Saturday 27th September 2025

Feel a little bit more like a person recently which is good.

I told my friend about how I had been avoiding people because I feel generally crappy and unpleasant to be around and she said that I am a joy to be around, that I am clean, wholesome, very nicely dressed, funny, usually calm, interesting, interested in others and that I have lots to share.

Like oh yeah.. I'm not some mean self-absorbed teenager anymore. I'm a delight actually. I had forgotten.

It felt cognitively jarring to be reminded, but also actually it was really nice to hear this shit from somebody else. And when my anxious thoughts creep in I can tell myself I am wholesome and clean and a joy to be around and it has been actually helpful and made me feel more brave and less reserved.

I've been making a papier mache Halloween mask for my sister which has been really fun because it's not a medium I would usually use so there's been lots of problem solving and decision making and trying things out. There's this kinda cool fugue or hyperfixation that my head slips into when I make which has been really tiring but also good. I think this is what motivation feels like.

I can sit working and listening to my audiobooks and hours go past easily. 

My hand hurts from working on it too long so I've been trying to rest it a little today but the mask is coming along nicely and I like being able to share my joy and my processes with my friends along the way.

My next job is to cut out an eye-hole in the mask so that my sister can actually see where she's going and then test out some paper mache clay to see if I can get a nicer smoother finish over the paper and creases.

I think I can use a box-cutter to make the initial incision and then rip around it so that the edges have a nicer finish and it looks more organic. I'm a bit precious or apprehensive about tearing up my beautiful dome but this is only a prototype and I do need to test out to see how effective my initial methods will be. Once I have the right texture etc. then I can start thinking about paint and finishes and try some things out there. 

I've been listening to more of the Jurassic Park audiobook and honestly I think it might be one of my favourite books. I wasn't expecting to enjoy it that much at all, really not my usual fare. There was a lot of raving about the evils of unchecked SCIENCE and venture capitalists, but I actually think that there are still a lot of relevant parallels from Jurassic Park to today. 

Even though nobody is shitting themselves about genetically modified dinosaurs right now, there is certainly a nod towards Dr. Hammond using his exorbitant wealth to make his dangerous new animals without bothering to think about the ethical consequences and tech oligarchies using their exorbitant wealth inserting AI/LLMs into everything without considering the ethical consequences. I could probably write and think about it some more and maybe use the word technofascism, but not right now and not this blog.

Things don't feel quite so hopeless for me right now. There's people out there who want to do cool shit and I could be one of them. I want to make things. I want to go back to Turkey and work in my friend's studio for a bit. I want to meet new people. It's not impossible. I don't think it's impossible.

Stuck in my head: Infinitesimal by Mother Mother
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffTxXXfGKi8

Reading: The Romantic by Madeline Hunter
https://www.madelinehunter.com/books/romantic.php 

 Watched this week: Saint Omer by Alice Diop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Omer_(film)

Thursday 4th September 2025

The problem is that part of me doesn't want people to know me.

 I am ashamed and hiding is what I do best. Avoiding attention makes me feel safe. I almost don't want to be perceived.

If I let people get to know me then they will find out. 

I spent years cultivating friendships and learning to care but God if they could see me now. Makes me feel sick.  

Something like: the things that protect you also keep you caged.

I think Sabahattin Ali wrote "the more I needed my friends the more I longed to run away" at the start of Madonna in a Fur Coat and the first time I read those words I didn't really get it. I was in the Hagia Sofia museum in Istanbul, I was renting a little room in a run down terrace house, I had a job that I hated and couldn't seem to unstick myself from and I had gone to visit my friend's family for a couple of weeks.

I didn't have much, but it wasn't nothing either.  I just feel like everything is so much more materially worse right now and I am fucking glued to it. I have all the same problems that I had back then but more.

I can barely stand looking at myself. I don't want to be seen.

Is that not the most paradoxical bullshit about loneliness? The desire to be seen and to be recognised versus the desire to hide so that nobody can see me?

What if somebody did see me and loved me anyway. What then?

If somebody really saw my incompetence, my cowardice, my greasy skin, the mess, the fear, the avoidance and decided it really wasn't so bad?

It's like no matter how many times I disappoint myself, I have to be that person to have any hope of freeing myself.

And when would I actually be good enough that I no longer felt like I wanted to hide? What fucking benchmark is there? What goalposts can I nail down?

