#so i drew all this in like. 5days

[emile-hides]

While cleaning out from under my bed I found a sketchbook from 2017.

Sense I’ve been kinda burnt out on ideas for what to draw, I took pictures of the decent stuff and figured I’d redraw them over the next few days. See if I’ve actually improved at all.

[mcrmadness]

I don’t understand it why all professionals think that staying at home 24/7 it worse for one’s mental health than having to work 8h/day and 5days/week. (At some point I was doing 6 days a week actually.)

I mean, I told my therapist today that sometimes I get so tired from just visiting my parents 2-3 days a week that I can’t get much anything done. And she then asked if I remember how it was for me when I was still working, and she thought it sounded like I’m running out of energy a lot more when I don’t work than when I did work. But I told her that I do remember what it was like when I was still working - I could not do anything at all at home. I was just watching TV or staring at my computer screen and fighting back my body’s urge to fall asleep while sitting on a sofa or in my computer chair. And that really does suck. (Partially the tiredness came from the fact I always stayed up too late because I felt that 8h of free time was no enough for resetting my brain and when I couldn’t make the work days shorter, the only option was to take hours from sleeping. My average day is longer than 24 hours and does not fit the normal 7 days in a week system.)

Literally when I was still working, I never created anything. I had the urge to create but I was always so tired and exhausted that I didn’t even have time to think anything before falling asleep. I’d just pass out the second I put my head on the pillow. I never drew, I never wrote a fanfiction, I pretty much created just one video per YEAR and only because I had what, 2-3 weeks off during summer and started and finished the video during those weeks. Sometimes I worked on a video for years because I started it one year and then went back to work and school and had no time nor energy for it until the next longer holiday (usually summer).

What comes to drawing, I kinda stopped drawing (and also writing) somewhere in 2012. In 2013 I drew a few new things when I quit antidepressants and had just so many kinda dark thoughts in my head and my brain chemicals were still so fucked up I suddenly was able to draw random things, but then it stopped again. Mainly because I started work and school in 2014 and I didn’t draw again until I was done with both in November 2018. Since then I have been just at home and it’s been... awesome. I mean, I still struggle with starting things, even things I like, but at least I still have created things. I have made 3-4 videos, 5 fanart comics, 9 other fanart drawings with my comic style, finished 1 pencil fanart drawing and on top of that all: 9 self-comics. All in just a span of 2 years which is INSANE, especially for my inattentive adhd. And currently I have 3 more fanart comic plots/plans and 6 self-comic ideas in my sketchbook, one unfinished pencil WIP and have been kinda planning on two more pencil drawings. Oh and I have also written over 30 pages of my never-released fanfiction and I have an endless list of “fanfic ideas” in my head because that’s what I keep thinking about every night when I go to sleep because I just have to think about something in order to fall asleep.

So, me getting tired from just meeting people is not worse than me never being able to create because work makes me so exhausted. I think I was permanently so exhausted I just didn’t feel it anymore. I had no free time. After work I was fighting against my body falling asleep and on weekend I visited my parents (or was working) so there literally was no full free days. All I needed was to have a day when I don’t need to go to ANYWHERE but I couldn’t do that because, well, work and I wanted to meet with my parents every now and then too. Since I don’t have friends so it’s good to have at least some sort of socializing - I’m still a social animal even when I’m mainly introverted.

I think my problem is that when I have work and have a structure in my days, I can never create because I have no energy, and the limited time makes it even harder to start anything. Because I already had to do all these other things like house chores and cooking, or showering. Which is why I basically never cleaned here, apart from taking out the trash and doing the dishes.

But now as I have nothing but time, I have so much time it’s so easy to procrastinate because I can always do everything tomorrow. That’s how days and weeks and months go past so fast. I keep planning on how I want to draw or write or edit a video or play a video game asap but because I have all the time in the world, I have no deadlines and I have no pressure, I just never get to that. Until on that one day when the inspiration hits so hard it brings motivation with it and I just start creating something out of blue. Usually I cannot sit down and think “now I start drawing” - if I don’t feel it 100%, I can’t concentrate on it and I will just get more frustrated than excited. This is why I hated school assignments - even when all that was interesting! - because the deadline was never lining up with my motivation and when I forced myself to start writing a paper, I spent the first hours online complaining everywhere how I can’t focus and I was so frustrated and had several sensory overloads from my own skin, muscles and bones because I knew I had to focus and I always get so self-conscious that I have sensory overloads from my own body. Actually now I remember one time from when I was a teenager and still living with my parents and I wanted to draw something so bad but I couldn’t come up with anything and the next thing I know was that I found myself from arranging my mom’s bookshelf because even cleaning is fun when it’s not the priority.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say here. I think I kinda just lost the plot. It’s just that time management is hard because there’s always too little and too much of it simultaneously.