all information on dinosaurs, and the history of the Earth from the first life forms is just fascinating. It's not something I could do right now, but I want to save these thoughts for the somewhat near future, when it might be possible to actually do these things.

I also got on the subject of skydiving and flying today with someone, and it made me realize that I really want to paraglide or skydive or something. Even if it was just once and I didn't want to do it again, I think that's something I'd find really exciting. I don't know why, up to this point, I never thought more about things like this, but I'm realizing I can really do whatever I want. Once I get out of debt the world will be open. I heard a physicist say the other day that what he does is a creative process, and that's when it really hit me that I could do this. I could make that dream happen and actually be good at it. A lot of discovery is just figuring out how to test different ideas, and I've always been good at visual spacial problem solving. I may never be a candidate for MIT, but I could figure out a way to test a theory that revolutionizes our understanding of quantum physics, or the universe at large. Who knows? It's at least worth thinking about and doing a bit of research.

In other news, I did get my brother's old guitar working, and it sounds perfect. I haven't had a chance to play much, but I went through a couple of songs that I know. I'm pretty rusty, but it felt great to make music again.

I have a long day helping Jim put in a new service at his house tomorrow. He offered me extra work helping the electricians and the low voltage guys dig and pull wire, and since I've done that kind of thing before I took him up on it. It's going to be a tough day, but it'll allow me to get some exercise and make money at the same time. Tuesday will probably be a lighter day, and we might go into the city briefly on Wednesday. I have to work all day Thursday for Besim, so I have to skip my usual appointment. He had to backtrack out west because of snow on the roads, so I may wind up working Friday for him as well. Yay.

I've gotten halfway up the page on this phase of the drawing I'm working on. I'm going to keep going up a little past that and then flip it over and start the other side. This side had a lot more on it already and more complicated patterning, but once I get what's already laid out filled in more I'm going to try to view the piece on the wall if I can, so that I can figure out what needs to be added to aid the composition. I've already tacked on some small areas of shading in places. I'm taking much more time and care with this versus the one I did in college that was similar. This one promises to be far more nuanced and interesting, and I think if I do a series like I plan to that it will be very successful. There was another drawing I did all in curved lines that almost swirled under your eye, and I want to take the most well done areas of that and sketch them out into my pad and try to translate them into a drawing with only the swirls, subtracting the rope ball that was present in the first one. That was there because it was part of an assignment, but there's something in the way it almost moves of its own volition that makes me really want to experiment more with that technique.

I'm working all this week, but I've been putting in a couple of hours when I get home each night. It doesn't leave time for anything else, really, but that's okay. I feel like I'm really getting something accomplished, and it's fun to see the drawing take shape the more work I put in. I ordered a few different types of pen from Amazon, which will arrive in about two days. I discovered there are all different point thicknesses, and I'm looking forward to experimenting with them to see what kind of different effects I can achieve with each thickness.

I'm getting way more than I thought I would on my tax return this year, which is exciting. It will all go towards debt, but by the end of next month I should have only one card left, and at that point I'm going to start saving up for a security deposit and begin my search for a new place. I'm being careful with my money and it's been paying off. Even when I don't make that much when Besim is slow or I miss a day with Jim for whatever reason I'm still making progress. I'm hoping for a new car by the end of the summer, but we'll see. I don't want to count my chickens yet.

I haven't gotten to exercise the past several days because I've gotten home late from work, and I just don't have the motivation to get up early to do it yet. All in all, though, I feel pretty good about myself lately.

There's a corner being turned, here. I'm going to take the opportunity to try medication and see how it works. As I've said, I made a lot of progress just by changing my routine and my habits, but there's something still out of reach. I feel like a better person than I was, more energetic, happier, more relaxed. I know my actions make it seem like I was really crazy, and not just badly affected by depression. Without a job, feeling like I had no emotional support, things got pretty bad. They had never been like that before, and my psychologist is positive that it was just the set of circumstances I was in. I knew that at the time, but I was the only person who understood that. No matter how much I protested that it was situational and that I needed time apparently it just wasn't getting through. It became easier to escape than to face reality, and I wasn't being honest with myself or anyone else for a long time. I'm not a victim, I know that. I have things that belong to me, that I have to deal with that are nobody else's problem. I was stuck in a rut for a long time, and being unhappy made me take the easy way out. It took enormous pressure to move me from where I was, to get to where I am. I know that I'm not completely cured. Depression is not something you cure, per se, but it's also not something that has to impact your life in any significant way if it's treated. I know that I still have to reach the goals that I've set for myself in order for all of this to mean something.

