When I think on art, and I do often, it is easy for me to be overwhelmed. There is always more work to be done than I can do. And it’s demoralizing to think that there’s always more work than I will do. If there’s a trick to it, to turning off the nagging thoughts, I don’t know it. So how do I sate that guilty conscious, do enough so that I can tell that nagging voice to shut up? Honestly, I don’t know and I still don’t. I have tricks that I use or have used. They don’t work though. Outsmarting myself never does.

My traditional trick is escapism, usually in the form of video games or movies, occasionally a book. That escapism works for the moment, after the moment is over, though, the guilt rev’s up like a hot rod. The roaring and the smoke overwhelming the senses. This cycle continues. The winding of the guilt with escapism then the guilt making me miserable until I escape. That dysfunction goes on for some time.

I don’t know if it’s spring fever or the warm weather or the release from the cold of winter. I’ve found it is usually that time of year when art springs eternal and my ambitions and motivations and will returns to crush artistic endeavors. I don’t lose the guilt, it just nags me about how rusty my skills have become. Even so, I’m able to and desire to function as a working artist . . .

What a strange apparatus I use to get by in life.