mental health cause and effect is on my mind again

 as in, the question of "does writing regularly improve my mood or is it easier for me to write when my mood is better?"

I'm feeling vulnerable about art stuff lately, maybe self-conscious? One of my classic forms of self-sabotage is to half-ass things and then reassure myself that if I had really tried, I would surely have succeeded and therefore, I am not a failure. So I've been avoiding writing, and telling myself that it's just because I've been stressed with life stuff. Except I now realize it's not actually because of that, it's because it feels scary. And because I still feel like I don't want to write, I am writing about that feeling. So there.

Today was a lot. A day full of many slightly stressful things, and it culminated in a comical shit show. I was sitting by the campfire with some friends and we were talking about a skunk that had been in our alley the night before, when my monster dog bless her heart, Macaroni, suddenly bolted at something and started shaking her head back and forth like she had a rag doll - except it wasn't a rag doll, it was a mother hecking skunk. We all immediately ran over and I managed to grab Macaroni and pull her away from the skunk, which dropped floppily out of her mouth onto the ground, and while I'm trying to mentally process what the heck do we do with this skunk corpse now oh my god, the stinky little rascal skunk just pops back up onto its feet and goes trotting off into the night. Mac got sprayed directly in her face, and she's got all these tiny little scritchy scratches on her snoot, but we got the stank out and it's chill now. Every part of it was hard. But it was okay, and I knew it would be okay, and that we just had to get through it and then it would be okay. And that's what happened, and on this side of it, it's kind of funny.

Look at that. When I tried to write about feelings my brain decided "fuck it, let's write about this ordeal instead", so I guess that's what we're posting today. Also this self-portrait of me as a goblin creature, why not.

originally posted August 27 2026.