Messy and Chaotic
That's the only accurate way to describe how burned out my life feels right now, but at least I did my art school homework.
It’s more than obvious that 2024 is not progressing the way I had planned.
AT ALL.
I would like to speak to the Manager of this Existence, and get a refund.
Evil Life Manager: Sorry we don’t do refunds, all sales are final.
There has to be some exhaustier word than exhausting because the last two weeks have been whatever that is.
Fatigueception - I am tired within my tired.
With a healthy sprinkle of executive dysfunction, meaning I fall into doom spirals of anxiety thinking about all the things I’m supposed to have done that I haven’t done yet, then the anxiety sets off a chain reaction that makes me feel like I can’t breathe, and mentally paralyses me from making any sensible decisions, so I’m incapable of actually doing anything which would relieve my anxiety.
The only thing I barely managed to stay consistent with, was going to art classes, and I still missed some, and now I’m behind on even my art school homework.
The worst thing though, is that I had another major allergic asthma attack where despite taking two doses of my control inhalers, and then my rescue inhaler, I still couldn’t breathe, so I had to go to the Emergency Room… AGAIN.
The doctor prescribed me Prednisone, but I haven’t taken it, and I don’t want to take it because it’s a steroid, and I’m already on steroids (inhalers to control allergies / asthma are steroids), and I don’t want to deal with the pretty fucked up side effects steroids have when you take them even medium term.
I have enough health problems.
Ergo, a luta continua.
I couldn’t even get through the week, before I had to go to the Emergency Room AGAIN, this time for sharp stabbing stomach pains, that I previously had thought were food poisoning, but it turns out I might have been wrong all this time, and besides that time in April when I nearly died, it probably wasn’t food poisoning the rest of the time.
Turns out, the Nigerian doctor who saw me this time, couldn’t believe I’d been to the ER over six times since January, and decided to look through my whole medical history, and what did she find there?
Right there on my chart, all the way back from 2014, was a diagnosis under my positive test result for H Pylori (a pretty common bacteria that half the world has in their stomachs or GI tracts):
Severe Chronic Gastritis.
How come I’m just finding out TEN YEARS LATER that I have severe chronic gastritis and nobody told me?
I immediately fished out the memory of the day the nurse called to tell me the test result, and I could hear her voice saying “Your test for H Pylori was positive, so you need to take these Proton Pump Inhibitors for a few weeks, and then we’ll test you again to make sure it’s gone”
That was it.
She never said a single thing about the very important fact, that I had been diagnosed with gastritis.
Even though I did as instructed back then, and several weeks later, I tested negative for H Pylori, meaning it got cleared from my system by the antibiotics, all my various mysterious stomach issues over the years suddenly make sense.
Of course I’m worried because medicine is one of the big arenas where what you don’t know can actually kill you.
The new game plan is that I have to go back on PPIs for the next few weeks, and then be examined by a Gastroenterologist and possibly do an endoscopy just to see what’s actually going on in there.
I’ll do my best not to worry.
Not that I have any expertise in being calm. I literally have a serious anxiety disorder.
I’m also no longer allowed to eat anything tomato based (basically snatching away my Nigerian card, because what is a Nigerian without tomato?), nor anything citrus or acidic, which means no more chocolate, and worst of all, no more coffee.
I have drunk one, sometimes two, sometimes three cups of coffee almost every single day for the last six years, all while unbeknownst to me, I had severe chronic gastritis.
It wouldn’t be an understatement to say I am majorly worried about the state of my stomach.
Alright, enough about my internal organs.
Before I get into what I drew this week at art school, let me just say that I know I was supposed to publish a post about Nigerian Number Systems, which I’ve been working on since the year began, but to be honest, while I’ve written over a thousand words about it, I just feel really lost about how to tie it to anything that might be relevant to anyone who reads this blog.
I don’t know why anyone would care about number systems, inasmuch as I myself actually do care.
Maybe this is a reminder to me to just write what I want to write, and not care or worry about whether anyone is going to like it or find it valuable.
EYE like number systems, so I apologise in advance dear reader, but since you subscribed to my blog of your own free will, whether you like it or not, I’m just going to publish it so I can free myself from agonising over whether it’s going to make sense to you.
Art School Homework
I missed quite a lot of class because I was sick, and this is all I could do because I’ve felt like shit and been so miserable lately.
I emailed my teacher to excuse myself from class, and even though she emailed back to say get well soon, she assigned me more homework.
I respect the dedication though.
She didn’t become a successful professional artist by allowing nonsense like poor health get in the way of practising until your hand turns to a pencil.
I don’t need wahala abeg.
I had to draw:
Five blind contours of my hand.
I can’t even begin to describe how much I hate blind contour. Everything looks horrible.
Three outline contours
Two detail contours
You can tell I was already tired when I drew this because I drew my hand too wide, then I had to go back and make it narrower, and I was frankly so fed up with the whole thing that I didn’t even finish. Anything the teacher sees in this drawing, she go take am like that.
The negative space of the plant scene
I had to do this time consuming negative space drawing by picking a plant scene and drawing not the plants themselves, but the spaces between the plants. I looked at trees, and stuff outside but it looked like too much hard work, so I settled for the dried up flowers in my living room, but even those were too hard, so I ended up drawing this based off the photo of a plant that I found online.
I have to do a separate post about figure drawings.
Momentum
To round this up, I’ve decided I’m going to start keeping track of how things I’ve committed to doing are going in personal posts like this.
I also made a dedicated page for my bigger picture, pie in the sky, longterm, large scale dreams and goals I call my Infinity Stones.
Here’s the trajectory so far:
Walk 10,000 steps every day — Unfortunately hitting about 6800 maximum right now. My breathing problems are also making it difficult for me to exercise.
Follow my intermittent fasting schedule — Whole thing has collapsed with my stomach issues, but I’m going to keep trying.
Lose 100 lbs / 45.4 kg — I’ve lost just 5lbs since the beginning of the year, but the struggle continues.
Launch my Art business (Clothing, Jewellery, Art and Lifestyle) brand - Onu Monu — This hasn’t happened yet, but is still on the table, just running overdue by about a month.
Finish the novel I’m writing — Zero progress. Shame on me.
Write in this blog at least once a week — Partial win since I spent a week editing a video and got out both a post and a video. Amending this to once every two weeks since I need time to edit both posts and videos.
Buy a house of some sort — Zero progress, although I’ve identified some houses I would like to buy, then promptly watched other people buy them like a mumu.
Alright, that was a lot, but it’s not the whole story.
More updates soon.
💛
I really enjoyed reading this. Thank you for sharing the messy and not so glamorous details of your life 💜