So shoot me

Depression is a tough one. Hard to shake and anything can shake you. Just chatting with a friend -- a guy who I happen to have a crush on, sort of (and he knows) -- and he tells me about this other girl, this other friend of sorts, who just asked him out. It's no big deal, or at least it shouldn't be, but of course, it makes me feel like the most hideous and undesirable human being alive.

My day consisted of going to work. We hosted a panel discussion today, and it was actually really inspiring. I'm shocked when things inspire me, it's such a foreign feeling of late. One of the speakers, Sharon Alward, is a prof from the University of Manitoba, and she told of her amazing struggle to attend art school, practice, and then teach as a woman during a time and at a place that was actively hostile and toxic toward women. She had a moment in Winnipeg, after she had come back there to teach, where she was being persecuted. This woman, who had done her graduate work with Chris Burden and Mike Kelley in California, was being told she was unqualified to teach. She fought back, and she won. But it resulted in a deep depression and medication. Eventually, she found martial arts, and got herself back to a state of living.

I really identified with this aspect of her talk, personally, for sure -- since my own work and personal persecution over the past three years has taken its toll. So much so that I am so off balance lately that I can barely remember to take my crazy-pills, my drugs. It was inspiring to see someone so smart and sharp come out whole.

The whole panel itself was really interesting, and this just occurred to me. The underlying theme was about fraud, versus qualification. Everyone on that panel in some way fought against, or grappled with the idea that they were fraudulent.

I grapple with this every day that I don't make art, and that I allow myself to be drawn down by the undertow of depression. If it were the 70s, I could shoot myself, but that's just so overdone.