But, I feel good about myself and what I'm doing. I pay attention to little things and watch how different things affect me and how I react to situations so I can figure out the best way forward. There is no doubt in my mind about what I can achieve if I continue to push myself. I want to prove that nagging voice that was always in the back of my head wrong. The one that said you've been here before, or somewhere similar, and you didn't pull yourself out. I didn't have help, then, and I couldn't see the way forward. I couldn't see a future where I was happy so that I could aim for it. I didn't know what direction to go in, and most of the wasted time was spent figuring out if I really wanted to be an artist, if I really belonged where I was, if I should finally just get a job, any job, and stop being picky, what kind of job I'd like if I had a choice... I had no answer for any of those questions, and I was paralyzed by anxiety.

That's in the past, and it feels amazing to have some solid answers for myself, regardless of whether they change over time, I finally understand what it means to really know what you have to do. I don't know how I know, I just do. I have to focus my energy on things that will make me feel better about myself, and make them part of my routine. It takes time to let go, and I haven't been letting myself do that. I don't know how, to be honest. It's the hardest thing I've ever had to do and it's the only problem I don't have a solution for right now. The only thing I can think of is to keep myself busy and put time and effort into positive growth so that I'm in a better place tomorrow than I was today. It's a process, and it's not going to happen overnight. The changes in my mindset are tangible only to me, because no one wants to hear about them, but they're still real. Only I know what I really think and feel now, and how I was then. These feelings of knowing what I need and what I want are alien. But the ones that relate to what's important to me and how I conduct my life are familiar. To this day I don't know how I managed to let myself go for so long. I just didn't care about myself, and in doing so I went down a self destructive path that pulled others down with me. If there's one thing I regret right now, because of where I wound up, it's not making sure that I took care of my needs and preparing myself for the future. Being alone is not as oppressive as it once was, because it gives me the opportunity to start from square one. It's the most painful way to become who you want to be, but it's the most pure and the most character building experience I'll ever face. I can point to things that went wrong, and the way that other people affected me, and I have every right to be frustrated about the fact that people I thought would be there for me weren't. But I have to be responsible for my own feelings, and I can't let that consume me, just like they should be responsible for their feelings and realize that they can choose to feel this way, or they can realize it's not the way things have to be. Maybe that will come with time. I don't have a leg to stand on or any reason to feel morally superior, and I don't. But regardless of what I did, it doesn't provide a justification for the hurt they caused me that made some of my problems worse. I believe in love and forgiveness being more powerful than hate and anger. I think that holding a grudge and punishing people is not the way to deal with being hurt. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Some photographs from the Prospect Park Zoo. I wish there was a bunch of bananas in the last picture to make the left hand side more interesting. I'll have a few more pictures from the park itself at some point, but there wasn't much light that day, so therefore not many pics are that exciting. It was a good exercise, and it was good to work on my compositional skills, but not a whole lot came out of it that's worthy of going in my portfolio. I do really like the last photo here, however.


I'll end with a story:

Picture the coast of Montauk, a harbor with piers 50 feet high. Small ladders descend from these platforms down to 5 large sailing ships achored there. Anthony Bourdain is accompanying me on a trip around the world in a sailboat, but I have to find the right ship. It's a dark night, the landscape devoid of life, the wind whipping around me as I climb down thin ladders to the bucking and rolling ships at the bottom. I almost fall several times trying to get back to the ladder as I find no one aboard. I can't find the right ship, no one seems to be around. Finally, all of a sudden I'm in a ship, as if my subconcious got fed up with me risking my life and teleported my corporeal body. Anthony enters the hold. There are a few talking terriers walking around, and all of a sudden a rabbit with a beak. Not a large parrot beak, but a small one, like on a baby chick. I say that I always wanted a rabbit, and nuzzle it. It talks to me. Anthony makes a statement, that whatever drugs are aboard, they should be brought out immediately and that everyone must share to keep each person high for as long as possible during the voyage. The chick-a-bunny produces a large bag of weed, and everyone (everyone being me, Tony and several talking cute mutant animals) makes celebratory noises. Bourdain pours himself a large drink, and gets me a Sam Adams. The bunny mutant has now turned into a giant baby chick, and passes me an electronic device, asking me if I can tweet for him. I've never used twitter in my life. But this is like a notepad program in a small hand held device, similar to the electronic pets that were in vogue about 15 years ago. I type "tweet, tweet, tweet," and a small bird flies across the screen and says "tweeeeeet." I begin to get drunk, and the dream ends.

