Existential Crisis: The Hamster Wheel Inside The Mind

I woke up today feeling like I was in a hamster wheel. I currently feel like I’m in a hamster wheel. I’m running and running and not moving forward. It's mild despair, still potent and heavy like a bomb, but why today? Actually, I have some guesses.

1. This is my normal state of flux, based on the way my brain chemistry works. Some days I’m high, and some days I’m low. What these fluctuations are based on are semi out of my control. I’m sure what I eat, how much I drink, the drugs I take, and my amount of physical activity are active (highly unmeasurable) components in their own right. Things like the astrological cycles could also be a factor. Is it a coincidence that a huge eclipse event is happening and I feel this way? I have no idea. In any case, there is nothing I can do but accept it, because it is here, and I still have to get my shit done. No crawling into a ball and catching up on Game of Thrones, staying in my pjs all day.

2. I have a photoshoot today for Skin on Sundays. Not the normal kind where someone comes over, I write on them, take some pics, and it’s done. Today there are two girls, sisters, actually, coming to model in their underwear on my roof. And there is a photographer who I have never met coming as well. We met through Instagram, because when I was riding on higher spirits, my collaborative energy was reaching out to the art community here in Mexico City, and I sent him a message asking if he was interested in doing this particular shoot with me. I wouldn’t normally think this would be a reason I woke up feeling out of sorts, but I have to weigh in the amount of stress that is coming with it. This shoot, if it ends up looking insanely good, could be reposted on Arsenic’s Instagram account, which has over a million followers. If not, then better luck next time. I have been corresponding with them, and they seem excited to support what I am doing, but I feel anxiety. The week has been full of trying to find a higher roof than my own to use, getting blown off by that acquaintance, two of my models canceling on me, one at the last minute late last night, explaining to the two other girls that are coming in Spanish the essence of the episode, feeling like I should be paying them for posing in their underwear, wishing I could pay them, trying to figure out a way to not feel bad about not being able to pay them, wondering if anything I am doing with this project even matters at all, if I just stopped, would anyone be worse off for it, is that the way poetry is in general, that it could disappear and the world would just be the same, understanding with a certain simultaneous pang of grief and relief that nothing matters, that we are specks in the scheme of the universe, and so I should just keep doing what I’m doing for my brief and ultimately meaningless existence. Which is why I still texted my crew this morning to make sure they were coming, and they are. And why I am going to the store to make sure I have beverages available for everyone, as well as some snacks. No crawling into a ball and crying today, Jessica. You’re doing a good job, Jessica.

Does this sort of endless meandering through the mind happen to everyone else too? I guess it does, though others have their own manifestations of it not necessarily similar to mine. I am prone to these ups and downs, and perhaps that is what life is really like inside of most artists. Speaking of art, I went to Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s old house yesterday, and I learned a lot about them. Her polio, her car accident, her physical and emotional trauma, even worse how those traumas grew when he cheated on her with her sister, and how she just kept going with the flow, because there was no other way to suffer less and be better.

(That's Frida and Diego's Casa Azul that I'm leaning on twice, btw.)

And making art, it just comes; if I stop, there is probably nothing as good to replace it with anyway. What would I do, start watching more Netflix? Texting more? Obviously not.

Thanks for listening to my Sunday morning melancholy today, Steemit. Getting it out makes it easier to deal with, kind of like making lists makes feeling overwhelmed with things to do makes it easier.

And here's Luna, another gift from the universe into my heart for all times heavy, light, and gloriously in between.