Making Art in Depression

I have no answers, lol, just trying to keep going.

Apr 12, 2025

I’m not really feeling like myself lately. I have been extremely low. I think thats the worst part of having chronic depression or persistent depressive disorder (PDD) as I think smart people call it now. It’s having a baseline that is already lower so when the “episodes” (aka big sads) come on I feel, lowwwww, one might even say hopeless at times. My energy level fluctuates between emotional hysteria and can’t get out of bed. It’s really not a cute look.

So between, ideations, tears, unnecessary fights with your partner, and somehow you’re supposed to gather the will to carry on and overcome this all. Usually I am pretty buoyant, the episodes don’t last too long and I bounce back to my rather optimistic, chipper self. But we’re going on almost three weeks of this shit and lemme tell you its getting old.

The thing about making art is the times when you absolutely dont want to do it are usually the times its most important to. Creativity is a muscle and without use it does get stiff. So yesterday after a huge melt-down snotty nosed snob where I shared everything thats been weighing on me to my partner. They suggested we go get ice cream at our fave place (even in a brisk 40 degree weather) and ride with them to make an exchange at the bookstore. I very reluctantly agreed, knowing it would probably be best for me to get out of the house. I threw on sweatpants, my glasses and two hooded sweatshirt things, and headed out the door.

I marched myself right over to the magazine section grabbing anything that caught my eye on the way in then tossed my glossy stack on the ground and tossed my exhausted body down next to it. Magazines are still one of the most inspirational things to flip through for me. I still love having something to hold in my hand, I love the bitesized articles, the luxe images, and the way it’s laid out with so many little tis-bits, all messy but makes sense. Magazines are perfect for people with ADHD.

After sifting through a dozen or so and taking photos of recipes on my phone because I have no money to buy them right now, I meandered over to Sarina to see what they were looking for. It’s weird being a “writer” now (I say still feeling like a total imposter) because I see so much more about books now. I see the books of so many of my online pals, some even that they sent me advance copies of. I see books my agent worked on, and I see books from my publisher. Then I look down at my tie-dye crocs and my sweatpants and wonder how this depressed mush ball could soon be displayed in this very space and why I feel like I'm still just trying to catch up.

My partner crossed Amie McNee’s, WE NEED YOUR ART: Stop Messing Around and Make Something, they flipped through it and kept turning the pages toward me to read or reading excerpts out loud. “These are all the things I am always telling you!”, they say, “just nicer.” I laugh and flip through a little and then find a chair and start reading. Sarina brought me the book hoping “maybe hearing it from someone else will be better.”

I don’t know if they’re right but either way it’s already been nice to read. Things like this clear my head of social media fog and remind me that I’m a real human making things. Sometimes the way I see myself through the lens of the screen distorts my self-understanding and purpose. But I was an artist long before people knew or cared anything about me and I’ll be an artist long after. It’s my blood flow, my breath. So, I gotta just keep showing up like it’s my actual job (because quite literally it is.) That means being okay with shifting and fluidity and understand as I am not the same neither will be my art- or how I create it, or how I share it.

You can preorder my book: here! it comes out 6/3 and im really fucking scared.

Some other random updates:

-growing my hair out even back to a bob sucks so much