That is all.

Just wanted to post my continuing progress on Dave's wedding present:

I'm getting really into the piece I'm working on for Dave. It's exciting, so it's going to be hard when I have to give it away, but as soon as it's done I can start on a new one. I plan on doing a series of the same type of drawing. I posted some shots below showing that it's basically lines up and down and across the page. I start with an even layer and then accentuate the places where the ink built up more or where overlapping lines created darker regions and bring them out. Then I start to look at the composition of the piece and construct it from there. I have some variations that I'd like to try out, with some hard edged shapes along with the gentle blending that I normally do. I have several ideas to try out as far as the "forms" go that are in my other drawings. I've got enough sketches to keep me busy for quite awhile. It will be harder to work this summer, but I've gotten into a good rhythm and I think about new pieces or what I want to do next at work so that I'm psyched up to do it when I get home. I think a lot about how nice it would be to make a living doing this and be able to just create things all the time. That's what keeps me working hard, the dream that I could do this all day every day.

I found my brother's old guitar downstairs, and I've been nursing it back to health. It suffered several cracks in the top, which I clamped and repaired with small slivers of wood on the inside to strengthen the top in those areas. It shouldn't affect the playing at all, but I was afraid of them getting worse. He disobeyed the cardinal rule of storing guitars for long periods of time and neglected to loosen the strings before putting it away. It's a shame, because it's a really nice acoustic. Tomorrow I'll fully tighten the new strings and we'll see how it sounds.

I got back on the topic of medication with my therapist today, and he recommended generic Selexa. I'm going to see my GP at some point in the next few weeks and ask him to write the prescription, then we'll see how well it works. I'm not looking forward to it, really, but I am hopeful that it will help. I think I've done almost as much as I can on my own, and I just need something to make things easier. I'm not content to stay where I am.

I watched some of the songs from Les Miserables on PBS last night and it made me remember how much I used to enjoy musicals. I hope it comes back to Broadway sometime soon, because I'd love to go. In related news, Trey Parker and Matt Stone just finished writing a new musical called The Book of Mormon, which is supposed to be phenomenal. I love everything else they've ever done, so I'm going to have to go see it when I can get tickets.

I'm going to a Rangers game in a week or two. I can't wait! Hopefully by the time I go we haven't been knocked out of the playoff race. We're hovering just on the edge right now, still in 7th or 8th place, and we've been winning of late. I hope we can keep it up, though I'm not sure we'll go deep if we do make the playoffs. I'm so sick of Glen Sather and his complete failure at being a GM. Yes, he had success elsewhere, but in the last decade we've won two playoff series. Nothing else. Why keep a jackass who just wastes money on big name players who are past their prime? Jagr was probably the only good acquisition he's had so far with us. It remains to be seen whether Gaborik will perform up to what we expect. Last season he was great, but this year he's gone right back to being hurt all the time and only has something like 19 goals. He's invisible when he's actually playing, and at this point I wouldn't mind trading him. We have a good core of young players, but we need a real sniper. Somebody who you can rely on to score 30, 40 goals a season. Who knows where we'll find someone like that, but without that kind of player I don't see us winning a cup any time soon.

Everything else has been good, not much to talk about except that I'm excited about the warm weather and summer. I'll get to run outside and go to the beach, and there are a lot of fun things coming up. I'm thinking about taking some kind of martial arts class depending on how much they are, and I'm still trying to find a way into the art community here. I just have to keep on keepin' on.

The Godspeed show was amazing, as expected. There's an Explosions in the Sky show coming up on April 6th, but it's a Wednesday, and I can't go because I have to work late. There are decent seats still available and they're not that expensive. So I'm pretty upset considering Low and Eluvium are opening for them.

It was a really fun day all around. Spending the day with the Daves took me back about 6 years to my Junior and Senior years of college when we used to hang out all the time playing Smash Bros. Bernstein and I got together around 11 AM once I finally got through the morning traffic and arrived in Brooklyn. We had breakfast together at a weird little diner, which supposedly had the best food in Brooklyn. It didn't compare at all to Country Corner, and, put it this way: if that's the best food in Brooklyn then I don't want to live there.

