littlestar

my body seems to have hit its limits. i am now forced to sleep 9 hours a day which still leaves me feel tired, but awake, versus feeling like shit every day or with a headache. it makes me wonder if i have some sort of disease or builds up resentment for lacking stamina and having that run on my mom's side of the family.

i think i just need to battle it with exercise. maybe it was because i was younger, but i felt GREAT about... 4-6 years ago. :) and even then i needed at least 7 hours to feel good.

so yeah... i've been battling my body and forcing it to do what i need it to do, which leaves me exhausted for everything else... and when i'm tired, i tend to get cranky and down.

which really isn't a good thing at all, because i've been pretty much tired all day long, leading to crankiness and downness all day long... so a state of chronic downness. i want to stop this before it gets towards chronic feelings of depressions.

but these are some of the things i've been feeling depressed about lately:

1. my body is the limiting factor in what i can accomplish in life.
i really wonder if i can handle having a 8/9-5 job. or... the 60-70 hours a week that you need to do in studios around crunch time. i tend to peter out around 5 hours of continuous work. if i'm working from home... i can take a 30 minute or hour break and try to get into another 5 hours. and on such a schedule, i can max out at about 16 hours of work a day. this is with the aid of a LOT of caffeine.

but i can't do this continuously.... or i would pretty much make myself sick as evidenced by the anemia i gave myself last semester with 113a.

i find myself giving myself a light load in school more and more, because i keep feeling like i'm pushing myself over my health capabilities. and i think this chronic fatigue is evidence of that. i am at a point where whatever amount of sleep i get isn't enough. i need vitamins, regularity and exercise... all of which doesn't seem to be all that high in the priorities of the artists i meet and talk to.

especially with some of my professors... they're telling me things like they work 15 hours a day, get 7 hours of sleep... or that sometimes they get 4 hours of sleep a night... i mean... i just can't compete with that.

and in a field where the more mileage and experience you have alongside intelligence is key... i feel like i just don't have prayer of keeping up.

hence the depressions.

2. i don't know what i want to do with my life.
i do.... but at the same time i don't. i want to write, children's literature, picture books, comics... whatever. i want to tell stories. but i'm also surrounded by people who want to tell stories constantly. just by sheer statistics alone, i know that we all won't end up writing something. and because i perceive most people to not be able to write something, i tend to clump myself along with them....

not to mention the sobering difficulties of actually getting published... but add to that the small industry of children's books. or talking to comic writers, where it took them about TEN YEARS to have anything happen.

it's just depressing.

and then.... even when they are successful in getting published and are good enough to be acclaimed and awarded prizes and whatnot..

they still don't earn enough to live off of their writing.

so that even if i do get what i want (to write books and be published and have that sucker be on bookshelves in stores) it very well may mean that i can't live off of it. one of my professors made this explicitly clear. writing books will most likely have to be a second job because they don't pay you enough to pay the bills.

so then i get to working in the industry for a few years and save up money so that i can take break and do writing and possibly go for a master's program and qualify to teach or somesuch....

but then i hit #1. my body will die on industry hours. AND #3, i'm not good enough.

the depressions settle in once more.

3. i'm not good enough.
i started art...2002, so three years ago. some of the people that are in the program have started in high school or before, or one of those people that are annoying and have "always been drawing". i learn quickly, but physical training of the body takes longer than training the mind, and, especially with drawing, some things take both the mind and hand in conjunction to even understand, let alone learn how to do yourself.

every day, i strive to work on drawing. and my darned cerebral-trained mind keeps trying to get all cerebral about it instead of just drawing, you stupid thing. and it's because my hand is trailing years behind and my impatient mind rails at it from afar, not realizing all the things it didn't learn because it didn't realize it needed the hand to learn it in the first place.

but being surrounded by people who can essentially draw circles around me... or confronting my own limitations by doing my work all the time...

yes.... depressing.

combine that with #1, where i can't sit there and abuse my body and draw 12 hours a day to learn things faster and "catch" up to my peers...

very depressing.

the "i'm not good enough" isn't just about art, though. it's about everything. it's that debilitating feeling that sucks the life out of life. here are some choice ones for me:

"i'm not good enough. i will never get a job."
"i'm not good enough. i will never get published."
"i'm not good enough. i will be poor and my parents will yell at me forever for not having gone to med school."
"i'm not good enough. i will always feel alone."
"i'm not good enough. i should have gone to med school where i don't have to work this hard to make something out of thin air."
"i'm not good enough, or else i wouldn't have so much shit to deal with"
i'm not good enough, or else i'd be able to handle my shit as well as other people"

"i'm not good enough. or else, i would be happy right now."

it's horrible, isn't it? i can plainly see how ridiculous some of these ideas are but feel hopeless at getting myself out of it. it's not so bad when i'm feeling healthy and more social and willing to meet up with people, but it really really sucks when i'm feeling tired and i have no one else but me to talk to (frequently, because i'm too tired to talk).

then i start feeling all frustrated because i wish our groups of friends would be more open about their feelings or what they're thinking. i feel like talking about these things are such invaluable lessons.... you figure out how other people figure or solve their way through things. it's a very different dynamic than advice. talking about feeling and how people work with them or despite them at times... that's seeing someone else succeed past them. it's more emboldening and inspiring to realize that other people feel like shit too, and they still work past it.... rather than feeling like i'm the only person with shit to worry about, and everyone else seems to be handling their shit better than i am.

and then this brings up things from the past, things from now, blah blah.... and the

"i'm not good enough, or else i would be happy" thing kicks my ass alongside the "i'm not good enough, or else i wouldn't have so much shit to deal with" and the "i'm not good enough, or else i'd be able to handle my shit as well as other people" things combine to the ultra

"i'm not good enough, therefore, i will never be happy."

it's this vicious cycle where i'm perpetually kicking myself while i'm (literally and figuratively) down.

it starts out with a simple thing and it snowballs into the feeling that i won't be happy, life is hard, and i will never manage it well so i'll stay unhappy. it's weird stuff.

4. i'm not that interesting.
i was debating whether this will go under #3. but well... yeah... i just don't feel like i'm all that interesting.

i don't feel like i do interesting things. i don't feel like i've done interesting stuff. so i feel like i have nothing to really talk about.

what gets past all these feelings is obsession. so when i obsess i talk. and since i tend to be an obsessive person, i talk about whatever is going on my mind right now... and maybe some of the stuff i'm obsessing over may be interesting to some people, but i still feel essentially uninteresting because....

"i'm not good enough, or i wouldn't be obsessing over stupid shit"

right?

so.... yeah....

i end up with this feeling of... not being good enough, not knowing what i want, feeling lonely because this stuff doesn't come up with people i care and trust (family and friends) because they don't bring these things up so i feel like i would just be burdening them with my feelings on it, etc etc etc, and then combine all that feeling like i'm just failing...

at being a good student
at being a good friend
at being a good daughter
girlfriend
sister
worthwhile human being.

and that just drains me for the rest of the day.

anyway, if you've come down this far, do me a favor and write a comment. doesn't even have to be an elaborate thing that addresses my post. a simple "i've read this long-ass post" will do. for personal stuff like this, i'd like to know who's read it. this means you, too, parakkum.

thanks.