Winston Churchill called it the Black Dog. I call it John Kirwan, after a sports star who fronts the depression awareness for men campaigns here in New Zealand.
It’s hard to tell, despite my awareness, whether I’m feeling depressed, or I’ve fallen into some trap because I base my happiness on how much money I’m making and it means if I’m not making money I feel like shit.
One is natural, one is my own stupid fault for thinking like an idiot.
Why am I like that? Because money is easy. Girls get boring if they don’t get bored of you first. Art is such a dangerous and essential path, one that really offers you the least reward.
These last couple of mornings, even after spending these last few weeks really working hard to put my mind at ease and move on from money as the centre of my life, I’ve been waking up feeling really rotten.
I’m aware that if I get up and get going it will pass, but still, it seems to be a reminder . . . a memo . . . Was I talking about here about how the fact that I live alone really changes things because I just don’t have the opportunity for distractions that I once did. So inevitably I end up thinking about my problems, in a situation where “problems” may simply be the fact that my life isn’t perfect which gives depression a chance to sneak in and party up and stomp about the place screaming “you don’t have a girlfriend, you never will, and your art is going nowhere, you’ll just be a cold, lonely and desperate asshole sitting there clutching on to your modest million dollars or whatever bullshit it was you gave up your opportunity to truely be happy for.”
ouch. What a prick! Amiright?
I even thought about affirmations. How frickin . . . y’know? Affirmations.
And I pictured myself doing exactly what I’m doing now. Oh, you’ll just post a blog about it and you’ll feel fine.
Blogging therapy. I don’t want to wake up like I’m in this empty world. It’s not real. I see my sweet Beamer parked up and I’m like hell yeah! I see some girl walking down the street and I know she’s love it. I wouldn’t be singing Fuck You “If I was richer” I am rich. Well not rich but that’s where it’s going.
That’s where it’s going but I allow myself to feel miserable if I go 48 hours without making at least a few hundred.
And many days I see it. There’s nothing stopping me from getting in my beamer and living the life. Well except if I do spend the next 5 years wallowing because the days of being youg, stupid, of trying to be some producer guy seem to be over. Will I ever be that hot young DJ or writer or youtube guy or whatever with my smoking hot young girlfriend? Maybe not.
Or maybe I just have to work twice as hard. It’s probably true, and having money behind me will certainly help.
That’s sometimes how I see it: I spent the last 3 years getting it together, making sure I had my money game tight. Now it’s time to move on, as long as I can maintain then I’ve still got a lot of effort to contribute to a girl or some artistic statement, but in both of those areas, it’s hard to know where your time is best spent.
If something is worth doing it’s worth doing properly. I never really followed that idea, I’m just trying to get from A to B to Z, but perhaps when it comes down to what you really want, it’s worth making a little bit of effort. And that’s my problem, I don’t try, too busy worrying about my money.
I think about girls I’ve liked and I think yeah, they make you want to chase them. Otherwise it’s just going to get boring if it’s a “she’s a nice girl” situation.
My art is almost at a new low. I’m barely doing anything.Yes I am soldiering on with a new track and putting it to a video which I guess is a first.
I keep coming back to the concept that I have a very uncommon pain, the pain of space. I always realised if I didn’t have art, there’d be the pain of that space, just feeling like a complete, anonymous square.
Most people out there have a crap job, or a relationship with a crap person that is toxic, kids, and responsibilities that are stifling, they would love my problems.
Money doesn’t set you apart. Art does though. I don’t have anybody in my life causing me pain like most people do, I don’t really have anyone in my life. i may feel unhappy at times, but I am never tested by the weight of my relationship to anyone.
I’ve weeded my garden. I’ve napalmed it, really. But what can I grow? By getting desperate and trying to be a player and an artist without doing anything real, you’ll just end up in the same spot.
Do I just want to have the same pain most have, the common pain of having made the wrong choices, trapped with somebody, forced to do what they hate?
Cheer up, I’ll never be held down by some shitty situation, as long as I can accept that I can die alone and I don’t care what people think of my art, then as long as I can make my money then I’m free.
I’m free because I am financially independent, I do my art because it makes me who I am, however, whatever, whenever I do it, and finally I am free because I am not going to let some chick tell me what to do.
Things happen and you’ve got to accept that you’re best off not to care. You’re best to protect yourself.
That’s me, I have high expectations, I don’t expect people to turn into nutters and act irresponsibly, I don’t put up with it, I’m out the door.
Only to wake, once again, alone. That’s the price you pay for being smart.
