I have a feeling there are some of you who read this title and asked yourselves, “What the fuck does that mean?!” And, unless you’re on the older side like me, it’s no wonder…

Back in the 70s and 80s (yikes), there were these commercials for Calgon bath products. You’d see some seriously stressed out woman, usually a mom with several rowdy kids, who would lose her marbles and call out, “Calgon, take me away!” Next thing you know, she’s whisked away into a nice hot bubble bath full of relaxing Calgon. That was their gimmick… Calgon was so relaxing that you’d be spirited away to this huge, beautiful bathroom where all your stresses would melt away in a tub full of their bath products.

I can’t tell you how many times, when I was really stressed, that I myself have said, “Calgon, take me away!” Guess what… Yeah, you know what… I had to draw my own bubble bath in my standard size tub in my small bathroom. I’m guessing the almighty Calgon gods were asleep on the job every time I’ve said that… And, over the years, whenever I’ve been more than a little stressed out, I eventually started saying, “There’s not enough Calgon and Xanax in the world to take me far the fuck enough away.” That’s how I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve been under a lot of stress, losing my shit completely. It would take a whole bottle of Calgon and a whole bottle of Xanax and I’d still be wound tighter than a spring at the moment. It’s just been a rough couple of months…

What’s worse is that, when I’m really stressed out, the creativity center of my brain just shuts the fuck down…

And when I say it shuts the fuck down, I mean I don’t even have enough creativity to figure out what I want to eat for dinner let alone try to draw, paint or write anything. Hell, it’s been so bad, I haven’t had enough creativity to make a blog entry and have scrapped probably a half dozen over the last several weeks. This is more than a dry spell. This is a fucking disaster…

Which brings me back to my identity crisis… Here I am, probably more than halfway through my life (none of us knows how long we’re going to live after all) and I literally have nothing to show for it. What have I done with my life?! Worked a ton of shitty, low paying, dead end jobs? Made a few drawings and paintings, written a few shitty short stories that mean nothing to anyone?! Yeah, that’s what I’ve done… And now I feel too old to do anything special with my life. I don’t know why that’s so important to me. There are a lot of people who are content to live their lives working the same, meaningless job the majority of their lives. They may get married and have a family… And that’s enough for them. They’re perfectly happy if that’s all they ever did with their lives and have no regrets. But I’m not one of those people… I need to feel like I’ve made something of myself and that just hasn’t happened. And I highly doubt that it ever will, unfortunately…

I’ve been so down, my mother has been very encouraging lately (it only took her nearly half a century to do so) and my one friend, we’ll call her Greta, has been trying to act like my own personal cheerleader, pointing out that I should get off my duff and do something with my work, that it’s never too late. In fact, Greta was incredibly supportive. It’s as if she knew exactly what I needed to hear. No matter what it is I want to do, fucking do it! If I want to paint, then paint! If I want to play my piano, then play! Just get off my fucking duff, motivate and do it! Sounds easy in theory, doesn’t it? It’s really not…

Still… whatever she said much have gotten through. Several days later, I was suddenly inspired to draw. I’m not sure what kicked me in the head and brought the idea to mind, but something sure in the fuck did. So I sat down with my laptop and my Wacom tablet and I sketched out the concept. I was happy with the sketch, so I decided to start coloring and shading. Sometimes, when I reach that point, things start going downhill and I realize that it doesn’t look as good in color as it did in the sketch, so I either try to make the best of it or scrap it. But not this time… This time, for some reason, it was turning out so good it was scaring me. I don’t think I’ve ever put so much love and detail into a drawing as I did this one. I had no idea that I could do shading that good! I was so proud of the finished product, I couldn’t wait to post it to my Facepuke. That’s when things went bad… Do you know how many people liked it? All of 3… It’s not surprising; I usually get very few likes on my work. But this time it was quite devastating. I was so proud of the work I did. Not now… So I guess I’ll have to thank them for pissing on my parade…

