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Artist: Georgia Simandan

When I couldn't look myself in the mirror anymore without becoming depressed I started running and doing little, googled work out routines in my room. I would run at night because I didn't like being seen. After a year of it I still felt depressed. I didn't look that much different. I'm sure depression added a few of its own pounds as well. On top of that, working out only at night didn't do much for my pale complexion.

Life grows exponentially. When I'm no longer conscious I'm altering a behavior, each tweak I make to the daily routine compounds upon itself. When I'm no longer conscious my conscious mind can do other shit. Feedback makes a change into a habit, and then to a part of your way of life.

Through my alcoholism and seclusion I've maintained two ways of life that still produced positivism within me, writing and working out. Drinking came and went. Dependencies have come and went but true growth stays and I see it reflected most clearly in the type of relationships I have. I have no friends now. They aren't dead, not even most of them. We just aren't that close anymore. Maybe I still have a lot of friends.

I'm constantly looking at my own efficiency in what I produce. But I am not successful. I'm not focused. I am not a trendsetter because I'm too afraid. I only receive feedback from myself. The remnants of toxic parenting, which too many of us suffer from, remind me that I'll never be good enough.

I ride that insecurity like an undercurrent so that I become an undercurrent; the magma before it's lava. It's quiet underground...maybe too quiet for success so I make my own measures; the only way I know to be happy.

It is a success for me to change my perception; to release the weight of depression, layer by layer, by building my thoughts inside of it. It is a success for me to create a complete (whatever that means) idea. Sometimes ideas draw themselves into stories. Each little epiphany of character and thought compounds upon the other, developing the legs of plot and arc. Seeing these things happen make me happy because they show me my sadness. They show me how to be aware of things I say I'd like to change...

Most of the time though, my mind isn't telling stories, it's reciting thoughts. One day I hope my creative brain patterns find a forum of discussion... One can only hope they be passed along or noticed, but I guess everything is, when given that meaning.
I've heard consultants talk about what steps to take to achieve success but when I watch them, a few years down the line, they all seem to twist and glint with a sort of anxious greed.

Sometimes a defeat or a let down can level me to a place of such shadow it's difficult to make a step. But there's always a step. Sometimes I forget: surveying is part of the harvest.

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, 

Your thoughts become your words, 

Your words become your actions, 

Your actions become your habits, 

Your habits become your values, 

Your values become your destiny.”

Gandhi