An Alright Day After All

Current listening: Crickets

Ari meowing as he stalks the yard

'Funny Cat' (the raccoon) chewing on something

Today was indeed an alright day. It started out a bit rough though. I went ahead and asked for an appointment with a new  therapist in town after I woke up and had that old, familiar empty feeling right in the middle of my chest. I call it "The Void" because that is exactly what it can feel like - a vast, Lovecraftian crack in the center of myself, stretching into eternity and frightening in its very emptiness.  A little while later, another familiar monthly  :::ahem::: friend showed up and explained why some things seemed amped up lately by about a factor of 10. Yay. 

Today was also the deadline to enter the show at the Tomato Art Fest and I let it go. I did enter last year, after a four year absence, but that was more because I had promised the former owner. It's no fault of the show or the Fest, but I am still so burned out on it. Maybe I'll be ready to enter again somewhere down the road. 

Granted, I don't have to fight and jump through hoops anymore just to get my work there. Thank the gods! No more crazy narcissistic reasoning ("You can't make a living with art...of course they want you back. They want to make money") or fear that I might miss a delivery deadline - and waste an entire hour long trip to town - because someone else insisted their fun was more important. I certainly don't miss the dismissive "Oh. You didn't sell anything" on bad days and the hours long rages, with attendant threats to call the police for some stupid, made up thing - when I did sell. The better my sales, the worse the rages. The feeling of eternally being caught up in an emotional and mental tornado and not being able to think clearly was maddening. 

Oddly, late this afternoon, as I waved at the deadline as it passed me by, I started working on a few additions of the sporadic series I started years ago called An Ode to Wazowski. I have two about half finished at the moment, an illusionist and a clown. We'll see what else comes of it. The ones I did last year - a Gandalf type wizard, a ceremonial magician and a hip witch - were the first ones to ever not sell. I'm pretty sure my burnt out energy were all over them and no one wanted that. 

I've been thinking of a different way of promoting my work, which tells me that I must be finally getting that former bullshit out of my system. I signed up for MailChimp a couple of years ago, but I never did anything with it. I had thought of doing something about less well known folklore, starlore, mythology and who knows what else. What I want now is do that in a newsletter promoting my art - make it more engaging than just saying, "Hey. There's this. Please buy it." 

Okay, I'm tired - enough rambling. Goodnight y'all.