How to start a post, especially the one marking a renewal of a several-years-old blog? I’ve never been comfortable with introducing things, moreover texts. It’s like attracting all attention to self, and not on the content. Because it’s me who’s introducing this. But whatever.
I’ve always wanted to blog, to write my thoughts, to express myself with words and pictures I made. The fact is, I never did it right.
I always struggled between what I wanted, and what I was (am).
I wanted a clean blog, interesting, nice, fun, regularly supplied with great entries. A ‘famous’ blog, as famous as it can be since I’m no one, but anyway, a place where people would like to come often.
But I’m not like this. Really not.
I’m unstable, to start with. Regularity is really not part of me. I may write 5 entries in a row, then nothing for months. That’s not very good for a blog, even less for attracting people and making them want to come back.
I also struggled for a very long time with my desire of displaying only pictures, my pictures, and my need of putting my words with them.
Between the desire of describing my pictures’ process, their meaning to me, what I technically discovered while creating them, this issues I may have had, my own judgment on my work, and also the need of writing other things, my self-deepest thoughts, my cognitive ways, my fears, my doubts, and my so-rare moments of joy.
If you check the archives of the blog, you’ll see what I mean.
I’m not a positive person. Well, I may be, when I’m in a good phase, but it’s so rare.
This scarcity is a brake to my frequency of publication : when I feel bad, I keep it all to myself, even if I need to write, I won’t post it. And when I feel better, I look back at all this time spent in idle silence, at all my thoughts, the road I’ve gone through since my last entry, and I wonder what image of my myself would I display if I post during different phases.
I tried. To post only during my ‘up’ phases. It was a fiasco, I couldn’t keep up with my self-induced posting schedule, and I ended giving up, as simple as it is.
The guilt, the shame and the self-disgust (oh yes, we’re right there) of not beeing able to keep up with my own blogging guidelines ended to make me step back, not daring to post anything.
It’s almost the same thing with Instagram, all in all. I deliberately stopped using Facebook and Twitter, and I don’t think I’ll go back to it. But I’m not quite ready to quit Instagram too, maybe because I still use it to check on some of my favourite artists.
To be honest, it’s the same thing with everything. But it’s not my point right now.
My point is : all this is over.
I don’t want to push myself under pressure again for a blog, for social media, for my art.
I’m done too with the idea of being a professional artist. I took me several long years to realize it wasn’t for me. At least, not as I started to do this.
I still draw, paint, and write. I can’t stop, even if I wanted to. I’ve made a break, forced myself to stay away from my pencils, my brushes and my keyboard. That’s simply impossible. I need this to keep my head out of the water.
So I started back to create, but never showing, for months. I tried to show again at the beginning of October, with the Drawtober challenge, but I couldn’t keep up the line and the feelings of showing my art and expecting it to be seen and congratulated, and then the shame of reappearing only for that challenge, and not doing it full.
Until the moment I opened my eyes on the fact that I was the only one to dictate this rigour in publication.
In the end, who would blame me for not posting regularly?
Who would blame me for not finishing my drawings, my paintings, or for my unsteady writings?
Me. Only me, I guess. For no one else, in the end, comes here, and even if lost viewers would come wandering on my blog, it’s not a commercial showcase. Not anymore.
It’s my blog.
My thoughts, my art, whatever I’d like to post, whenever I’d like to post.
No matter if I don’t post for months.
I don’t want anymore to attract the viewer, I only want to express myself.
I’ve spit on ‘famous artists’ for long, for claiming that all young artists needed to do if they wanted to live on their art was “being themselves”, as if it was the only thing to do.
I was so deeply convinced that I was myself that I couldn’t bear reading this, they were lucky liars.
Until I opened my eyes on my own imposture.
What I posted, was created in a commercial thought. To please, to attract the customer, because hey man, there are bills to be paid. Bit by bit, I stopped drawing things that weren’t me. The happy loving mothers, the lovely childish creatures… I started doing things more in touch with what I had in mind, darker things, more ‘true’. But it wasn’t genuine, it was hesitant, new, and I was ashamed to show this, so I restrained myself to even being able to draw what I had in mind.
I was in a wandering, lost between what I wanted to be, and what I really was without knowing it. In the end, it wasn’t genuine art at all, even if it was a start.
Now, I create, and maybe, one day, I’ll show it. It piles and gathers dust and scratches in my studio, it doesn’t have any potential money value.
If I post something, I may add a picture of my paintings, and that’s it.
As well as if someday I want to post on Instagram, I’ll do it, and whatever if I don’t post anything more for weeks.
I don’t want to advertise myself anymore, I just want to try to be myself.
My self that I still don’t really know yet.
I only start discovering who I am. A shame, at 31.
My drawings, my texts, only start being genuine. So much more than what I was convinced to do a few months ago.
It may be part of the self acceptance process, of the acceptance of my diseases, of my bipolarity. This acceptance is painful beyond words, I refused it for so long, and I’m still not sure I want to go on, as much as I hate myself.
But it’s necessary, it’s part of the path.
The rebirth of this blog is related to the premises of my acceptance.
Accepting to show myself as I am, as negative, unsteady, uneven and unstable as I am.
Accepting not getting feedbacks, not refreshing the viewers’ board, not getting comments.
Because now, I don’t care about all this. I did, all my life, but not now.
As I said, I don’t write for others. Not for you. Well, now I do, but you know what I mean.
It’s over.
I now draw, paint and write for me. For the first time. Because I need it.
I do it on a public media, right, and for two reasons :
The first, is an obviousness : if I want, one day, that someone likes my art, I need to show it. No insisting, no advertising, no hope. It’s simply here, to be seen if checked.
The second reason comes from a deep need of helping people. With my texts and my art, if what I say echoes into someone, if someone thinks he sometimes feels the same, maybe it would help. It’s very selfish, in the end.
It’s when I met another bipolar that all was brought to light in my mind. He made me realise that as dark, frightening, even terrifying are my thoughts, I wasn’t the only one to have them. Just the knowledge of this was a relief.
I don’t have any contact anymore with him now, and I painfully regret this.
Maybe it’s what made me start over this blog.
Anyway, I hope this time I’ll keep up, without any constraint (except the fact that I want to translate my french entries in English, to practice).
Welcome into my mind.
my very own wonderland 