I can say this since LJ is mostly abandoned now
The end of my 4th semester at school/1 year of school is coming to an end.
I am not doing well.
I have seen many kinds of students make different kinds of progress and learned the secret to becoming awesome at art. It's hard work... and having no financial responsibilities. Every single student I've seen who makes great progress and leaps ahead does so because they don't have to worry about working full-time. They can devote tons of time to studying in addition to classes. I'm never going to be in that position, which means I'm never going to make the kind of progress I need to in order to become a professional.
If I stay in California, I can keep working and keep going to school but not have enough free time to make any real progress or do serious studying on my own.
If I leave California, I can't go to classes (although my school has an amazing online program I could certainly use) and would have no job/guarantee of a new job but would have lots of time to practice on my own.
I am feeling increasingly despondent with each passing day. I hate California and am exhausted and depressed and lonely and want to leave here, but I feel that doing so means admitting I am a failure with no hope of ever being good enough at art.
I have been seeing so many kinds of successes and steps forward in life and small triumphs in my friends and acquaintances lately, and I feel like each success of someone else is an added burden of failure on my shoulders, a reminder that nothing works out for me. I haven't talked to any of my friends in months because I don't want anyone to know what a failure I am, and I can't handle hearing about how everyone else is being successful where I'm not. I want to reach out and get back in touch with people but feel like I am too scummy for company.
I am unbelievably depressed, and I need help. I need to talk to someone, I need to do something, change something, fix something, but I feel like my life is a catch-22 with no way forward and no way out. I don't enjoy anything anymore, I can't sleep/I just want to sleep all the time so I don't have to be awake, I'm either eating 300 calories a day or 3000, and I can't remember the last time I had a real human connection with another person. I feel sick and hollow and dead inside. It's been like this for about 3 months now.
I thought about going to therapy because I'm so desperate to work things out somehow and talk to someone. I've had the phone # for my insurance company's mental health administration department on my desk for weeks now, but when I saw how much work it is to jump through all of the insurance company's bullshit hoops just to try to get authorization to get therapy covered, it made me feel even more worse and like it wouldn't even be worth the stress and money and embarrassment.
I feel very alone in the world and like I am just a dried up husk of a person going through the motions every day. I think I am very sick or that my life is just fundamentally flawed in some deep way that I cannot fix. I used to think that I made all the wrong choices in life, but lately I've come to realize that it's not that I made a bad choice where an alternative choice would've lead to a good outcome. It's just that all choices available to me lead me down the same path.
I am not doing well.
I have seen many kinds of students make different kinds of progress and learned the secret to becoming awesome at art. It's hard work... and having no financial responsibilities. Every single student I've seen who makes great progress and leaps ahead does so because they don't have to worry about working full-time. They can devote tons of time to studying in addition to classes. I'm never going to be in that position, which means I'm never going to make the kind of progress I need to in order to become a professional.
If I stay in California, I can keep working and keep going to school but not have enough free time to make any real progress or do serious studying on my own.
If I leave California, I can't go to classes (although my school has an amazing online program I could certainly use) and would have no job/guarantee of a new job but would have lots of time to practice on my own.
I am feeling increasingly despondent with each passing day. I hate California and am exhausted and depressed and lonely and want to leave here, but I feel that doing so means admitting I am a failure with no hope of ever being good enough at art.
I have been seeing so many kinds of successes and steps forward in life and small triumphs in my friends and acquaintances lately, and I feel like each success of someone else is an added burden of failure on my shoulders, a reminder that nothing works out for me. I haven't talked to any of my friends in months because I don't want anyone to know what a failure I am, and I can't handle hearing about how everyone else is being successful where I'm not. I want to reach out and get back in touch with people but feel like I am too scummy for company.
I am unbelievably depressed, and I need help. I need to talk to someone, I need to do something, change something, fix something, but I feel like my life is a catch-22 with no way forward and no way out. I don't enjoy anything anymore, I can't sleep/I just want to sleep all the time so I don't have to be awake, I'm either eating 300 calories a day or 3000, and I can't remember the last time I had a real human connection with another person. I feel sick and hollow and dead inside. It's been like this for about 3 months now.
I thought about going to therapy because I'm so desperate to work things out somehow and talk to someone. I've had the phone # for my insurance company's mental health administration department on my desk for weeks now, but when I saw how much work it is to jump through all of the insurance company's bullshit hoops just to try to get authorization to get therapy covered, it made me feel even more worse and like it wouldn't even be worth the stress and money and embarrassment.
I feel very alone in the world and like I am just a dried up husk of a person going through the motions every day. I think I am very sick or that my life is just fundamentally flawed in some deep way that I cannot fix. I used to think that I made all the wrong choices in life, but lately I've come to realize that it's not that I made a bad choice where an alternative choice would've lead to a good outcome. It's just that all choices available to me lead me down the same path.