Stuff lately

I emailed this to a friend who recently inquired about my emotional state. Others have been wondering too, so... here you go:

Thanks for poking me again. It is helpful and comforting that people like you are reaching out to me, and I appreciate it far more than I can probably express.

Maybe I have mentioned this before, but I have felt utterly lost and directionless since Arthole closed. I had some phases of real-life artwork productivity earlier this year, as you may know; but my moods lately have stifled my creativity more than they've inspired or helped it.

There are other factors adding to my emotions lately as well. Real-life complications in my personal relationships. The dissolving of many art circles, social circles, and hangouts that I once frequented in SL. General frustration with my RL job and the struggle to make ends meet. The fact that my closest friends are, for the most part, scattered around the country and the world when I need their RL company so much at times. And as a highly sensitive, emotional creature, these things overwhelm me to the point sometimes that I feel I can't cope.

I used to consider myself more of a loner, and perhaps I still am at times; too much socializing can drain me & I need to escape. But I have come to realize that I need to feel connected. I used to kind of stay closed off to all but my closest friends. But now I see no point in that and I'm just allowing more of my whole self to just show, scars and all. I know I'm a bit intense and fucked up and eccentric and maybe too much for certain people to handle, but so what. The right ones will stick around I suppose. A lot haven't. Oh well.

I need direction. I need a build partner or collaborator. I need a lover. I need more friends, RL and SL. I need to make more money so I don't have to struggle so much. I NEED projects and things to work on (but I need to find the motivation and drive to do so again). These all seem like reasonable requests but at times it seems like it's just too much to ask for, so maybe I don't deserve it...? I also need to stop being so hard on myself; I need to learn to not beat myself up so much.

Well, that's what is up with me in the most basic of explanations. With everything piled up, it seems so insurmountable at the moment. I know I'll survive as I always have, but...I can't see the next step, or the next path, that I need to take. I feel like I'm drowning a lot and I almost wish I just had someone to tell me what to do.

Thank you.

Illness vs. will

I would like to point out, to anyone who might not understand, that emotional desperation, depression, etc., is NOT a matter of will.

It's not something one can simply CHOOSE to get over.

One cannot CHOOSE to make cancer go away.

Mental illness is exactly that -- an ILLNESS.

Will Work For Sanity

Something random just occurred to me recently while thinking about everything and nothing (as I often do).

I think that, as an artist, I am a bit similar to one of the working dog breeds - like an Australian Shepherd or a Border Collie, who require more activity and mental stimulation than other dogs -- in the sense that I NEED to have something to do. I need a project, I need something to keep me busy, I need a focus, I need to WORK on things to stay sane.

I think the fact that I have too much free time on my hands, & too little direction/focus lately, is a major contributing factor to my recent horrible, crushing moods & psychosis.

I used to be so very much involved with many projects in Second Life and that was GOOD for me. As an artist, one of the only ways I truly feel fulfilled is when I'm creating. When I am unable to do that for whatever reason, I always suffer. When I am also going through emotional crisis, it's only made that much worse. I can sometimes channel my feelings into art, which is cathartic and pacifying; but sometimes the emotions are too overwhelming and I'm simply paralyzed by them. That in turn makes me even more frustrated, and it snowballs from there...

I want to get more involved again. But I don't know where to begin or how to start or anything. I'm lost. I spend so much time wasting time that the casual observer might think I'm a slacker, or lazy... and I am sometimes, but the truth is that I DESPERATELY NEED WORK. I need motivation and passion and direction again. I need it like I need air.

Okay, so.

I realize I need a lot more than just therapy and/or meds. I need some sort of life coach or something. I am at the end of my rope and I have nothing. I have a roof over my head, but I can't be a burden to others anymore. I need to find a way to make a decent living and support myself so that others who have supported me for so long can get on with their lives.

I'm not normal. I can't financially support myself and have never been able to. I don't have a car. I have nothing, no credit, no family support. I need someone to basically hold my hand and tell me what to do every step of the way until I get there because I CANNOT do this by myself.

I'm reaching the end of the road & it's a dead end. I'm terrified and I am desperate. I can't live like this anymore. I feel like a helpless child. How the hell did I ever get this bad? How can I ever reclaim some sort of life for myself?

Art giveaway

Attention: anybody who wants any of my art, just come up with the shipping cost and I'll send it to you for free. Whatever I don't give away by the end of the year is going into the trash. So, seriously. If you want it, tell me.

'Empty' - sold

My painting, Empty, has been sold to a private buyer and thus removed from my Etsy page.

Hopefully, I will have more work to show soon.

