Eight days later and I’m still getting over this flu! I’ve been mostly horizontal watching bullshit TV, like murder shows on Discovery ID or the various home improvement series, take your pick. Those shows just make me wish I owned a house, so I don’t know why I watch them.

When I was younger I used to fix things up. My brother is in construction and I’ve done a few light jobs in my time. I also owned a condo once and renovated it myself. Aren’t you impressed? If you think that’s impressive, I used to fix up old cars, Type 3 VWs mostly. Not the engines, but the body work.

This is Herman, the last car I worked on in the 1990s. So long ago. It’s a 1970 VW Squareback, which had the first fuel-injected engine. I actually had two of these and combined them to make one clean one.

Oh to be young again. I did a lot of things I can’t do anymore. I mean, it took me weeks to set up my easel for crying out loud. But here it is.

I’ve had this particular easel for over 20 years. I sold my giant studio easel before we moved (the time before last), but kept this one. I considered it a back-up. It’s actually not such bad easel though. It’s still a Mabef and really well-made. We had to chop off the top of the mast however, because I’m using it inside a regular eight-foot ceiling home. I took off the casters too, then I bought this cheap little four-foot rug. It was as cheap as a canvas drop cloth, so why the hell not? I hardly ever drip paint anyway–something that seems to drive my other artist friends batty.

All I gotta do now is make some art. Who knew making art would become such a fucking struggle for me? I haven’t made anything substantial in so long, I’m beginning to wonder about myself. Am I am artist? Am I a writer now? It’s really hard to be both at the same time. I’ve been learning that.

I’m still tinkering with those short stories. I have about 17 of them now. Although, since I’ve been sick, I’m falling behind on focusing deep on them. I feel like shit physically. Tired. I missed a day of physical therapy. Did I mention I go to physical therapy now? Well I do. Twice a week, but I missed this last Thursday and I haven’t been doing my exercises at home. I went this morning and it was like starting all over again. I’m 100% sore as fuck.

I was hoping I’d be able to lose a little weight doing these exercises, and who knows? Maybe I will after a while, but so far: nothing. I’m still fat and tired, tired of being fat, tired of being tired of being fat. I’m going to see the doctor on Thursday and I’ll just hear how I have to lose weight again. I’m all-consumed with being fat.

I’ve got so much going against me. If you think I pig out, I swear, I don’t. I essentially eat one normal meal a day, but I’m on twelve medications, nine of which cause weight gain. My shrink put me on a new (additional) one recently and I did not take it as soon as I read the label: May cause weight gain. I looked it up on the internet and read how about 1000 women gained 15-20 pounds on it, just like the other nine medications I take. So screw that. I’m already avoiding as many people as possible because of how I look. It’s sad and fucked up, but it’s true.

And speaking of confidence, I guess I fell back a few steps on putting the short stories book together too. Nobody said anything shitty about any of them. Well, yes, a couple people on a writing critique site did tear one apart. Probably the best one too, but I actually didn’t care about that. I thought it was funny. It was what someone said on the forums about publishing any book of short stories–like if you’ve never published them anywhere else before that, it’s not “viable,” whatever that means.

I guess it means it won’t make money. Though, that was the last thing on my mind. However, it made me pause and wonder why I would publish a book of short stories in the first place. I mean, really. Why? If it’s not for the money, then am I all that proud of them to put them out there? It got me confused and I started to doubt myself all together. Now I’m wondering why?

Jeez, I really don’t have this kind of confusion or lack of confidence about my art. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Am I just sick? Sick in the head. All I know if that I have to get out of this article before I dig myself into an even more embarrassing hole. I also have no idea what sort of hashtags to use for this blog post. What a pain in the ass. #impostersyndrome.