Driven_to_produce_work.cda

The blog that disappears and reappears.mp3

There are so many times when I hide this blog, but I can't seem to drop it. I've started a new blog that's more appropriate (based on what I think a proper artist-researcher should be like). I like writing on here because I feel like I can write what I want. I guess I hid this blog because a part of me disapproves of it being seen in public, but I have some kink in public thinking. A part of me can only write if there's a thought of being seen. 

I don't understand it either. I had a random suspicion that it's to do with my asexuality, but that's trusting psychoanalysis too much - and I've since moved away from that as my lens to view the world.

How to actually be more confident.mp3

I'm borrowing confidence from the knowledge that if world leaders and people in power can write what they fancy to address international audiences, then the fear of freaking out my acquaintances with my thoughts is nothing compared to that. At least I know my thoughts aren't as terrible as the thoughts from the people in power (and still, there are a lot of people who admire them for being themselves). 

So I might as well just be me.

A strong drive to produce work.mp3

Even though in the eyes of the government, I'm unemployed and 'lazy', I feel that I'm my best self with the work I'm producing. The times when I have a permanent contract and is perceived as a good member of society, these are the times I feel the worst, because deep down I know it's not me being true to my path - and I'm in some ways robbing from future culture. I know my path is to keep producing intellectual labour. I can’t help it, I just feel a compulsion to do the creative task. 

I just seem to keep having urges to make artwork and write, even though I'm embarrassed by it. I feel I have a lack of role models who can guide me and make me normalise it. My family and close friends don’t understand me. My dad thinks it’s a conscious switch that I can just turn off at will when I go to work.

I was talking to my former manager at my past job, and she was the one who indirectly persuaded me to continue with my PhD studies because she said it was a shame that I decided to work, and work in a different field - I think she was sincere about it. I think she was the only non-art person I’ve spoken to who understands it. I was talking to her about my artwork, and she said some people have urges to create, hers is to sit at home. I refrain from calling art a calling, because I don’t think it’s spiritually fair - why do some people have a calling, and others don’t? And I just think that a lot of people sometimes use their calling as a way to leverage their specialness, which I don’t like. 

I'm going to write her name on the contribution list if I succeed in getting a PhD one day. I only worked with her for three weeks, but she made a big impact on me.

Part of me wants to be like most people, where I can relax and enjoy the fruits of creative people's labour, rather than producing my own and constantly analysing others' works. But this is because most of the role models I had whilst growing up watched TV as a past-time. 

I'm having a discussion with my friend about it. She's Christian who grew up in a Christian household. I would label myself as spiritual/agnostic. My family upbringing was consumerism if I'm honest. We drove to the supermarket religiously every Sunday to do a grocery shop. I like having discussions like this. It's a lot better than small talk

Being neglected as a child.mp3

When I was a child, I had a lot of passions. I wanted to play rounders at a school tournament because I was good at it, and I wanted to play the piano, but these dreams were killed off, when my parents refused to take me to after school activities, as I was getting in the way of their shop opening hours. So I just stayed at home and was put in front of a TV set to live a parasocial life.

My primary school teacher was trying to persuade me to join the tournament, thinking that I was being stubborn, but I told her my parents won’t let me (hoping she would help me), but she said ‘fair enough’.

At one point I had to be a thief and take books home because my parents didn’t buy me enough books. I wasn’t physically neglected, but was neglected emotionally, intellectually, and socially. I spoke to one of my friends through the mailbox, because they wouldn’t open the door for me to talk to my friend.

Part of me thinks my current bitterness and cynicism is the residual feelings from being denied the things I wanted to achieve as a child.

Bad mental health history, the patriarchy, and moral badness.mp3

I used to think my psychoses in the past was a result of me being an unhinged person, but what if this is what happens to healthy people surrounded by toxic environments and toxic people? The story of someone with bad mental health as a stigma might have been a narrative and a scapegoat of Freudian propaganda made to dissolve the blame of abusers in a patriarchal society. I thought my dad was Freud in one of my delusions in 2018. I have the confidence to write about my delusion, because it's not as terrible as this one:

I was also reading about Kanye and what he did. I did a lot of damage during my episodes of psychoses, but not to the extent as him during a bipolar episode. What I did was bad, but it could have been a lot worse. It's a really odd idea, but knowing how bad these high profile people are, is making me more chilled about my dark side (not sure if I ought to be writing it like that, but these people can write what they want - and I feel this uncertainty of whether to write it, because of some moral conscience. I had a thought that I might be a morally corrupt person for most of my life, so I now feel relieved. I remember when I had my first psychosis in 2016, I was convinced that I was evil, a narcissist and a morally irredeemable person, but that's because I'm overly harsh on myself, and have an unconscious habit of absorbing the environment and saying it's on me.) 

In my psychoses, it's important to note that I was being nasty to men I looked up to, maybe I unconsciously knew something about the patriarchy back then, but didn't have the intel to intellectually discuss about it without having a psychological breakdown. It would have been termed female hysteria a century ago, so...

I’m going to have insomnia tonight, because writing this post has summoned me back to my personal past.