Oh Covid…

Ahh… the blank canvas. My biggest enemy since Covid. I’ve started so many blank canvases since Covid. Very few have been finished. Art, blog posts, websites… My neuro stuff just doesn’t work the same since then. Like it physically hurts to process a blank canvas now. That cognitive process that synthesizes an idea in your head and then transfers it to that blank canvas that used to make my heart happy, is now a physically painful, neurological dumpster fire. It’s been 8 months. (Yes, writing this physically hurts too, but I’m in charge now, goddammit. Until the seizures start.)

I got covid in December. I’ve had long haul covid since then. It’s been trying to kill me, literally, for eight months. I’ve had chronic illness/pain/fatigue my entire adult life, so on one hand, this all feels like just another year. Except I don’t think it is business as usual this time. Every so often, my quality of life reaches a new, lower “normal”. Like the year where I had to give up martial arts. And the year I had to give up traveling to conventions. And then traveling at all. That time I had pneumonia for two years, I had to give up going to the gym. That year I got my first seizures from art and had to completely quit for six months and then redo my style. Chronic brokenness works in a cycle. You break. You try to heal. If you do then great. If you don’t, you keep trying to heal. But eventually… you have to ask yourself, “Is this my new normal?” This feels like one of those years.

When you finally accept that this is your new normal, that’s when you start making investments for survival and rearranging long term goals. So… I’ve already been doing the “fun” part - the investing in tools like better shoes and clothes that will be kinder to my newly diagnosed fibromyalgia. Investing in better marijuana tools, investing in experimenting with different neuro supplements, investing in kitchen tools that make things easier - and make me feel a little pathetic, but probably not as pathetic as I feel when I can’t cook or do dishes at all. Stuff like that. I don’t know what to do about rearranging my goals though. This time it’s a little tougher than usual.

I’ve tried to work with this covid shit for months. I’ve tried different plans to get me drawing regulalry. Try it at the beginning of the day. Try it at the end. Try to set a timer for 15 min. Try to draw fanart. Try to draw original art. Try to draw commissions. Nothing. I’ve tried different plans to stream. Morning? Night? Three hours? Two hours? Art? Gaming? ASMR? Nothing. I’ve tried different plans to make candles. And the experiments go on. Even as I write this up, I think man, maybe I’m just being a little bitch. I mean really, maybe if I just tried a little harder it would surely go better. But I’ve tried that, too.

So what now. What fucking now?

I don’t know.

I do some casual advising/coaching/therapy for friends sometimes (they tell me it’s helpful), so I asked myself, “okay, if I was the client, what would I say to myself?” I would say that taking care of my health is non-negotiable - sleep, food, exercise, meds, meditation, doc appointments, etc. That’s pretty basic. But I can’t think of a single solution for the myriad of other problems that all require some kind of physical health or ability to deal with. …and that’s probably because there is no solution - at this time, for now.

And I hate that.

So… … …maybe the present answer is to keep treading water until a variable changes. Maybe my health gets better. Maybe I win Powerball. Maybe the zombie apocalypse happens and it doesn’t matter at that point, as I will embrace zombification and probably feel better than I do now with my sad living flesh and bone. But for now, I will tread water and try not to get worse. Makes me want to cry because it feels like doing nothing. Except it’s not doing nothing. Just surviving is an insane amount of work. And pain. And suffering. And that makes me want to cry, too. Although, after seven months of this non-stop shit, I don’t have any tears left. Like seriously, my crying ability is like “nope, I’m sick of this shit I need a vacay, I’m out.”

I’ll keep doing the experiments. I’ll try to find ways to draw, stream, create cool stuff etc. Worst case, I fail again. That’s okay. I’ve been failing every single day for eight months now, so I am super good at it by this point. Which is good, because apparently this is my life now. And I’m gonna make it fucking work. Until the zombie apocalypse, anyway.