I am low. Like, bad low. I am tired and burnt out and there is no joy in anything that I do. It’s been dragging on for months and this last week I have just plummeted. I don’t know how to talk to anyone, I am not sure there is anyone to talk to. Usually when I can’t deal with the world I draw or paint and these days I just sit in my studio and cry, because every time I pick up a pen or a brush I work and feel exhausted. I look at paintings and drawings that will just be made and then will sit in here and I don’t know why I do it.

And then I am in my room trying to make sense of how to get myself dressed because that is what adults do and I hear my daughter say “I have bones and blood and a beating heart” and I swear to god I have never heard anything more amazing in my life.

She’s going away this weekend, something I was very reluctant to agree to but just because I feel low and blue does not mean I get to be clingy and keep her all to myself, especially when I am in this gloom. I look at my workspace and am concerned that it is becoming a bit of a shrine to her but I promise ( her ) that it’s just because I haven’t done the other works that are meant to be part of this body of work. Which I guess is an ode to her in many ways, but an ode to childhood and children and the amazing things that they say and imagination and dark and light and beauty in all things.

I bought a canvas the other day that was meant to be a final for a study that I did that I was planning to enter into a prize, but I can’t bring myself to do it because prizes are brutal and I think I want a bit of time out from rejection letters. I’m also angry at the canvas because it cost me $50 and I feel guilty when I spend THAT much on something that will only be one thing. I could make my own but really I couldn’t because I do not have the space or the equipment or the means to do so.

This weekend I think I am going to drive out to some part of Victoria that I haven’t been to and just walk in the bush for hours and hours. I can just keep on walking until I am so tired and then maybe all the fresh air in my lungs and the vastness of the skies will make me get a bit more of a grip.