This Is What I Can Do Now

I was about to make this a tweet thread and just decided to blog about it instead. Was reading my latest favorite webcomic (a Furry sport romance, no less), when one of the characters said that ice skating needs to work out for them because they don't know anything else. And I felt that. 

And no, I have had multiple jobs over the years that taught me a multitude of skills and helped me gain abilities I didn't know I had. I am considered over-qualified when I applied at different workplaces. 

However, in my more just world, I would have attended a technical school, worked under the apprenticeship of a known artist/artisan, and built my career more organically. The problem is, I wasn't expecting to have reached this age, and now feel like I'm "winging it" through life. Sick-unto-death, is how my mom will describe it, and I have nearly died several times over the years. 

Since I have chronic health problems, I have spent time reading and loving books. I have been able to get through school and work because I actually do enjoy reading, learning, and researching.

However, in my case, "The mind is willing, but the flesh is weak". Once I've been at a job for some months to a few/couple (depending on if you're US or UK) years, a mental/emotional malaise comes over me, and my physical body begins to break down. In other words, my anxiety and "mild" depression begins to kick in, and my body begins to break down in whatever way, shape, or form my illnesses, disorders, and other health conditions also act up, and I begin to arrive late to work, taking sick/mental days more, or until I finally just... 

What I'm saying is, I'm trying my damnnest to work on my art and writing because THIS IS ALL I CAN DO THAT WON'T  BE DISRUPTED BY MY CHRONIC HEALTH ISSUES. I need to do everything I can, now I'm in my 40s, to make this my life's work and career because, though I have the skills and plenty of experience and job-training, my body won't let me.

Sorry for being a downer post, but this is the reality I have before me. I didn't expect to live this long. I hadn't made plans this far ahead because I didn't expect to reach this age. My original love of writing and art will have to be it because I don't have the stamina to do anything else. 

Like my Jamaican mom says, "You have the mind. Not the behind." 

Thanks again for being patient with my ranting, dear readers.  Until next time...

The Year I Couldn't Draw

As quarantine and lockdown forces me to have enough time to draw and even some wee hours to write, I remember when I couldn't draw.

It's not that I would not draw or lost the ability to do so. I just COULDN'T. 

Throughout 2000, many pivotal events happened. I finally freed myself from college. I had already graduated but remained, my excuse was I had a campus job and I felt comfortable. But I didn't want to remain there in case I grew stagnant. 

I also started to substitute teach, which wasn't something I wanted but I just couldn't figure what else to do with an art degree. My mother had to undergo cataract surgery, and I was constantly sick from catching colds and other viruses from little to young students. My body was always weak, my immune system always compromised. I was a sickly kid. Oftentimes, almost to ER-deathly ill. 

This same year trying to figure things out, I ended up in ICU twice. 

And then as the year drew closer to its end, my only grandparent became ill. We spoke on the phone as she was overseas in my parents' country, letting me know she wasn't doing well. She died weeks after, her oldest daughter, my mother, holding and watching her take her last breaths. 

This was also the same year my first short story was published and I knew I wanted to write if the artwork didn't work out. All this happened in 2000. Though my mind was on fire with story ideas, I became lost in what to draw... The ideas dried up. Inspiration and necessity left me. Looking at art supplies caused me to vacillate between anger, frustration, and sorrow. Now I know this was depression but I didn't wish to speak its name. I gave up my art, fearing that the dry-spell would cause me to lose my illustrating abilities once I felt able to pick up a pen or pencil. 

That painful 2000- and the Year of the Dragon, no less. My animal year under the Lunar calendar! -forced many questions. I yielded to few answers. I needed to get back into myself. I wondered if it were possible and I missed my chance. 

There are the people who see your works and feel it flowed to you. That mystical ease of expression. But just as hard as it became for me to create, when 2001 came around, something unclasped and I was able to look at a blank sketchbook page again. I remember drawing a new idea as the tears fell, spattering the colors. 

I had started diving more into my writing by attending workshops, registered for more classes, and attend more writer conferences. 

The effects on my year-long artist block collapsed but with it, pain, rage, and grief for my lost grandmother, my lost ideas, the loss of fear of a parent's health, the loss of my body's autonomy. I had to accept it in order to give it up. And with that, I was free to illustrate once again.