Re-emerging from under my rock.

Why howdy ladies, remember me?

These past two silent weeks I've been sick with the flu.

As always happens when I get sick, my meds sort of blinked out and stopped working. It's the strangest phenomenon.

And you know how when you drink coffee everyday and then one day you don't, it's much worse than if you'd never had any coffee to begin with? Yeah it's like that except for instead of caffeine it's the hormones that keep your brain working in a non-schitzo way.

So it feels like a really bad acid trip overlaid with the joys of the flu. Oh, and add to that the lack of inspiration I'd been feeling lately and, well, shit got dark.

I of course decided that I was stuck that way and that this past decade of stability and functioning was just a temporary island in a stream of despair. I remembered what it was like for reality to take on a creepy atmosphere of utter strangeness. Like different moods could color existence itself.

Granted, right now that last sentence sounds like gibberish to me, but I was experiencing that quite distinctly...

Aaaand, then I got all better and went on a bracelet kick, the results of which you can see here. So that was weird.

Every time I get sick and this happens I have a renewed appreciation for sanity, home, family and whatever limited productivity/functioning I am able to achieve when I'm stable.

And I remind myself that I don't have to be the best most successful artist in the world and that my pieces don't all have to make me tear my hair out with amazement. Rather I should just do what I know how to do simply and with enjoyment for the pleasure of of the work.

And if something doesn't sell, it doesn't necessarily mean it was a failure, as art is not always wearable per se.

The piece below is a perfect example of that. Like, maybe no woman out there wants Napoleon around their neck. I tried adding dangly beads to pretty it up, but they didn't work. This piece wants to be minimal and masculine and I like it so there.

Anyways, all the meds I kept lowering in hopes of clearing the fog in my head? Turns out I needed those and that's where my drive to do anything at all had gone to.

Not very romantic to think inspiration is some kind of hormone you can directly consume, but all the stuff that happens in our brains, even our emotions, are all made up of hormones. It's all chemical reactions.

But like technology that is advanced enough will always seem indistinguishable from magic to the lay observer, this chemistry takes place at a level of complexity so beyond our comprehension that taking meds for mental and emotional harmony seems sometimes like ...

Throwing aspirin into a thunderstorm? Doing a rain dance and hoping it pays off? Playing the lottery? I don't have a metaphor, it's that far beyond me.

In other news, this necklace was inspired by the idea of making something super simple and after re-arranging each element several hundred times for the perfect balance I've decided once again I'm incapable of simple.

Literally, I was inspired by this type of thing I saw originally on pinterest:

My only guiding thought being "grey bits!" and I end up with this unholy mess. OK, actually I really love it and it's not unholy. It was just a pain to get it all to hang just so. And I did make that simple Napoleon choker above, so... I don't have a point.
Let me distract you with cuddling cats.

P.S. My dear Emmanuelle at CreationsAsh is having a huge 50% off sale, you should check it out.