rambling on....

I do not like running behind on things, and honestly  I hate myself when I do.  For me everything in life is  penciled in by the schedule, by minute, I try to get everything done to the smallest detail, if I dont I panic. I do not like submitting work that is substandard, that is below my expectation, nor stuffing up because I am rushing. It makes me extreemly anxious, uncomfortable and affects my health badly.

I am chronically ill,and I am not allowed to stress, and that is easy to say for doctors not to stress when there are pressures everywhere. I learned while back that there are no second chances.  When I was younger I was pressured by my family not to do art at school and I caved in, however now I am trying hard because I want to try to go for BA in art down the track, even though everyone around me tells me that what  I want is irrelevant and that I should focus on more important things first ie selling my old home, and moving on through divorce. I do not want to give up my dream again.

I am taking this year at TAFE as an opportunity to prepare myself for doing BA down the track, maybe in a years time when my life gets a bit more sorted. I think over 30 times I got told that its just TAFE,and that me doing art course is irrelevant and that things like selling home are more important,and I cannot balance.

Thing is with school work I do not want to do work that is not good enough, with public art project I do not want to  do work that is below bar I have set for myself, and critique is looming.  I am behind and to be honest I cannot get things done.  As it is every day I wake up at 4am, go to bed at midnight and hope to hell I can get through next day on enough caffeine. I spend my day working on TAFE stuff,  being a mum, and getting things done.  I have very little time to spend even any time on myself. I found that I get much more at the home, than at TAFE, except on tuesday mornings, primarily because I am set in routine, I have decent computer there, and most importantly I can concentrate because I have my peace and quiet, which I value more than anything.  I like drawing semi-realistic drawings, I call them semi-realistic because I am still not up to standard I have set for myself where I would like to be in 6 months time. Same with photomanips I work down to the pixel level, I do not like just skimming through and roughly doing things.  This is where my OCD comes in and it drives me nuts.  I continually go back and forth redoing details, getting everything to perfect, measuring and remeasuring things.  In class no matter how much everyone is dear to me, its too loud and distracting and I cant get things done.  To be honest I am when working best to be left alone, in my own world and things get done, at least to the point.  Yesterday I had great difficulty getting things done because A I was stressed over the critique and B noise level was a bit high for me to work in.I also prefer my own drafting table, and my blankie and my pot of tea next to me when I need to get things done.

Stress over things makes my chronic illness flare up more, and to be honest I am trying really hard to avoid having surgery or having meds, because both are bad. I do not know if amount of getting things done is worth while ending in hospital over, because last night due to stress level I felt very ill, which was all flared up due to stress.

Main thing today for me is to try to get as much done as I can, school work and real life stuff which is hard.  Accepting everything wont get done by friday is hard for me because I hate myself for not being able to get things done, because I am not good enough, or fast enough, and because I will not let my standards slip. I understand life is unpredictable and that I need to try to adjust but I am trying my best, and I still cant get everything done.