Afterward we grabbed our cameras and walked to Prospect Park. Eventually we found our way to the Zoo, which was pretty tiny but had some interesting animals. Dave was like a kid in a candy store. The highlight of his day was watching otter sex for half an hour. I hadn't been to a zoo in ages. It was fun walking around and taking pictures. I got a few good shots, and we walked around Prospect Park afterward as well, so I'll have some things to put up in the next couple of days. We were out walking for about 5 hours, and my legs are still sore today even though I've been exercising.

We met up with Berg around 6 and had dinner in Union Square, which was actually really good. We made our way closer to the venue and stopped at a bar, then got a taxi to take us to the show. Bernstein and I were both pretty beat, so the three of us found a couch on the third floor with flatscreens showing the stage and chilled out there for most of the show. It's orchestral type music, so actually seeing the stage isn't that important. We got a taxi back to Berg's apartment after the show and went to a bar around the corner. I had about half a beer and suddenly started to get really tired, so I had to leave them there and find my car to go home. I didn't get home until almost 3 AM, so it's a good thing I left when I did. All in all it was an awesome day. I'm hoping that Berg will be up for hanging out more often. We always say we should get together more, but then neither one of us is that good at keeping in touch.

Pretty soon I'm not going to have any time to do anything social. It looks like I'm going to keep my job at Besim's. Somehow he pulled it out of the fire and is planning to move down the street in the next few weeks. Don't ask me how, but he held off the tax department and I'm even getting a few extra hours. Once April comes around I'll be working almost 70 hours a week. I really need to save some money and get my own place, so I don't mind working hard.

Tomorrow my psychologist and I are going to start talking about medication for my anxiety. I hate my social anxiety so much. It's cost me not only love, but opportunities, and my general anxiety has impeded my progress a lot. I never realized how much it affected me until recently. It's hard for me to get to sleep at night because I lay awake thinking, and tensing my muscles. It's completely involuntary. I can't even imagine a life without anxiety, or even with decreased anxiety where I feel normal. I've been living with it all these years, and I've even been called selfish because my anxiety prevented me from going out or spending time with people. I feel like a leper. Nobody understands how hard it is, because if you don't have it then it doesn't make sense to you. There's no concept of the effort it takes to hang out with strangers, or even people you just don't know that well. Sometimes even people you DO know very well. People completely misjudge you, call you moody or elitist, aloof or self centered... there's a difference between those things and being an introvert. You can't do something wrong if you don't know it's wrong, if there's no intent to cause harm or frustration in others. I've been made to feel like these things are my fault, somehow under my control. It's only recently that I realized that I have no reason to bow to those opinions, and that the way people have treated me as a result of these issues is what's really wrong with this picture. I take responsibility for my actions, but not for things I can't control, and I refuse to take responsibility for something when your being hurt by it is only a result of you not trying to understand it. The wrong things I've done are few compared with things that have been taken as such by people with no understanding and no capacity for empathy. I hate to keep rehashing this stuff, but I wish I could grab people and shake them or make them see a psychologist themselves so they could have this explained to them. When I do it I just sound like I'm making an excuse to them, or not taking responsibility for my actions. If I didn't have social anxiety and I didn't want to hang out with your friends, or go out to a bar, then go ahead and call me selfish. But if I say no because the thought of it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin, or hide somewhere by myself, then you have to understand that it takes an effort of will to do these things.

My psychologist and I are going to talk about referring me for medication. I've been resistant to taking that step so far, firstly because I wasn't sure if I needed anything more than the supplements and some exercise. That's probably true for my depression, but it's certainly not in the case of my anxiety. I was worried about taking something because of my tendency to abuse substances in the past. However, my psychologist and I both agree that if I have something that helps with my anxiety/depression that I won't feel the need for drugs. I was essentially self medicating, taking things because they helped me get through the day, accomplish things, etc. But it got out of hand, and what I was taking was too strong and not really what I needed. Sometimes it was the complete opposite of what I needed. So I'll have to start talking to my boss about health insurance to get that covered, although if it's not expensive I might be able to handle it myself. I should have health insurance anyway, and I'd like to get dental as well. I'm trying to take care of myself, and I'm starting to think that medication might be what I need to get to the next level of function in my life.

