All the best ideas come out of the process

“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.” 
― Chuck Close

I guess after 2 years of being pushed around, being ignorant and and lost a lot of the time, this is really how it is. There is no time for feeling lost. When you're discouraged, just pick yourself up and do. Even if you're scared, just do. No amount of wallowing in self pity or being too afraid to do anything, or even worse, being in a state of denial and escapism, will make things better. In fact, they just get worse because you were not doing enough to face them when the issues were smaller and more manageable.

2014

The new year has been especially meaningful for me. I can't tell if it's for the better or not - somethings don't feel good, even though you know eventually you will be thankful it happened, it doesn't stop the feelings from being as intense and hurtful now. As someone said to me, "So it hasn't been a very pleasant new year for you." Indeed, it has not been a good one. It didn't turn out the way I expected it to at all - after all, New Years are usually reserved for new hopes and aspirations. For me, I think the good I can draw for this is a clean slate.

God does work in mysterious ways that I don't think I'll ever be able to understand. I'm just glad I discovered strength and rationality in myself that I never knew existed.