This Blog is Hypocritical Just By Existing

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth"

-Alan Watts

This quote inspired me, hilariously enough, to try and define myself; to try and lay down in a line precisely what it was, exactly, that was going on in my brain. This decision was fairly recent, but I've made so much headway that I'm a little frightened that I probably missed something somewhere along the line. I think it's likely that I've gone too fast and made some mistakes but they certainly haven't presented themselves so far and it feels as though I'm thinking with more clarity than I ever have before. Until these mistakes decide to show up in whatever form, I'm just going to keep plodding along the way I'm going.

which could easily be straight into one of these

Let's take a trip back to almost exactly a year ago, where things will seem grim for a bit but don't worry, I got better. I've struggled with depression off and on throughout life, and had just moved to the big city and was excited as hell to become a character artist or cartoonist or something or whatever. Point was, I was going to join some awesome hipster art zine beer commune, have awesome flatmates, make awesome money and have an awesome time. The world was going to know just how fucking amazing I AM.

Well, only one of those things happened (I was blessed enough to have the most kickass roomies of all time, they even got me a job). As you can guess, nobody gets all that stuff overnight and it takes work. The more I worked at my drawings, the more I realized I was resenting it and hating it. The more I resented it, the less progress I made and the less I did. So fuck it, I thought, I'll let it be for now and draw only when I feel like it (consequently my art began to improve; something I didn't pick up on until later) and deal with money-getting work for the time being. Summer was coming and since I worked in a fancy-ish kitchen, it would be busy and I could just occupy my time with that. Three spontaneous nose-bleeds and a handful of panic attacks later, I realized that this probably wasn't the job for me. I waited until the end of the summer rush, gave my two weeks, and off I went and looked for something else. What I found was a simple dishwashing job at a diner. Awesome, something simple and mindless.

The deceptively heavy work, combined with the freezing fucking cold (back door wasn't properly sealed in the winter) and the "gogogo" attitude of any kitchen made panic mutate into depression. Getting up every morning to go to a dead job in a cold, dimly lit room with no windows, then going home to go to bed in a cold, dimly lit room with no windows started to get unbearable. I started to loose my grip on things and working just the three days (paying bills was kind of difficult, yes) a week I had to work seemed like three years. I can't really describe where my mind was at with any sort of eloquence, but it was bad. To make matters worse, my asthma started flaring up, my knees and back started to give way. Feelings of worthlessness, self-pity, disconnection, anger, isolation blah blah blah cry cry cry. It got to the point where, at the lowest point I think I've ever experienced, it seemed the only solution was to sit on the wrong seat at the subway station, if you catch my meaning.

However, I thankfully tend to learn from suffering, even if it sometimes puts things in a haze. In a fit of what I consider to be the first wise decision in my life, I said "Wait a second. I'm not being honest with myself here."

After a meeting with my doctor (and yeah, I got prescribed some welbutrin), I quit my job at the diner, quit smoking, got my drinking under control, went on state money, put in an EI claim, applied for school, began to meditate, became a vegetarian, told my roommates I was moving in with my brother, and most importantly, came out as queer. I'm not going to go into specifics of what exact branch of "queer" that is, but that was the biggest and smartest decision I ever made. Yay, me.

Now, I am more elated than I have ever been and this feeling has persisted for over a month. It is all because I am subscribing to that Taoist philosophy of taking "the path of least resistance." If you push against the current, not only will it simply go around you but will also push back against you even harder. This is not advocating inaction or laziness, but patience and contemplation. Once I finally made the decision to look at my life and see the things that were unhealthy, change them, and accept those things that I can't things felt lighter. This may seem obvious to some people, but all too often I see what happened to me happen to other people.

Desire to prove yourself to the world turns into lust for result

Lust for result becomes fear of failure

Fear of failure becomes failure

Failure becomes simply getting by

Getting by becomes survival

Survival becomes a struggle

Struggle becomes overwhelming

Overwhelming feeling becomes desire to die

Trying to justify everything you do by a code brings confusion.

Trying to have everything you do define you, or make you shine in front of other people brings anxiety.

But if you do things because it seems like a Thing To Do; because it's as natural to you as blinking or opening and closing your hand, then life, it seems, works out for the better. So, now that we've gone down that horrible road, here I am, eating up philosophies from the East (especially Taoism) and applying them to my life. I feel unstuck, free to flow, natural.

This long winded, sobfest wankery is simply a preface to what I hope to be my more uplifting musings; from the serious and deep to the playful and the how-much-I-like-dragonflies.

I only have one bit of advice first. Don't read them, I'm a very silly person.