I'm still consistently experiencing some small setbacks, although overall I feel I'm getting better. It's frustrating when your body and your brain conspire to keep you immobile, and all you want to do is be free. Sometimes, when it was really bad, I felt like I was stuck in a swimming pool with 6 foot high sides and no ladder. It took so much effort to get anything done. Some days I still feel like that, and it would be okay to take a day off here and there like a normal person, but I beat myself up for it. That makes it even harder to get anything done, because the next day I start criticizing myself for not getting enough done and taking the day off. Then I wind up talking myself into doing nothing because I'm worthless anyway and none of it will matter. It was a vicious circle that I had to break to start setting goals and getting things squared away in my life so that I can be monetarily and psychologically free. I long for that feeling, and everything that I do is aimed at a feeling of accomplishment. The problem is that accomplishment is hard for me to feel good about when it's not something big. I think about all the other things that I need to do and it makes what I have done feel like nothing. Like the finish line keeps moving away from me even when I'm running full speed. I think that I should at least try medication. I know now, from having a lot of days where I don't feel like this that I could feel better than I do.

What I've done has been through willpower and hard work, as well as a little bit of help from the supplements, but they're really not the final answer. They helped me get this far, and now it's time to re-evaluate and figure out where I am and how to make things a little bit easier so that I can realize my potential. It's there, seething under the surface, creativity and music and ideas and goals and wants and flights of fancy that I wish I could undertake. But there's something still holding me back from moving past the best that I've been so far in my life. I don't want that to be where I stay. It's not the place I really want to be, I just got used to it and stopped thinking that I was the type of person who had ambition. I do, I just worry too much, and criticize myself for not being smart enough, or hard working enough, or talented enough, whatever it might be. That's why it's so hard to start a project and finish it if its going to take longer than a week. My drawings are something I'm passionate about, but I'm crippled by anxiety and it feels like I can't finish them no matter how hard I try. I put them down as not good enough, and ask myself why I should bother. I work on them anyway, but I could put in more time if I let myself see how well spent that time is. Right now I can't see enough progress on a day to day basis to put in the long hours that I need to. I'm proud of myself for doing as much as I have, but I can do better. That applies to a lot of other areas of my life, so it's not just one thing that's affected.

There's still something that needs analyzing and fixing, but I'm getting closer to figuring things out. Therapy has helped a lot. I've been able to define for the first time since I can remember who I am and what I want out of life, who I'd like to be and the things that are important to me. There are people that I had to leave behind that I miss, but some of them were not good influences on me, and some of them enabled my self destruction and made it hard to feel good about myself. As much as I wish I could have those people in my life, I don't even want them there right now, because I'm doing well by myself. I've been hesitant to meet a lot of new people and make new friends because it's very easy for me to disregard my own needs and responsibilities when other people are around. People that I admire or respect have a lot of influence on me, whether they know it or not, and my desire to please people makes me get in my own way a lot of the time. This is where I need to be in order to be a whole person. It's not what I necessarily want or desire at the moment, but it's becoming more and more clear that leaving certain things behind was for the best. Not that it should have turned out this way, but with the state I was in, this is what had to happen. I've been able to forgive myself for the things I've done, and I take responsibility for what I did wrong. It's frustrating that other people can't see what they did wrong, but even if they did it probably wouldn't change anything for me at this point. I want to keep pushing ahead, and when I'm ready I'll come out of my shell. I have to build a solid foundation for myself, then I can incorporate more people and outside influences into my life. Right now I'm still not well equipped to handle all of them. Simplicity is key until I feel more secure.

Pretty profound coming from someone on the internet. Also here's a thread on Reddit, an "ask me anything" by a person who's dying of cancer and has 51 hours left to live before they go in for doctor assisted suicide. Not a cheerful subject but very moving.

 I was shooting a lot with a diffusion filter in San Fran, and a lot of the forest photographs didn't come out the way I thought they would. I have a harbor shot that I need to stitch together, but these were the only two shots I thought it was worth spending time on aside from the two I posted earlier.

Here are the first couple of images I've worked on so far. I'm getting to the others right now. I have a bad habit of procrastinating on my artwork, but it's so satisfying to see the finished product. Even if I never make money doing art, I will always do it for myself. I have to throw myself into this drawing that I'm doing for Dave. It's really important that I get it done before a year has passed, and even though there's plenty of time, I don't want to keep pushing the date back. It will make Dave really happy if I get it done and give it to him before July. I owe that to him for the way he has stuck by me during the last year.

Depression is like being underwater. Like you're swimming in molasses. Trying to move forward, every step takes effort, and everyone else seems like to be walking on air. It's not always easy to be so upbeat in this blog, but I do it because I need to stay positive. I know I'm in a better place than I was 6 months ago. The future still seems a long way off, even as I can see it coming over the horizon. My biggest goals feel no closer, even though they are. That's what's so difficult about being depressed. It's hard to think it's worth the effort to do things, because you can't see how it will benefit you in the long term. Sometimes it's easy, and I feel great. Sometimes I feel like I accomplished nothing, even if I worked hard all day. It's a slow process, but I have to keep a positive outlook in order to keep moving forward.