Done

I'm so, so fucking done with everything. Done with dealing with other people, done with trying to fucking make things work, tired of being letdown and fucked over and neglected and being disappointed. I don't want to be around people at all anymore. Sick of human interaction. I'm done with all of it.

Going easy on myself

One thing I need to really, really work on is how to stop HATING myself when I mess up, feel guilty, etc.

I have had good opportunity to hate myself tonight; I hurt someone near and dear to me very much and I was completely irrational and unfair and mean.

I feel overwhelmed with guilt as I lay here trying to fall asleep. My first instinct in situations like this is immediate, intense self-loathing. But in the half-awake haze of semi-consciousness, some inner voice made a very good point: "Yes, you SHOULD feel bad for what you've done, but DON'T hate yourself. Hate never solves ANYTHING. Make amends for what you've done in every way possible, LEARN not to fucking do it again, forgive yourself and grow up a little bit and move on."

Someday

Someday, maybe I'LL be the one chosen, for a change.

But I doubt it. Hasn't been that way for nearly 35 years.

I don't know how

I don't know how to be a human being who doesn't fuck up every relationship I have ever been in.

I always go into a new one trying so fucking hard to remain calm, and rational, and all that shit. Yet time and time again, I manage to freak out, worry, become insecure, get too clingy, and then I either eventually push them away, or the other person says "fuck this" and runs away. And I end up crushed, grieving, in pain, and even more scarred and fucked up emotionally than I was before.

I try so, so, so fucking hard to break this pattern, but I never succeed. It has made me come to the conclusion that I am too irreparably damaged and defective to ever be able to have a close relationship at all. Even my closest friends just don't know how to handle me after awhile. I'm caught in this loop and I can't seem to stop hating myself.

Seems like I have to stumble through life just having superficial, non-close, non-intimate relationships, because when people get to know the real me inside, they don't want to deal with it, no matter how patient and accepting they seem, no matter how reassuring they are initially.

I suppose it is ultimately all my fault and that I should just suck it up and fix myself or expect to be alone for the rest of my life. And since I don't know how to fix myself... I should probably just get used to being alone.

Broken

So the fact that I am quite fucked up and broken emotionally isn't going to go away unless I keep fighting and fighting and fighting to heal myself, somehow. Trying to get to that point is one wobbly, precarious, slowly-taken step after another, and for every blood-sweat-and-tears inch of progress I think I've made, I fall back about three.

I don't really know exactly why I am writing this, except to perhaps ponder the idea that writing more, on this blog, might be good for me. Most people seem to want to hide their fucked-up-ness. Maybe I need to wave mine like a fucking flag instead of trying to hide from it. Because I CAN'T hide from it, I can't suppress it. I've tried and it doesn't work. Writing more might help me to work out some of this poison shit in my head and heart and soul. Maybe it'll start a dialog with others that will help me to come to some new conclusion. I don't really know yet. It's nearly 5 a.m. and I haven't slept and I am aware of the possibility that I am a bit delirious at this point.

Ebb and flow

A bit of wisdom passed along to me from a friend; it's something I think I really needed to hear today. (Thank you, Jubi.)

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity in freedom. The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. Once must accept the serenity of the winged life, ebb and flow, of intermittency."

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Reassuring Myself

Consoling myself has not ever, ever been an easy thing for me. My thoughts tend to snowball, worry overwhelms me, and my emotions can so easily spiral out of control.

All my life I have relied on various other people to help console me; often just talking about my worries helps a great deal. But that's not always possible; I can't always count on my friends, it's just not possible to have someone there for me 24/7.

So, how the hell do I, at nearly 35 years old, learn to comfort and console myself? It would be a nice measure of independence, I think...and that's a step in the direction I kinda desperately need to go.

Etsy shop - Prices reduced

So, yeah. I'm broke and I need money and my paintings aren't selling so I am reducing the prices in hopes that someone might buy something.

Here are the paintings currently available for purchase:

Empty - $75

http://www.etsy.com/listing/43950763/empty-one-of-a-kind-acrylic-painting

Chasm - $100

http://www.etsy.com/listing/43911937/chasm-one-of-a-kind-acrylic-painting

FUCK - $50

http://www.etsy.com/listing/42266003/fuck-one-of-a-kind-acrylic-painting

Divulsis - $75

http://www.etsy.com/listing/41416928/divulsus-one-of-a-kind-acrylic-painting

My Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Nebulosus

I Am Okay

I guess it's time to just start pretending that everything is okay, and that I am okay, and to just close off everything inside; because when it comes right down to it, people don't want to deal with other people's shit and that's not something that will ever change, ever.

So I'll grit my teeth and smile and I'll do what everyone else does, because I know everybody else is fucked up too; they've just mastered the art of hiding it and somehow I never learned how to do that.

