We all lose steam, but....

8/7- I’m not dead, I swear. Although I do keep feeling like I’m just wasting my CORE membership month after month. (Insert convenient “Ug!” face)

Nonetheless, I have in fact been peeking in here I confess. I’ve been logging in, took a look at the new “Eclipse” set up, hated that so I switched back, browsing my notes, journals and new artwork from friends. But I haven’t been posting anything new because I haven’t been drawing. That fact’s reason isn’t quite as cheerful as the first paragraph.

If you recall my last journal, I said that I needed to  "internet detox". That some times you need to just walk away from the electronics and go "off the grid” for awhile. This was true and I had been, but there’s more to it that has been difficult for me to know just how to go about sharing and talking about it. Everyone loses steam from time to time. When your “get up and go” has “got up and went,” when there’s no more “pep” left in your step, sometimes the best thing you can do is just stop trying for a while.

Moving forward feels great, but movement takes energy. When’s the last time you took a break without feeling guilty? ... Well, I felt guilty. I constantly felt guilty. I lost a lot of my motivation when my health took a turn a few years back. At first it was just a slowing--just a bump in the road. I thought I would recover, like a cold or something, and be back as strong as I was before. It didn’t happen... Not exactly. Although I had recovered for the most part, my situation left a lasting, permanent Peripheral neuropathy in my hands, my feet, and most all of my left leg in general. It’s a nerve pain and it’s controlled w/ medication to quell “flare ups,” at least as best as it can.

I couldn’t draw. It was once not uncommon for me to do 3, 4, sometimes 5 pieces a week. Suddenly I had ground to a halt and was lucky if I could squeak out 4 in a whole year! I was angry at myself. I was SO angry! I was depressed. Never in my whole life had Art felt like a chore for me. It had been my go-to comfort for my whole life. Why? Why wasn’t it working anymore?! “What’s wrong with me?!!”

I would be hoping, praying, wanting, wishing, practically BEGGING for my motivation to return--to be anything at all like it had once used to be while all the while wondering where I had lost it in the first place.

We tend to hear and use the word “Depression” so very much in our daily lives that it has become an off the cuff generic term in many ways to describe any time we’re feeling badly. We forgot, I think, how truly real it is. Even I must confess that I did not understand it until it really did happen to me. Depression sucks the life out of you!

I realize that I’ve shared some of these struggles with all of you from time to time, but I know that I hadn’t been completely honest about it neither because I never wanted to fully accept it. I am drawing again, painting. I entered a few new pieces to the 2019 “ACCESS THE ARTS” exhibit at the county fair just a few weeks ago. I need to share those. Just please forgive me if my updates are not as frequent as they once had been.


I want to really thank for tackling this subject perhaps in even far greater depth than I have. Since mine developed from a change in my health as well, it did me a world of good to know I was not alone. I needed to know that. I really did. I’m not alone. Thank You.