I need a little bit more time to cement my new habits, and then I'll be ready. Sometime in the near future I'll have passed a big milestone and be able to say that I did something I set out to do months ago. I'll see the result of hard work, and how it paid off, and that will help motivate me towards other things. For now I have to keep doing the day to day stuff, reminding myself that I have to do it even if I don't feel up to it. It's really hard sometimes, but it's gotten easier and easier the longer I keep it up. I may never be a person who's always happy, but I refuse to ever again be a person who's never happy.

I know, I haven't gotten pictures up that I said I would. I'm working on it. I will hopefully have time tonight. I'm done with smoking. Done done done. Nada mas. This is important, and I have to exercise restraint. It shouldn't be that hard, it's more psychological than anything else. After almost 10 years it's hard to break a habit like that. But I'm starting to remember how great I used to feel when I would exercise regularly when I was younger, and I want that feeling back.

I'm trying really hard to control my spending. I've made progress, but it's one of my worst bad habits. I have to figure out a better way to budget and a way to find cheaper alternatives or something. I know I'll be making a lot more money soon, but I want to stick to the same budget once I start so that the extra money all goes toward debt/savings. I've always been terrible with money, but I'm concerned about my future and I have to get it together once and for all. It's the most important thing that I need to accomplish. I have to just keep telling myself "don't spend, don't spend, don't spend. You don't really need that. You don't need that either." I'm a lot better than I used to be, but I still struggle sometimes, especially when my schedule slows down unexpectedly and I don't have as much coming in as I planned for. That doesn't happen often, but it can throw a whole month out of whack, and if it happens twice in two months or something it takes awhile to get back on the right path. I can save a lot of money by not smoking, and I'm trying to cut out things like Red Bull and drinking the free coffee at work instead. Things like that will be a big help, but I still need to figure out a solid budget. I have a rough estimate in my head for things, but that's not good enough. I'm asking my therapist for help with all of this stuff. He should be able to help me figure out how to psych myself into doing things right when it comes to my finances. It's not rocket science, I just need some help with motivation and strategies to help keep myself on the right track.

Loooong day today. Update photos of the piece I'm working on and sketches, as well as San Fran photos will be uploaded tonight. I had no time for exercise today. Well, that's not really true. I didn't want to get up at 7 AM so I could exercise. I'm still sore anyway, and I get off work at 4 tomorrow, so I can combine cardio and free weights, which is better in the long run. I have one cigarette left in my pack. Contemplating using it as motivation and leaving it there.

Going bowling again Saturday. Perhaps Monday I'll finally go get the ball I've been promised. Now that I've been throwing better, with my new technique I'm excited to see how I'll fare my third time out. Will it be a case of beginner's luck or am I on to a sure thing?

Apparently Besim can't move his shop to the highway next to Goldberg's. There's a town ordinance against it, which really sucks. We were going to do traffic studies and find out how many people and what socioeconomic class most frequents that location so he could make an informed decision. All those plans are out the window now, but he still has two months to find a new space before his current lease runs out. The last thing he wants to do is stay put, so the search will begin in earnest now. I only made up a few of the hours I missed this week, but I got a full tank of gas, and $40 bucks worth of fuel is nothing to sneeze at in addition to free lunch (there is such a thing) and my regular pay.

I have to really get going on my drawing, because I still owe Dave a wedding present. I feel bad about it, but I've had a lot happen in my life in the last year, so it's understandable that I'd be a little behind. Etiquette dictates that I have a year after the wedding anyway, but I would have liked to have been done with it awhile ago, since I'm worried about my portfolio right now. Speaking of Dave, when we have our concert in a few weeks we also get to spend the day together. We're going to use it to photograph the city. Dave has gotten more and more into photography over the last year and it's nice to have someone to go out shooting with. He's got a surprisingly good eye, for someone whose interests aren't usually creative in nature. I'm consistently amazed by the quality of the work he produces. He's more into bird photography and close up things than I am, but since I'm into landscapes and nature it's easy to find enough for the both of us when we go out together. I'd like to take a trip to Boston soon to see him, but he's been slow with getting me his schedule so we can figure something out. I know he's got a trip planned to the Southwest and that's taking up most of his time, but I haven't seen him in months. We had a great time last I saw him photographing Millennium Park. I'd like to go back in the springtime and shoot it again.

