Ok, so I'm pretty much certain now that stress is something I suffer from quite regularly. I mean there's your general screaming-at-the-kids, throwing-stuff kind of stress. And then there's severe stress that affects your well-being. I have the latter. When I'm stressed I come out in a nasty rash, develop acne (gross I know), I panic more; for example my driving is always worse when I'm stressed, because my mind wanders. I also lose a lot of sleep and my appetite turns very bizarre. But most noticeable is the hot flushes I get. I've been getting them regularly for years but they seem to be getting worse.
Luckily (or unluckily depending how you look at it) I am going for a blood test this week to determine if there's anything I can take to "chill me out" a bit. Forgive me but I think the best cure is probably pot.
Anyway the source of my stress as usual is myself. I am the worst kind of procrastinator: the one who knows it but can't do anything about it. Believe me, I've printed off enough help sheets and read enough books :/
At the moment my turmoil lies in the idea that for the first time ever I WANT to do my uni work, but I can't because I also WANT to finish my commission first. Why can't I finish my commission? Well apart from that feeling of nausea I get when I even look at one of my drawings, I guess another reason may be that I'm scared of the final result. I'm never happy with my artwork and I wish from the start that I'd done it all on paper and not in Photoshop. I now hate Photoshop and sincerely hope I never have to work with it again :( I wanna go back to traditional. Soooooo bad.
My other devil-on-the-shoulder is Tattoos (incidentally that has just given me an idea for a tattoo. But oh wait, I can't do anything about it because I HAVE OTHER WORK TO DO FIRST!) I can't stop thinking about tattoos; how much I want to draw them, read about them, design them for me and other people, get one (or two or three) done now...
Dan (the ever supporting boyfriend) suggests that I should use my lust for tattoos as the driving force to get me to finish my commission and catch up on my uni work. But it's so much harder than that. Procrastination isn't laziness. Trust me, I go hiking every Saturday. Procrastination, I'm starting to think, is pretty much a serious mental illness. I mean I've been doing it for years without realizing. I only bloody learnt what the word mean last October. I can put jobs off for years on end. It's lost me a load of art and writing opportunities. It even lost me one of my friends. It's ruining my life!
Even if I tell myself to look ahead, see how worse off I'll be when I haven't done my work, it doesn't shift my left arm to start drawing. Ever. I can only draw when I enjoy it. And I'm really not enjoying it.
God I want to draw tattoos so much! I want to do my uni work: my bookjacket, my canvas poster, my ideas for the bloody cycling competition thing, and that Bee-Battery thing... I'm so behind I feel like giving up altogether!
So there's my blog update for these last two weeks. To my tutors: I haven't done any work. But I guess I'm developing my writing/critical skills (insert dry hollow laugh).
References:
Stop Procrastinating, Don't be a Perfectionist
Beating Procrastination
How to stop Procrastinating: 7 Timeless Tips
No comments:
Post a Comment