This has been a busy busy month.

Of course there’s christmas/yule, and there’s trying to get my act together.  I’ve completely gotten caught up in taking care of our cat, Gehenna, who is 21 years old.  We’re trying to value the time that we have with her, but she’s starting to lose weight and lose weight and not eat, and it’s very distressing.  She got kidney disease a couple of years ago, and we’ve been giving her a subcutaneous drip every night to help take some of the pressure off her kidneys.  She’s been super good about it, and she takes all her meds without too much drama.  She’s adorable, really.  She’s hard to get good pictures of because all-black kitties are notoriously hard to get photos of because of lighting, but this is her:

(I had to edit that top photo and turn up the lighting on it so you could see her.)

So anyway, that’s a thing, and I’m also doing more cooking.  So that means that I’ve had less time for self-care….and I have a tendency to self-neglect, so my self-care is usually the first thing that goes.

I’ve been working from home, too, and Rob has been switching back and forth from days to midnights and back, so figuring out what day of the week it is has been challenging.  I’m focusing on my job, getting and keeping it organized as I go back and forth to work, but it’s hard and I need to be innovative for that, so that also subtracts from my self-care.

Honestly, I considered it a win when I bought a wet-brush and just detangled my hair.  I need a haircut so badly I’ve literally spent time crying about it.  But it feels like there’s no time, each moment of my day is spent caring for us as a family, or caring for the cat like a child.  Gehenna wants to be held all the time, and it’s like having a toddler.  Sure, I don’t HAVE to hold her just because she’s climbing all over me, but if I don’t, how badly will I feel when I don’t have her anymore?

I feel like I just have to accept this is where I’m at and work with that.  So I’m trying to fit myself in sideways.

I’m also trying to deal with myself as an artist.  I have issues with the fact that most of my art isn’t “original art” meaning that I didn’t draw them from scratch from pencil to finished product.  Often I’m taking pieces of ideas from the internet, whether that’s photographs, or clip art, or whatever, and putting them together to make something else.  My friend Risa says that that has always happened, and as long as I’m not taking the original art and claiming it as mine, as long as I’m crediting the original artist, getting their permission if I can, and putting it together in an entirely new medium, then it’s just art because my combination in my medium is something that never existed before.

I don’t know how I feel about it.  I’ve been beating myself up because my art isn’t realistic enough, and then I see images like this by other artists that are beautiful and NOT realistic, and are definitely, DEFINITELY, Art.  (This was on pinterest).

So I’m kind of struggling with the idea that I don’t know what my own art style is because I don’t do enough original stuff, and then I sit down with something to do an original thing, and I just stare at the blank wood and do nothing but hate myself.

I mean really.  I sit there and hate myself and my lack of ability to move forward.

So I’m struggling with that piece of acceptance….just accepting that ALL of this is art.  That it shouldn’t matter as long as it brings me joy, that I should just keep going no matter what, and who and what I am as an artist will take shape on its own.

It’s hard.  I feel like I have a skillset, but not the ability to design.  I guess that’s it.  And no one can be good at everything, right?

And I DID design this thing, even if it’s not very complex.

I should just cut myself some slack.

This is me, learning how to do that.