I didn't get to work on those pictures from San Fran yesterday, and I probably won't get around to them tonight either, because of the Rangers game. Not that I should have wasted my time since we lost 3-1. I have to get up early tomorrow to go to Brooklyn, and I'll probably spend the rest of the night drawing.

I started The Fatal Shore today, a book I read a few years ago about Australia's founding. It was all I had to hand on my way to work today, and it's worth reading again. I've been doing two books at once so I'll probably start the other book I was talking about tomorrow night. I don't get much time to read these days in any case, but I usually have one book for work and one for home, because some are easier to read in small pieces and others need more concentration.

I should also put up some pictures of my sketches for record keeping and general why-the-hell-not-ness.

I've been having a few cigarettes a day lately, but I really need to quit. It's really counter productive when you're starting to jog regularly. I haven't smoked pot in awhile, not sure how long, but it's lost most of its appeal. I had a spring mix salad and a fruit salad today, as well as a banana and a smoothie. I'm trying to find a way to have a healthy diet that doesn't take a lot of work, but it's not easy. Either it costs too much or it takes too much time to buy and prepare. It's kind of a catch-22, and unhealthy food can be too tempting sometimes. I just keep telling myself that I can only have one cookie, only have one bag of chips today, no beer, just eat the damn banana. And then I go "mmmm banana," and remember that I like healthy food.

I have to skip a week of therapy because my shrink was away today. I'm not thrilled about that, but I've been doing okay anyway. There aren't a whole lot of pressing issues that I have to deal with ATM. It's more general stuff that we've been getting into, and they can wait a week I guess. Today was kind of a blah day.

First of all:

My back started to hurt as I moved further up the page, so I had to curtail my drawing efforts for today. I've been going back in half hour increments because I can't do much more than that before I need to take a break. If only I could suspend myself over the paper a la Maude Lebowski, though with less velocity it would solve a number of technical problems.

Before and after:

I started moving up the right side of the page as well, to give my back a bit of a break. It's hard to see fine detail with the camera, but I did a lot of blending in the bottom/middle of the page as well. I started around 3 PM today. One of these days I have to get a stopwatch and time myself. I think that rather than naming my pieces formally I will time how long each one takes and name them that way. For example, "3:23:48.22" 3 days, 23 hours, 48 minutes, 22 seconds.

The process is therapeutic and the conceptual side of each piece is mostly expelling neuroses and the necessity of drawing. I think that all artists, musical or otherwise fall somewhere on the savant scale, where their talent needs to be flushed out of their system through the act of drawing or playing an instrument... whatever it might be. The savant feels a compulsion, and I think that every artist or musician feels this need to a greater or lesser degree determined by how alike their neural network is to that of a savant. It's not a totally baseless theory. For me it's the way I feel serenity after working for several hours, and how unhappy I am when I haven't been working for any period of time. For a savant this feeling is unbearable, and they have to exercise their talent no matter what. For me it's just a mild discomfort, and I'm obviously not nearly as gifted as any of those individuals. This conceptual labeling of my work is something that's evolved over the course of the last 7 years, since I first picked up a pen and drew cross hatched lines, and there was always a sense that something inside of me was getting out through the pen. It's been a steady uncovering of meaning and refining of technique that has clarified what I'm doing and why, rather than taking a concept and trying to create an expression of its essence.


I did 2+ miles on the treadmill today, alternating walking and running. I'm definitely out of shape, but I can feel the stamina that I used to have before I started smoking. It's clear that my greatest struggle will be with lung capacity. If I could get more oxygen I could have run a lot longer, like I used to. In high school I ran 6 and a half minute miles. I guess that's stuck with me, although I've lost some muscle mass, because I haven't felt nearly as sore as I thought I would the day after.

I'm going to work on pics from San Francisco today at some point since I don't have work yet again. I felt better this morning than I did last night about my free time, because I really have a lot to do. Off to get lunch, aka a bacon egg and cheese. Om nom nom nom.

The first pic was a few hours after I'd started working. The lower left hand corner is where my focus is presently.

This is at the end of the night. Just finished. I know it doesn't look like much, but that's at least 6 hours of slow layering. I use a straight edge across the page and work long strips about 2 inches at a time, and then I have to go back and blend them together. Otherwise the lines start to go all over the place. It's funny how little things become big problems, like how the motion of your arm is naturally an arc. I've had to train mine to go in a straight line, and it's very difficult sometimes. After awhile you get in the zone, and the movement is like second nature. It's almost like playing an instrument. The muscle memory in my arm remembers how to make the pen go straight, and I just focus on that movement. Over...and over.... and over.

