Getting back into the swing of things.

I had a setback this month due largely to a couple of 'events' with my health.

Technically the first such event was back at the end of November last year when I had an anomaly in the sight of my right eye.  What I now know as a 'Migraine aura' was a completely new and frankly terrifying thing to happen out of the blue.  It took the shape of a lightning bolt creeping in from the periphery of my right eye, followed by a horizontal line wandering across the top of my sight-line, both of which would flash all sorts of strange crazy colours.

I got checked out that week, and the good news was that it didn't seem to be connected with anything (at least from that examination) neurological, but it did still scare the hell out of me.  I was prompted to make an appointment to talk with my optometrist just in case it was something to do with the eye itself.

I admit, my anxiety loved to run with this.  Years back I had a serious sinus infection that got into that eye, or at least the muscles surrounding the eye.  For over a year after the infection cleared up, I'd have a feeling like there was fine sand in my eye from time to time, and the bottom eyelid would spasm and twitch now and then.

Fast forward to this past Sunday which had me sitting on the couch watching some 'game review' video on YouTube.  Everything was fine until after I blinked my vision was blurry.  That kind of blurry you get when a fine cat-hair gets into your eye.  Naturally I wiped my eyes to try and dislodge it and suddenly had bifurcated vision in my right eye.  It didn't last long, maybe 10 seconds, but it was two compressed images of the entire room in one eye and again.. this scared the hell out of me.

I had already scheduled to see the eye doctor this past Thursday.  I not only needed to finally get a prescription for some reading glasses (I'm one of maybe three people in my entire family on both sides that hasn't ever needed glasses).  But I had to get my eyes thoroughly checked out.

The days leading up to the appointment were an anxiety festival.  There are two things I hope I never lose in my life.  My ability to see, and my mind.  Art is possibly the most important thing in my life.  So Thursday couldn't come soon enough.

I am, at least, happy to say that my eyes are in the 'very healthy' stage.  The doctor did a full exam, including the optic nerve and everything checks out.  There's no visual damage or muscle mis-alignment.  Its likely that one or two things could have caused the visual migraines, but whatever they were it wasn't my eyes at least.

To say I was relived would be understating it.

This did put a bit of a crush on my productivity this month.  Its one of the really hellish side-effects of a Generalized Anxiety Disorder, your mind ends up hovering around the things that 'might be' rather than the things that 'are'.

So, I'm now getting back into the swing of things after getting thoroughly checked out.  However I do need to set more realistic goals.  While I admit I was hoping to get three paintings out a month I finally realized that this was actually a pretty absurd goal.  I don't paint quickly, and I work a day-job, and it soon started to become very evident that that sort of goal was gutting the enthusiasm I had for doing artwork.

Doing art became a 'grind' and when that happens the work itself becomes just a dead-factory churn out.  So, I've decided to stick with the one painting each month, but add a caveat that if I do end up wanting to paint another picture right away, I can.  I'll still be putting out sketches (especially now that the whole worrying about my vision fun is behind me).  I'll still be doing a lot of colour work as well though.  I want to try and reach a goal I set for myself months back where I could colour images and leave the linework intact.  Illustration instead of only painting.  It shaves hours off of my work-time, and can look pretty spiffy as well.

For the rest of the month I'm going to ease back into doing art again as a fun activity that lets me wind down after work, or helps me escape stress instead of letting it fall into the 'job' category.  I still want to make this worth all of the kindness you've all shown me over the years.  

Here's to hopefully no more fun health-scares on the horizon.

-T.J.