Oh this?

Some days I am so overwhelmed by everything, or just so out of sorts that I feel like I am faking everything I do.

On those days I wonder if it is really obvious - just how much I don't know about what I'm doing.

Some days it probably is, but other days less so. 

In any case, it helps to remind myself that everyone has their own issues that they're carrying around. 

Maybe not as obvious an animal perched on my head... but still. 

I drew this a few years ago. My brother just let me borrow his computer monitor and so I have been able to get back into a whole lot of my art that has been locked away for months since my screen got wrecked.  

These days

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. Right? And this bag was just dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can't take it, and my heart is just going to cave in."

- American Beauty

There are times when I feel like I have missed my calling. Like I should have been a writer or a photographer, or a film maker - though I am not very good at any of these things.

Sometimes there is just so much beauty in the world. So many small moments that create such a fabudonkyulous world that I feel like there should be some way of recording them. Of possessing that beauty. Memory seems inadequate at those times.

I find my artistic skills just as inadequate at imparting those feelings, and I'm not really a poet (despite my enduring love for the haiku) and as you may have noticed from what I have shared with you on this blog - photography is still outside of my skill set.

I feel like my body fills up with so much feeling, and I am so incapable of expressing it, that I just sit around feeling emotional, and inadequate. Moments like these are given to us to make something out of them, I am convinced, otherwise why would we have them? Inspiration to creation.

 One of my favourite bloggers  writers said this:

"I get so damn tired of feelings sometimes, the way they crash over you, threaten to drown you, and then slowly recede, leaving you wet and stinking and covered in seaweed. I think that in my next life I'm going to come back as a robot that's incapable of feeling obligation or regret. I think that that would be nice."

I guess that is what is means to be human, and even more so what it means to be suffer from mental illness, though I don't feel that us 'touched' folk have the monopoly on intense emotions.
All I know is that I adore this side of the coin. The feelings before the plug gets pulled from the bath and you slowly get heavier and heavier, and colder and colder. The joy of beautifully real things. The pretentious feelings that make people film paper bags dancing in the wind.

My work is small and certainly not profound by any definition of the word, but I want you to know that I have aspirations. That my work, especially the things I do for myself, are my way of trying to tie up and own a tiny part of why I think that the world is lovely, and hopefully share that with you.

Don't get me wrong. Life is dangerous and awful too, and that makes me just as emotional - and I make art then too... even more than when I am absorbed by the beauty ... 

I am glad that Ky is studying film, I hope that he gets to share his vision with everyone of the worlds in his mind. I am glad that there are people out there who can write the way I wish I could and film and photograph moments that reflect the feelings that I have.

Like this guy.



We Were Wanderers On A Prehistoric Earth from James W Griffiths on Vimeo.


I never intended this blog post to be as ... emo (?) as it turned out.
Editing it now seems disingenuous so I won't.

You love gifs, don't deny it.

A while ago, on a previous blog, I mentioned that I have bipolar disorder.

After a long time of thinking it was totes normal to hate on myself (for any reason possible) and draw emo things, it was a revelation to know that actually it's totally uncool and I shouldn't do it.

While it still sometimes sucks ( a little or a lot) most of the time my attitude about being bipolar is kind of like...

... you know. Whatevs - It's how I roll. 

This post isn't actually about being bipolar, it's about when I had kids, and about art, and about fears, and whatever else.

When I had the Angel I was terrified that I would get post natal depression, and when I instead got a placid baby who I liked pretty much straight away I was pretty pleased. Two years later when the Samurai showed up, I wasn't worried. I was going to have a baby, take a few days off and get back to art and looking after the Angel and studying medical terms and all sorts of 'not related to baby' type things.

I left the hospital the same day that he was born feeling all tough and womanly about my staunch reaction to child birth.

And then I got home and went to bed and fell into what I would deem to be a self inflicted depression.
I wasn't connected to this squishy little guy, I never managed to get everything done in the day that I wanted to do, he was always (always) hungry and feeding him was a painful trial...
I felt guilty for saying anything about it, and just stared at his little face hoping for some kind of revelation - before going to make dinner, or clean something, or sit on the computer, or do something else that would take me away from him.

Dummy.

I was distraught that he wasn't like the Angel, that I didn't love him the same, that I couldn't 'figure him out.'

Then I realised that I didn't know him. He was just new and hadn't been around for the two years I'd had his brother.
I slowed down, spent more time with him. Realised that he whinges because he LOVES being around people and chatting and laughing and staring into peoples faces. After the first few weeks he even started sleeping through the night (um way to become the favourite - jks!!)
He's awesome, and super cute and totally different to his brother which is fantastic. I love his guts.

The moral of the whole story, or perhaps a moral of this story is that while I may be able to shrug about how I deal with my mood swings and bipolarity, and while I know that I don't need to hate myself, I can still draw emo drawings.

Shunning sadness and irrational desires to cry has meant that I put away a lot of the things that I did at that time to cope for things that actually worked.

For example.

Listening to sad music while sad - not helpful
Complaining to equally depressed friends while depressed - not helpful
Cutting off all my hair and/or dying it yet another colour - not helpful
More earings? - NOT HELPFUL
Watching world movies - not helpful

See?

So while I still love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I'm hardly going to rely on it to help me manage my emotions. Rather I'll go for a run or better yet, call my husband for a whinge and then go have a sleep.

I stopped drawing my emotions around the same time that I was diagnosed, and I shouldn't have. Drawing allowed me to constructively express myself without wearing down my loved ones with constant complaining.

So this is what I did today.

Because sometimes I need reminders of things. I will always know that I love my son, but the story of how I figured that out contained important lessons for me, and those I might forget.