This is the one I've been working on most the past few months. It's a couple of hours a day for the most part, but every little nook and cranny has to be handled individually. No long strokes like in the drawing above. That's partly why I started the other one. This one is taking so long that I had to get working on a different drawing so I could finish one soon. This might be a drawing that I work on for a year or more. The work is so intricate and finely detailed. The picture doesn't come close to doing it justice. Even the spaces that look black have a lot of fine detail in them.


I was thinking, as I stood on a chair above my work table, about where that table came from. And then I thought about this blog, and another blog that I named. It's funny how people touch your life in ways that you might not think about as much later on. My drafting table is a big reminder of another person, but it's only once in awhile that it really strikes me how I wouldn't be doing this stuff right now if not for them. Who knows when I would have actually bought a drafting table myself. The fact that I named that person's blog--maybe they don't remember that as vividly. But it's still there, and it always will be. It's the little things that make me happy.

No work today or tomorrow, apparently. Kind of frustrated, because I had some monetary goals that were relying on this week's pay. What can you do. I did spend all day today drawing, and I'll be doing the same tomorrow. Started with free weights today as well. Back to cardio tomorrow morning. I just went out briefly to go to the store. Now I'm at a loss for what to do. I guess I'll go draw some more, or pick up a book. I just don't really feel like much because I'm disappointed about work. I understand Jim needing to take a few days to rest his leg so that it doesn't become more of a problem, and I'll make up some of the time on Friday going into Brooklyn to pick up money from the shop for him, I was just starting to make some more money each week and it sucks to have this much downtime. I was actually enjoying only having one day a week off, because I really felt like I was being productive. Still, it's not as though I don't have things to do here, but I'm not used to having to fill 3 whole days. I should be excited, right? I get to be lazy if I want to be, but as strange as it sounds that's not very appealing.

Either no work today or working later... Jim's had a problem with his foot lately, he had surgery about a month ago to biopsy a nerve in his ankle, and he's had problems with his leg swelling up. He also had a huge blister on his foot that he couldn't feel because of the numbness caused by neuropathy that broke open last week. I imagine he's having problems getting around, so we'll probably go in early tomorrow morning instead. In the meantime I've been doing some research for him on donating old gym equipment and working on finding a suitable shredder/wood chipper to clear the brush out of his back yard. He also wants to mount some of his gun collection, and I'm having a hell of a time finding two gun racks that look nice enough to put in his house.

I just got back from getting brunch, so I'll work on that stuff and try calling him again, then get to work on my drawings. It'll be nice to have two days off in a row to get some things done. Lately I've been working 6 or 7 days a week, and going into Brooklyn Tuesday mornings, staying overnight and leaving late Wednesday evening. It's a hectic schedule, but half the time it doesn't even feel like work. The only difficult part is helping out downstairs in the lobby. His daughter has cerebral palsey and I've been assisting with the phones and greeting customers, directing calls and managing estimate appointments. I have to learn as I go because everyone is too busy with the new Progressive program to help teach me, so it's a bit nerve racking when something comes up that I can't deal with.

Besim is looking to move his business across town, and I went to take a look at the space this morning on my way to get breakfast. It's right next to Goldberg's bagels and the BCB. Not a bad location, but I worry about the type of clientele he'll be getting. If he could make the inside of the store look high end enough it might attract the customers that he's used to getting. If not, I think he'd be better off liquidating his inventory of expensive merchandise and expanding stock on items that have lower price points, otherwise it will be hard to move certain things. I hope everything works out for him. I've stayed on this long because I feel that I owe it to him. I know every item he sells inside and out, sometimes even better than he does, and I'm familiar with his customers and have the people skills to move product. I'd feel like a heel if I left him before he could find a suitable replacement. I want to try to stay on through the summer for the extra money and to train his next employee. Jim has offered to help me pick up the slack by sending me into Brooklyn on days when I'd normally work at the store, but I haven't taken him up on it because I feel this sense of obligation. Besim has helped me out and been there for me when I needed him, so I have to do the same for him.

I want to start photo-documenting progress on my pieces, so maybe I'll start that tonight. I'd like to have a record of how far I've come so that I can measure my progress. Sometimes it's hard to see where all of my efforts are leading, and that would help press home the point that every minute spent drawing is another step in the right direction.