Hi Pearce,

It’s very true to say that I probably undervalue my art, but then doesn’t every artist.. I suspect for many that problem is the basis for the well of improvement which we seek to tap into. I also have that passive rejection of praise and enthusiasm from others. Even though underneath the regular day job, I can call myself an artist with some measure of success in having a handful of real published book covers to my name, the chaos which I find myself in seemingly assures that I will always trip myself up and irrationally be the architect of my “doom” at some point. It’s been a fairly traumatic time over the last year with my partner dealing with her cancer diagnosis, the events of which took me away from my art and which have left me too depleted to even try and find my creative joy. As to carrying what I need, well I certainly try not to look for happiness outside. That is the first lesson I learned in getting myself out of a big hole which plagued my teenage and best youthful years.. as the saying goes you can’t get those back but you can try and make the most of what’s left. Even now I seem to be failing at the latter because of a wish to keep what I have and not let it go, and even then let it go for what? Why does the comfortable world which you make around you always become a prison? True freedom would perhaps be too chaotic for me, though it may yet come to that in the same way it came to Stephen Strange (sadly without the superpowers.. lol). Looking at it now it seems as though my internal happiness relies upon constantly shifting my perceptions and almost destroying everything I build – some stress seems to come from resisting that urge, as much as it endures from me doing exactly that on occasion. Whether it’s a dissatisfaction with what is, or feeling that I have to get away from something which has become corrupted, even when you know that it will hurt others to do so, seems to be an ever present threat. Even now I’m caught in a trap between my own sanity and not hurting a person I love and care about – whilst ever I remain without destroying that I know that I can say that I do care, As for the art I have no idea when that will surface again. It was my only hope for some salvation and getting me out of the unproductive, fish up a tree job that I seem to hold down somehow. There are, as you might imagine from my words above, times when I wish it would all go away without hurting anyone else in the process. I’m sorry to hear you labour with PTSD. I don’t mean that in a patronising or pitiful way, but genuinely as one unknown human to another – suffering is as the heart of what makes us and yet is all the more unwelcome in spite of that. Personally I tend to think there are better ways of finding oneself, by our community than to have that “journey” be left to the unreasoning, sharper edge of life. I hope you are faring well with it – without underestimating your struggles, it sounds pretty positive and if it is so then I will be thankful for that on your behalf. It seems perhaps fitting that I should apply Buddhist principles to life since the best course of action at present seems to be not by doing, but by laying low and being patient, and allowing things to pass. This is perhaps the source of my discontent as much as any.. the not knowing when it may be best to act and when not to. I often have trouble acting since I’m not the entrepreneurial type, otherwise I might be the artist I always imagined I might be, rather than the slave to what seems to be my only realistic source of income, much less the amount I pull in for my pain, which frankly probably isn’t that much. Time to lay low with it for now I think. They keep saying that things change and nothing stays the same forever, but they never add that this is usually sits within a framework of things getting worse every year, rather than better. You can tell I’m tired can’t you? Lol. Hopefully this will pass too.

• This reply was modified 7 years, 4 months ago by Gavin.