Whose standards do I not measure up to? Who gave me these standards? What level of competence is good enough to allow myself to share who I am with other people?

Do I need militaristically organised clothes, dishes, carpets, dust free shelving before I can fucking talk to someone and make a new friend?

Is renting a room enough or does it have to be a whole property? Does it have to be a mortgage? Am I not good enough until then? Am I not worth knowing until I leave my parents bungalow?

What kind of job is good enough? Surely I am only worthy if achieve a set amount of hours? Do I only count if I have a career and not a silly job that doesn't matter?

If I have no money then am I really as useless and as worthless as my dad said? Am I wasting my gifts? My intelligence?

And when will I ever be enough to allow myself to love someone again? What fucking point do I need to summit before I allow myself to fall in love? 

Because on some level I thought it was my fault, I thought I was too codependant, that I deserved to have my heart broken and my safety shattered.

I thought that one day I would become self-sufficient and only then would I be good enough. Only then would I stop myself from being hurt and being lied to. That I just had to wait until I became my own person and then I could try dating again.

But I'm just being avoidant. If I conveniently never become good enough then I never have to try.

So long as my goalposts are arbitrary and self-sabotaging, then I will never be good enough, I will never have to risk being seen for who I really am.

Because that is what happened. I showed my most honest, vulnerable parts of myself to somebody and was found to be lacking.

But really in distance, that wasn't the life I wanted, that isn't the person who I should have been vulnerable with because they were matching my honesty with lies. That relationship wasn't good for me either. 

It was just like sticking a bandage over a festering wound and then leaving it there for years. I was traumatised and I wanted to feel safe.

Something closer to the truth, it was a bad match. I have different standards for the kinds of relationships I want to have now. I have different standards for the kind of person I want to be.

Stuck in my head: Carrion Comfort by aeseaes

Watching: Long Story Short on Netflix

Reading: Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

Wednesday 3rd September 2025

Having an ass time with my mental health.

Having a hard time just doing basic shit. And I am bored of my nonsense.

Writing normally helps. And I missed the whole of August.

I started a new sketchbook which is nice. I thought I would try to use it to write down some stuff I've been researching and thinking about for a while, more like a commonplace book than just art ideas and sketches.

Some of my thoughts are actually good and not just bitching and being dysfunctional. Not really for this blog though.

I drew some fan art too probably for the first time since high-school and it's such a different skillset to my other drawings so it was fun and I would like to continue. 

I have all these sketches of people from earlier this year and last year and they are quick and fluid and I want to capture their posture and the way they take up space in public, but with fan art it's like there needs to be some character consistency. What is it that I liked about the characters and how is that portrayed by the original authors versus what I want to portray, what things I take from it what is it for me?

I guess my point is that there's very different things to consider that I probably wouldn't have considered otherwise. I wonder if I could use my poses/style but still depict the original characters in a recognisable way. Well yeah that's probably the point but I'm new to this.

I think I need to talk to an actual person soon but I can’t think of anybody I want to talk to. I am worried that I don't have anything to say, that I don't have anything interesting to share.

If I tell someone that I have spent two days trying to pick my washing up off the floor and that wearing clean clothes and showering regularly is a goal right now they will pity me they will feel sorry for me or even worse try to fix me.

And for real depressed people talking is such a drag. Complaining just makes it worse not better.

I've been reading lots of books. I should probably count how many. Mostly romance novels, I don't know how I got so fixated on this but it's fun. Escapist I suppose. As someone who has avoided romance in my own life like it's the actual plague, it's very foreign and amusing.

I've been practicing ukulele more too. Part of me feels like millennial white woman + ukulele is like a special brand of cursed. Like maybe there should be a tiny stringed instrument amnesty for 30 to 40 year olds, thinking Amanda palmer or the YouTube apology lady, it's sort of an ugly vibe.

My friend has recently started playing guitar tho and I just think it would be cool to jam someday when everything isn't as flying shitballs and I am ass at playing guitar too so maybe if I try to get better at ukulele then that would work out.

True to form I've been playing an arpeggio version of Mr Vain by Culture Beat and probably slaughtering everything good about it so thoughts and prayers for my neighbours I guess. I should learn some other 90s club songs and just make it a thing.

Recently watched: X2 (ya the 2003 xmen movie haha)

Stuck in my head: paint the town red by Doja Cat

Read: The house witch books by Delemhach