'Autosarcophagy' in Second Life Showcase

So I was awake unusually early this morning, decided to log into SL for no particular reason, and was just sort of hanging out at my shop (Numinous). I've noticed that I've been getting a LOT of people visiting lately, so I asked a random person how they heard about my place:

[7:01] Nebulosus Severine: hello
[7:01] random person: hi
[7:01] Nebulosus Severine: how did you hear about my shop?
[7:02] Nebulosus Severine: a lot of people have been coming here lately and i'm wondering where they heard about it, lol
[7:02] random person: i heard about it from the Destination Guide
[7:02] Nebulosus Severine: oh?
[7:02] Nebulosus Severine: where is that? haha
[7:02] random person: do you have SL viewer 2?
[7:02] Nebulosus Severine: no
[7:02] Nebulosus Severine: well, i do but i am using the emerald viewer
[7:03] Nebulosus Severine: oh! i'm in the Showcase
[7:03] Nebulosus Severine: holy crap O_O
[7:03] random person: oh, well if you had viewer 2 you could open a menu on the right which would bring up the destination guide
[7:03] random person: yeah pretty much
[7:03] random person: haha
[7:03] Nebulosus Severine: wow XD
[7:04] random person: the guide refers to the scene in the picture behind me
[7:04] Nebulosus Severine: yes :)))
[7:04] random person: in fact that's the picture they were showing
[7:04] Nebulosus Severine: wow!! i wonder how the heck i got nominated for the Showcase!
[7:05] random person: maybe lots of ppl just liked your place, or else whoever makes the showcase happened to like it
[7:05] Nebulosus Severine: maybe :)
[7:05] random person: seems kind of cool so far
[7:05] Nebulosus Severine: thanks for talking to me, haha
[7:05] Nebulosus Severine: aww thanks
[7:05] Nebulosus Severine: well, just click the sign to teleport up there :)
[7:06] random person: will do, thanks

It's actually referring to Autosarcophagy & not my shop, so I hurried to put up a more obvious teleport sign up to the installation. Wow! I wonder how the hell I got into the Showcase!

(teleport, btw: slurl.com/secondlife/Kress/172/88/391)

Edit: Thank you to whoever nominated my build for the Showcase. I needed this little ray of hope more than you could probably imagine. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

"If your body were hurting, people would send you flowers, but if your mind is hurting they throw bricks."

- Richard Berendzen, 'Come Here'
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Quote of the Day

"I don't have pet peeves - I have major psychotic fucking hatreds."

-- George Carlin (genius)
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Trying to get back into the swing of things.

I am quickly approaching my 5-year anniversary of arriving in Second Life and a large portion of my time there has been devoted to creative pursuits - learning to build, exploring artistic possibilities, etc.

For the past year or more or so, however, those activities have largely fallen by the wayside. Part of it had to do with the closure of Arthole, naturally. Part of it is likely just the natural ebb and flow of things. I've also gotten back into some painting & drawing again, something I hadn't focused on in a long time. (I've also started listing my art on Etsy - only a few things up there thus far & one sale to a private buyer.)

Sometime in February, I started logging back into Second Life more frequently again; and in the past few months I've spent time rekindling old friendships (& discovering new ones). I've been enjoying SL as a social/exploration activity, and I think I really have needed to recapture the sense of wonder and enjoyment of simply being there.

So, yeah. Lack of sleep has kind of made me forget my original intention of writing a post today, other than to mention that I am trying to get myself back in business, so to speak. I am currently in the (slow) process of re-establishing my Second Life shop, Numinous, which I originally opened back in '05 as a way for me to help raise a bit of money for both my Second Life pursuits and a little extra support to pay first-life bills. I need that income again, so I am putting up some old designs for now while I (hopefully) make new things to sell.

I'm also going to start pursuing the arts in Second Life again soon. I am completely disconnected from the art scene these days, but as always I'll just do my own thing in my own way and hope someone notices/appreciates it. My last installation at Arthole, Autosarcophagy, can still be seen by teleporting within SL to this location, and will be left up there until I make something new:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kress/169/89/391

I am hoping my renewed efforts to create things in Second Life are beneficial to my artistic sense of well-being and to my bank account. I hate having to pursue things for the sake of money, but the sad truth of it is that I barely make ends meet with my current job, and I desperately need a car by the end of the year and new computer parts ASAHFP (as soon as humanly fucking possible).

(Location: Immersed in Second Life via my BFFF's computer.)


Oh yeah - I also accept donations -
Via Paypal --

"Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty."

(attr. Blessed Teresa of Calcutta)