I haven’t been very happy with any of my artwork or writing lately. I start things and never finish them, every word or brush stroke after the first is another brick in the wall of it’s shitiness. In terms of writing, I’ve made things in the past that I appreciated, even feel proud of. Artwork for me is never good. My burned out artist grandparents echo in my head with every sketch I start. It’s never good enough, it’s never original enough, or well composed or executed. But I must be a glutton for punishment because I keep on trying to make something, anything that I don’t instantly want to rip in half.
I got in a car accident a couple of weeks ago, totaled my car. Aside from a few bruises and a cool-looking chemical burn from the air bag, I’m fine but I’ve been up and down ever since. I got a new car, and a new car payment. The new car is awesome, but the payment’s a burden I didn’t expect to have. I can afford it, but I’ll have to be a lot more strict about my budget, which I haven’t been for the last few months. My friend told me that feeling depressed like this is normal after an accident. It makes sense–I mean, I lost my car, endangered my life and cost myself a ton of money. But I’m still frustrated. The first week after the accident, I was actually felling better than I had in months. I was so grateful I was okay, so happy that it happened on the freeway on-ramp and not on the freeway it’s self and that I was the car with the most damage because I couldn’t have lived with myself if someone had been hurt. The second week I spent panicky and angry about money, about the inconvenience, worrying about the car payment. No matter how many times I added up my budget, and saw that I was fine, I just couldn’t let go of the nagging idea I was fucked–totally, incontrovertibly fucked. It didn’t help that right when I decided that I would be fine, that I had enough food in the fridge to keep the grocery bill low and make up for the money I spent in the weeks following the accident, my fridge broke and all the food spoiled. It was almost cosmic. Of course, I was still fine, even with all the food spoiled. I just bought more, it’s only money. As uptight as I am about it, you’d think I was about to die.
I spent so many years feeling like I was living on some sort of edge, financially, emotionally, physically. The irony is ridiculous. I worked my ass off to be somewhat sane and stable, and when I find out that my life is actually sane and stable, I don’t know what the fuck is going on.