Return to Bipolar

When seeking perfection becomes overwhelming, find a place to just exist.

Between essays and my own book work and the slow improvement of my marketing videos, it’s become harder and harder just to tell stories for fun. I think, for starters, I have this idea in my head that if my ideas aren’t perfectly curated, they aren’t worth being shared. but that’s not the point, always. Sometimes it’s invaluable to blow off steam, just goof around, have a little fun. Now, that’s not saying books and essays aren’t fun. If they weren’t, I’d hardly be motivated to write them. But there’s a certain… relaxation in being able to do things that are made for no one but yourself. Little goofs and doodles and sprees of words.

My favorite artists on the internet, Drawfee, that often mention warm-up drawings. Drawings that don’t make it to the internet or to people, just made to hone craft and enjoy things.

Now, this blog is only a little taste of that. But I need to make more time for other things just for me. I love when I play the keyboard. I love to doodle, even if I’m not a stellar artist. Make things that nourish me and only me, instead of always trying to make refined art. I want places to be so beautifully unpolished.

At the point you might ask yourself how the hell this related to the title. To bipolar. And that is a very, very fair question.

Well, the reason I’ve been inspired to return to this blog is because I’ve had a flare-up. Waiting to move to the new house made me get all worked up, then crashed me down when I ran out of steam and I got hit by a single delay. So we’ve been struggling on the depressive end for a couple days. And lately all I’ve been thinking about is: how do I honestly find space for healing? I do the things needing done for treatment. Meds, therapy, doctor check-ins. But when it comes to the soothing, I struggle. Because my instinct is work. Refinement. Like even in sickness I need to clean or cook or—

Well, there’s a reason that I used to bake cookies whenever I was sad. Just simple chocolate chip, something easy to fiddle with but not hard work. A doodle. A drawing. But I’ve been guilting myself out of sad baking lately, and I don’t think that’s fair of me. Baking helped because it was that warm up of creation, the simplicity, the muscle memory of making something that didn’t matter.

I think we disregard how much nothingness matters. People say the little things, that’s what important, but I think we ignore the nothingness. The things that will be deleted. The joys that will be forgotten. The little things are a beautiful sunny day with family that you never forget. The nothingness is the tea you drink in the morning that you won’t remember the brand of by the time you’re sixty. But it helped you wake up every morning.

I deserve to cherish the nothing a little better. And so, in starting up the blog again, I revel in myself. My thoughts. My nothingness. Because I try so hard to make my books matter. This blog can be a place where it means nothing and that’s okay. That’s free.

So, music. Doodles. Cookies. Blog. I will find my beautiful nothings to help myself heal a little better.