agnès b. Fucked Up

As Madeleine and our one or perhaps two readers have noticed, I have been missing from this blog for a very long time. As is obvious, although the reasons I told myself were many, this was because I didn't think it was important enough. But today I am feeling differently.

Shall we recap? Agnes' role on this blog was the role of the "smoke quitter", though she proved rather better at quitting that. The winter was spent in a nicotine-infused fog right through to the beginning of March, the 8th to be exact, when she quit again, this time "for real." She did a perfect job for a month, and then, well, she fucked up again. So that's where we are now.

I am just about finished with school--I have my last class this afternoon, on Friday morning I have a exit interview/critique, and Saturday is Open Studios. After that, everything is indeterminate. In a way this is liberating, but it's also massively anxiety-provoking--freedom is terrifying. I was feeling truly rotten last week but for some reason today I feel great. I shouldn't, as I was drinking alone last night, but I do. A big part of my problem is the way that I am always thinking about the future. A cherished reader reminded me of the old saw about "one day at a time," and aesthetically displeasing as it is, I am slowly coming to the realization that it is in fact sort of true, and while it is certainly okay to look forward to things, it doesn't help to get there by postponing living. It also doesn't help to reify self-loathing with self-destructive behavior. Which I think very much plays a role in the whole smoking thing. I have mentioned before how much more difficult it is just to live without smoking because I feel like I don't have a way of checking out of life. But I'm not sure that this "checking out" is a good thing as it usually manifests itself in strange, time-consuming, compulsive behaviors like watching entire seasons of Black Adder in one sitting to avoid the fact that I haven't been able to make any (much) new work for two months. But is the inability to make work because of the checking out? Fallow periods are important for most artists, I think, and two months is not technically that long, but God do they suck. Especially when one is at the tail end of a graduate program that costs *ahem* more than one can afford and one feels as though one is wasting opportunities. Wasting opportunities was kind of a mortal sin in my family, along with waste of any kind, especially money. So you'd think that I would be more conscientious of the fact that cigarettes cost $8-$8.50/pack here.

ANYHOW, I am going to be back here in a serious way. I need The Mildred's help and I need Madeleine's help and I need your help, dear readers. I hate asking for help. But here is my plea! And I promise to be more entertaining and less incoherent in future. I am rusty.