Not dead! I think? Maybe?
46 is apparently the age where my health goes completely to shit. Or I could have turned out to have a bizarre problem where I discovered that my ability to feed myself like a normal mammal was way more screwed up than I realized and oh, hey, did you know that there’s a weird spot in under-eating where you can be below your recommended caloric intake and actually gain weight instead? Surprise! Guess who’s working on learning how to eat properly and consistently, for the first time in her life! (No, none of this is intentional or based in mental health…I’m just really not food-motivated, for all that I like good food, and have a bad habit of forgetting to eat meals pretty regularly. I have healthy snacks stashed everywhere now, and timers, and a logbook to make sure that I get enough calories into me.) It’s been about a week now, and I have to say that it’s really rude of biology to point out that it works better when it’s being properly fueled.
It also turns out that your brain doesn’t work too well when you’re not fueling things enough, so it’s been getting easier to think and have a scrap of executive function from time to time. I know, weird, right? Still taking it easy for a bit, because this is going to take some time (this was figured out because I ended up at the ER a couple of times with seemingly random health issues the week before last, and Things Were Realized). I didn’t get here overnight, either, but I’ll get there.
On the art front, to quote my Irish ancestry, “Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints…”
You want to know what’s SUPER FUCKING DEMORALIZING? Having every realistically useful site that you can possibly use to showcase your art/writing/whatever blatantly state that by using the site you are required to give them permission to train their fucking AI with your work and do whatever they want with it and they don’t have to compensate or credit you, they’re just gonna take it. It sucks having to choose between handing your work to thieves or giving up, tossing all of your stuff into the dumpster, and going back to the jobs that nearly killed you. It sucks watching creators in your sphere giving up because the algorithms have strangled everything so badly that they can’t get enough visibility for their work. It sucks having to read, over and over again, how you should be grateful for theft and scraps because something something weird religious ideas about deities and art being a divine gift and not something that you busted your ass to learn to do.
I mean, I’m still going to do it anyway, because I’d rather be demoralized than dead from stress, but it still sucks. After I get a snack, though. I’m not dealing with this shit on an empty stomach.