Understanding One's Symptoms

Understanding one’s symptoms. Long sleep last night. Almost 12 hours. Down at 10:30, up at 10:00. Stirred to waking, as usual, by low level anxiety.

No bed time wine last night. I’ve been self-medicating for chronic, low level physical anxiety. Break the habit. Two days. My head feels more clear, anxiety still there.

Describe: heart rate slightly higher than normal at rest. emotionally on edge. General feeling of dis-ease with myself, my being-in-the-world

Effects: Makes every ‘task’ –everything that feels like a ‘task,’ more difficult to initiate. I haven’t even been able to spend time reading for months.

If it weren’t for making art I don’t think I’d survive. This is not hyperbole.

Even those tasks (not directly making new work: improving drawling skills, working on anatomy, figure drawing), while they give pleasure when I do them are difficult to initiate. Felt resistance. Like having to push open—or through—an impossibly heavy door (… better a metaphorical door than a wall).

Procrastination becomes a symptom. On-line chess. The intersection of the physical neural/chemical conditions, and situational conditions.

Resistance. To being pushed into pre-existing choices—of any kind, whether concocted by others or outside circumstances, or by myself (making plans, schedules). The line between here, always fuzzy. Thus, the relief of art—and gardening. Purely spontaneous action. What I aspire to—my jouissance ?) to do nothing else? Make art. Tend my garden.

Conclusion. Incurable condition. Find the least destructive way to alleviate the aggravating symptoms. Less wine for starters. More art. But then… what do I do with what I’ve made? Find places to exhibit? Do the promotion required to sell? Why do I have to think about that? More anxiety—more stuff I ‘have to” do.

Incurable.