A Taryn

Woke up feeling quite low this morning. The sky was gloomy, no trace of sunlight, therefore less of a motivation to jump out of bed and start my day. 

I got around to making myself something to eat that involved the least amount of effort, and came across this video. Was rather appropriate that this was uploaded today. During the past few weeks, my mind has been fixated on reliving nostalgia, remembering decisions and events from my past, and lamenting how far away I am from the future I had envisioned. 

The most difficult thing eight months later is holding on to that moment of internal positive reinforcement and following through with whatever you believed you could do. 

I’m not saying “give up before you disappoint yourself”, not at all. I’ve been struggling with the recurring theme of following through inspiration for a moment, and then have it all dissipate before the day is done. 

Metaphorically, it’s like building a small sand castle close to the shore, with the intention of creating an epic sand-palace. Suddenly, the ocean waves come crashing in, wiping out your progress, and in the process they pull your paralyzed body out to sea. After a while, the tide brings you back to the shore again, and this whole process starts over. 

There’s been too much drifting off with the tide and less swimming back or riding with the waves on my part. I feel the earlier days of this pandemic hitting the US put me in a constant cycle of checking updates for the newest number of daily cases, tuning in to see what the next bad headline was going to look like. I never mentally prepared myself for whenever the latest global events did take a bad turn. 

I’ve felt so much fear, anger, and disappointment but I didn’t know how to progress from it. It paralyzed me from attempting to do any good from it. It sidelined me from expanding positive thoughts into positive actions. I have so many sand palaces that I want to create for the world, but I keep allowing the ocean waves to come wipe out my plans and take me with them. I’m almost ashamed that it has taken me eight months (and quite possibly longer) to recognize how much I let myself get swept away by forces I can swim against.

I started using Duolingo with my partner! We’re both learning Japanese, and so far since starting two days ago, I’ve learned a few nouns and articles. I’m finding that despite the app’s quick-learning method, I have a strong urge to write everything down. I need to visually and in some way kinetically connect with the words I’m learning. It helps knowing I can recognize most of the characters so far, but the fact I don’t know how to write some Hiragana down on paper is bothering me. I might just order a small notebook or something for all my linguistic adventures.

It’s been difficult getting up in the morning, and I’ve already taken a 30-minute nap today to make up for a crap night. For whatever reason, these last few nights haven’t been easy. Doesn’t help with the fact that the other night there was a double murder down the street from where I live. I’m talking about a 1/4 of a mile away. 

Last night I had nightmares that despite my best efforts, whatever money I had was stolen and my car got hijacked by someone who was convinced it was his car (even though it was parked in my driveway). Not sure if my brain is freaking out over how everything is in this weird limbo state where I can lose a lot in a matter of seconds, and have no power over the situation. I’ve been trying to let go of things beyond my control, and accept that throwing myself into despair won’t fix the problem of facing losses like this. Taking one day at a time is absolutely key.

I’m about to spend a good portion of this day setting up a commissions list, advertising on my media platforms, etc. I’m mentally pushing myself more to thinking that this is the perfect opportunity to get going on learning how to market myself and my artistic services, and work on personal projects to get them rolling. I’ll most likely start modeling client commissions from myself, and set up a good processing system. I’ll be sharing those updates soon!

Well, it’s almost another week gone by in this new reality. In another week and a few days, I’ll be moving to a different town, so that’s why there hasn’t been much consistent updating. I’ve spent most of my day today packing up, and I’m nowhere near done yet. Funny how when you settle in, you start collecting all these tidbits you wind up not using later, or neglected pieces that somehow add to the overall aesthetic of a “look at how much I own!” kind of room. I’ve gone through a few containers that I wound up re-purposing for general storage and necessities, and woof, did I have a lot of stuff in there that I simply.didn’t.need. They’re more like afterthoughts from the previous move I made almost five years ago. “I’ll deal with it later”, I had said. Four years and some odd months later, I finally dealt with those nonessentials. I’ll be doing the same thing after the move because I’m realizing I don’t need the majority of these things for my eventual scrapbook. 

Apart from diving into my closet stash, I’ve been applying to certain remote jobs in hopes of making some cash. Nothing turning up yet. Taking it a day at a time. If it comes to it, I might have to get some temporary job in an “essential” business, which I’m not thrilled about. Not being picky, there are legitimate health reasons as to why I haven’t jumped on getting a job in a grocery store or retail service. I’m not in the top percentage of people at risk, but my immune system isn’t the greatest and I have a history of respiratory complications that have been affected by recent illnesses, which I didn’t think was still possible. I joke about paranoia, but I feel my concerns of working around people who a) don’t take coronavirus as seriously as they should, and/or b) aren’t aware that they are carriers of the virus and lack the common courtesy of typical health hygiene is reasonable enough. Before my day job closed down business, I encountered a guest who went out of her way to tell me how to minimally prepare her order. This included her ordering me to change my gloves and wash my hands, while she was coughing and sputtering without covering her mouth, and reached past the glass divider of my station to personally grab her order from me. Priorities, man. Just seemed a bit like a certain Alanis Morissette song...

Originally, I was going to make a day-by-day update on how I have been dealing with this pandemic. That would have been a terrible idea. Considering it’s only Day 5 since I have been out of work, I think I would have put myself further down an endless hole of depression and anxiety than I’ve been at the last couple of days. I’m not going to lie and say that this transition has been easy. Monday was my last day-job shift. Tuesday I saw via my employer’s Twitter that they were planning to stay closed for 6-12 weeks. I received news on Thursday (?) that I’ve been furloughed and "might” qualify for unemployment. These rapid changes gave me at least one anxiety attack per day. The overwhelming scope of uncertainty put me in the position of evaluating my worth these last few days. I have coasted for most of my life with doing basic jobs that I didn’t care for, I got too comfortable with those jobs, and I wasn’t making strides into bettering myself. 

Despite always dreaming of being a freelancer and start up my own home-grown service, I did not expect to be thrown out there amid a pandemic that has shut down most businesses. I had a feeling not many people are going to be looking for an artist if they’re out of a job or had their revenue come to a halt.

However, I’m feeling less anxious now and a bit more determined to make the most of my days. To reflect this, I’m going to be updating with positive activities I’ve been engaging in throughout the week, and hopefully it will inspire some people (whoever reads this) to venture out and do something new as well. Make up a challenge, do something out of your comfort zone, or take up a new hobby or activity you’ve always wanted to do. The possibilities of transforming ourselves into a new version of ourselves is endless!