of speed bumps and roadblocks…

radio silence.

sorry for that. had a lot to think about lately.

the first full month of my semester and things haven’t exactly been panning out the way i had hoped. thinking, second guessing, technical difficulties and chasing time sums up the past month.

"hi, i'm riley the dog. i'm a needy, time-suck of a dog. you're home all day so that must mean you are here to play with me!"

i came out of the first residency swinging punches, seemingly to fall flat on my face. stuck in the vortex that is my home/studio/doggy daycare/personal hell. where i’m presently unemployed, i thought i’d have all the time in the word. wrong.

have i told you “time” and i don’t function well together. always chasing to catch up, perpetually late, “just give me 5 more minutes…” it’s an awful learned behavior, and a bitch to break.  i knew coming into this, it would be an exercise in time management. i’ll give myself an “F” for the first month. the a.d.d. doesn’t help. thankfully i was able to switch medication, from ritalin over to adderal,  back at the end of january, which has helped tremendously towards the “focus factor.” my body didn’t really enjoy the new stuff. though it should work its way out of my system within 4-6 hours, that second dose seems to want to stay with me (even if i take it before noon.) at the beginning i couldnt fall asleep till 2ish–leading me to wake up later, which only exacerbates the issue. it seems, finally, that i am back on track, and my body seems to tolerate the dosage a bit better. my face and stomach don’t really like the change in meds as well, but that’s neither here nor there… i do have the ability to just shut everything else off when i get going. it’s funny, really–i get so hyper-focused on what i’m doing, things cease to exist around me. it’s the only time i really don’t need my medication. it’s just getting to that point that’s the problem!so yeah, time sucks. i need to get better at scheduling my day…any suggestions?

what is this, high school? FAIL.

the other issues i’ve been dealing with aren’t super big on their own–but combined together, they’ve been tough to overcome. technical difficulties; stopping to wait for new pens to arrive since i was going through a whole pen on each “twitter” piece i had done. waiting for new materials to arrive (paints, panels, etc.) waiting leads to thinking about what i want to with my work. i get sucked into the vortex of thought, unable to break through and actually make. when i did find the spark to “make” there was failure, forcing me to second guess what i’ve been doing… if going to school was the right choice.  then it becomes paralyzing fear. what if this? what if that? what it, what if, what if…

its silly, really. i wish i could just shut my mind off. things would be so much better.

so, i’ve been trying to chip away at things a little at a time. progress comes slowly, but it’s there.

hopefully the ball will get rolling enough i can just disappear into the work. fingers crossed…

more on the actual work soon…