22 views. 3 days. Progress doesn't always look like progress.
22 views my not sound like a a lot. It is. It is to me.
After a hiatus of over a month I wanted to break my no blog streak, and I wanted to put it in front of as many faces as possible.
I want to thank anyone who read my blog looked at my art, shared any of it or both. I especially want to thank anyone who reached out. You inspired this.
One of the pieces of advice I got when I took on this journey of a livelihood dependent on drawing attention to myself and the things I create, was to make it seem like I'm a success story. People are drawn to success stories and they want to see how you got there. I don't want to do that. I am right in the middle of a hard time and I won't tell you otherwise. I'm am right in the middle of feeling defeated, but I'm still going to write this impromptu blog, because writing this blog is an exercise in keeping routine.
Before I left for Georgia I was producing blogs sporadically. I told myself when I got back to it, that I would produce with regularity. So for me to do just that is the only way to push back against feeling defeated.
I've felt so numb and unproductive for so long, that anytime I think I've figured out my problem I get excited and I dive into therapy and a new routine with my hopes some where in the stratosphere. It hurts that much more when I lapse back into chaos.
It's hard to go against the way your brain has always been wired. That's why I want to write about progress, and how it's ok to take baby steps. If you can obtain happiness and a sense of normalcy by making a drastic change than I'm rooting for you, but if you find that difficult, then I hope you can make a tiny change. I hope you can maintain that change, feel proud of that little change, and set yourself up to keep building on top of it. Progress is a wave pattern. Highs and lows are unavoidable, as long as you can bring the baseline up, you can't say your doing nothing.
My last post was about how I am keeping entries. For me, that's a baby step. I chose it because I feel that I can maintain it. I'm not a mental health expert, but a therapist I used to work with used to tell me to go outside and walk. Even if its for five minutes. The book The Power of Habit reinforced that idea. If something is helping you, don't let yourself turn it into a chore.
Good luck.
