Falling Apart

Seems that I go through these cycles lately where everything will be fine for a week or so, then collapse utterly. The week of collapse is triggered by some event--currently, an art project I'm both frustrated with and increasingly behind on--that has me worried. Eventually, my creative and academic ennui becomes almost a spiteful kick in my own ribs. I wake late, shower infrequently, stop going to class (or attend with little to none of the homework completed) and generally feel like an abject failure. During this phase I stop studying anything and instead watch a lot of Rohin's bad TV.

This whole depressed period generally continues until I'm afraid people are going to start asking questions. Then I try to pull my act together. Sometimes I can, and sometimes I can't. When I can't, the cycle elongates, though with decreased risk. That is to say, I still feel upset and unsatisfied with my person, my efforts, and my life, but I go to class and do most of the work. This continues for another week or so, until the final completion of some project or assignment lifts some of the worry from my mind. Then I feel all right again.

This just cannot be healthy. But it's not really clinical depression, either, even though it involves some of the same symptoms. It's just...God, I think it's that deep down I don't think I'm all that I could or should be. Whatever the hell that means. And it's really, really, bothering me that I very infrequently find myself writing anything but bullshit poetry. No fiction has come out of this brain in almost a year. A fucking year. It makes me want to howl and throw things and chew typewriter keys and smash in computer screens and deck every mincing word any writing instructor has given me throughout college. Why was writing so much easier, so much more fun, in highschool? Is it because I wasn't terrified/obsessed with producing "good," publishable work? I don't know. Maybe. But FUCK this. If I can't get it together in any area of my life, how can I ever pursue a writing career?