I don’t know, I felt like writing, but now I can’t think. What was I going to say? Fuck if I know!

…This is the kind of thing that keeps happening. I just started going to speech therapy. Speech therapy is more like cognitive therapy, but “cognitive therapy” is a type of talk therapy in psychology. So, don’t be confused. Since my brain surgery, I can’t remember stuff, I get confused, and I can’t process things like I normally would. Or like I could before the surgery. I don’t know what the new “normal” is!

I had a meltdown the other day because Blick wouldn’t accept any of my credit cards when I checked out on their website. I wound up talking to someone on their customer service chat, who kept telling me to call them on the phone. And this happened the last time I bought something on their site. I had to call after getting an error saying my cards were invalid. What is the point in having a website for consumers if they can’t consume anything?

Somehow, this seemingly tremendous inconvenience sent me into an unforeseeable rage. Or perhaps it was foreseeable. I’ve been ignoring all the short-term and long-term mental effects when recovering from brain surgery, i.e., confusion, memory and processing difficulties, fogginess, dizziness, weakness, behavioral and personality changes, and bouts of anger, etc. I just didn’t think any of those things were going to happen to me. I think I was in denial because my scar has been healing pretty fast. I thought I was out of the woods.

I’ve come to realize it could take 6 more months before I start feeling like myself again, if this is all temporary (which is most likely the case). In rarer cases, it could be permanent, or I might never snap back completely. I’m hoping the homework my speech therapist has given me, and the jigsaw puzzles Hannah bought me, will help my cognitive functioning and the embarrassment that’s been accompanying it.

So, after the rage started to settle, I broke down in tears. I felt terribly guilty for being such a child and throwing a tantrum. I felt like a child. I didn’t want to talk to an employee on the phone because I knew I would be a total asshole to them. I told the guy this on the chat when he offered to call me. “No, don’t call! I don’t want to scream at you. I just want to buy the things in my cart! Why is that so hard?”

Then, this morning, I got an email from another customer service person apologizing for the whole thing, and she offered me a $20 coupon for the mix-up. Wow! A whole $20? Should I write her back and tell her I’ve already purchased everything I wanted from Amazon? Some of it has even been delivered already. See? Easy!

It was just one of those days. A day to remember. Or rather, a day to forget! I went out of my cotton-picking mind over this small and petty issue. I’m just glad they couldn’t hear me raving and cursing from my office, and all around the house, too!

But Hannah heard the whole thing. She has witnessed me being angry in the past. A couple of times, at least, but this was pretty over the top, and the worst thing about it was that I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop. It overtook me. I’m glad it’s over now, but it was truly a strange phenomenon not being able to calm myself.

The next morning (yesterday), I received a rejection regarding my application to the Skowhegan School of Art. And then later that day, I found out that one of the mentors from Netvvrk had won a United States Artists Fellowship. Those are $50,000. Not that I want money. Not that I need the validation, but for a few hours afterward, I thought I did. I thought that was important. I thought my art was totally unimportant, mostly because I paint pictures. Who cares about pretty pictures? I mean, my paintings are not really “pretty.” It’s not like I create still lifes of flowers or bunnies—not that there’s anything wrong with that, but most of the winners of that fellowship are making socially or politically impactful work, or something close to it.

It all made me think about my artwork and how burnt out (physically) I’ve been with painting, especially the standing at the easel part. For some time now, I’ve been wanting to work on paper, create smaller pieces, and return to more abstract concepts. I just haven’t yet. Of course, the trend is to make BIG art. Who cares about small art these days? I mean, I still do, but to others, it just seems like it’s all so unimportant. So, I’m waiting to finish all the work for my upcoming show before I start working on paper. And I really wanted to learn animation on one of the Adobe programs (even though I can hardly process anything I have to think about), but I can’t afford the subscription to the Adobe Suite anyway. Instead, I had plans to learn Krita and CapCut, both of which are free.

However, it would really be nice to learn the software that’s standardized among videographers, especially if I end up collaborating on animation elements. I could wind up shooting myself in the foot, wasting my time on software no one really uses.

But what do I know?

Until then, I got a wild hair up my ass to brainstorm a project that would get me away from painting for a while. Right now, it’s mostly a research-based idea that’s not even fully formed yet. I’m having a hard time deciding on the exact subject matter—another thing inside my brain that’s not working properly: decision-making! I do know that it’s not too far from what I’ve already been addressing in the Discarded Snapshots paintings. My interest (in the subject anyway) is still there, and has been since 2022; I just can’t figure out how to combine it with my other interests. So that’s what’s next.

Since yesterday, I’ve been working on writing a plan. I’ve written four pages of this “plan.” I made a basic roadmap and outlined various steps, yet I can’t put my finger on exactly what I’m doing or my deep reasons why. Maybe I’ll figure it all out some other day when I’m sharp again. If I ever was, or if it ever happens.