So here it is, my once shining moment…

He’s a character from a “novel” I’m working on currently. I actually started working on this story when I was in my early 20s (when I still had hopes, dreams and ambitions) and this is how I’ve always envisioned him. Hey, that was well over 20 years ago, guys still had long hair… Anyway… I actually stole some of his looks from someone famous and melded those features in my mind into this. I think he’s pretty nice looking, if I do say so myself. And I have a certain… affection… for this character, so I wanted to make it look like an old photo. I put so much love and care into creating this, which is why I did shading I didn’t know I could do and amazed myself. I literally felt giddy when I was done. Then Facepuke happened… 3 likes (Greta wasn’t even one of them) and that was it. I’m so downhearted that I don’t know that I’ll ever create again. What’s the point? Obviously no one likes my work, so it’s not going to get me anywhere in life. I fucking give up…

So I suppose that’s it, right…?

I’ve just been kidding myself all these years… I’m no artist, no writer. Hell, I’m not even a musician. Sure, I can play the piano and I’m learning the guitar, but I just don’t seem to have the dexterity to do play like others do and probably never will. I’ve been so down on myself that I actually canceled last week’s guitar lesson because I just couldn’t face the day. And I obviously only have fair weather friends, if that. That’s fucking pathetic.

I just don’t know who and where I am in life right now… Every time this happens, I try to reinvent myself into the person I’d like to be, but that’s kind of difficult to do when you’re still living in the same town in bumble-fuck. Sure, I can change my hair, my style, my attitude… I’ve even decided to change my name. Jackie isn’t my real name because I’ve always hated my real name and it never seemed to suit me. Jackie seems more like me… But changing your name legally where I live is a pain in the ass. Besides, if I can’t get anyone to use that name, what’s the fucking point? I’ll still be referred to as the person I’ve always been. That’s depressing…

So that’s where I’m at…

I’m confused as to who I am, severely depressed and feeling very much like a failure. And I don’t seem to have any real friends, not even the ones that I thought were my real friends. I can’t even change myself because people don’t want to accept the fact that I don’t want to be this person anymore. I want this unsatisfying life to end and start over again in a new place as a new person, as Jackie.

But that won’t work… I need to face facts. I can change my hair, my style… I can change my name, move to another place… It doesn’t matter. I’ll still be me. I can run as much as I want to, but I’ll still keep running into myself.

I should really get in the habit of meditating again… It does help, but when I get in these moods, I just forget or just don’t have the fucking energy or motivation to bother. But I need help… And it’s not the kind of help you can find by crawling inside a bottle of pills, either. That’s not a solution; it’s a band-aid, really. All those problems, all those ill feelings I have about myself and my life… they’re all still there. My meds aren’t magic pills that change everything. They’re like a bath full of Calgon… They’re alright to a point. They may even help you escape and relax for a little while. But, in the end, the issues are still there and you are still you with all your issues.

They say happiness comes from within… Well, if it does, mine is either defective or literally missing in action…

I’m not sure what the fuck I’m going to do… At this point, I feel like selling my piano, my guitar, the yarn I use for knitting… even all my art supplies. I want to delete all the art programs I have on my laptop, all the drawings I’ve done, all the stories I’ve written… throw all the canvases I’ve ever painted out in the trash. I feel like deleting everything of this life, my art sites, my Facepuke, my Instagram… Just everything…

I feel like deleting the person I am, changing my name and starting life somewhere new. But that’s something for the young, not for people who are so old that they remember the 70s fondly and can tell you where they were and what they were doing the first time they heard “Afternoon Delight” by the Starland Vocal Band and recalls a time when the only channels the television had were from 2 to 13 and what it was like to talk on a rotary phone that was hardwired into the kitchen wall. I’m just too fucking old to start over…

Man, am I feeling depressed… I’m seriously considering canceling today’s guitar lesson again. I know I should go because it usually makes me feel better, but I just can’t bring myself to face anything today, including a happy thing. I think I’ve officially hit rock fucking bottom… I hope I can figure out how to pull myself back to the top again eventually…