mental illness

Meme with a cat sitting at a table like a human. Text: “Sit down, let me tell you a story. Once upon a time, I ate your hamster this morning.” Orson Scott Card doesn’t make a hill of beans’ worth of difference to me. I never read him until I was an adult (and haven’t read Ender’s Game), I was underwhelmed with the Alvin Maker series, and aside from his strong views on homosexuality, he has some other truly whacko ideas that also thoroughly and completely offend my libertarian sensibilities.

I weighed in on the controversy over his short story “Hamlet’s Father” because I can’t stand it when people rant about books they haven’t read. That is intellectually dishonest, and the people I saw doing this promote themselves as intellectually honest. Sorry, nope. Get off your fucking high horse and read the fucking book, then come back and talk to me. Read more →

… if you didn’t have a touch (or more) of madness, of moodiness and emotional lability, of doubt and depression and fear, of uncontrollable rage and joy, things you should probably go see a therapist about … You wouldn’t be an artist. You wouldn’t be driven to write or create or paint or compose or or or or or or whatever it is that you do …

My high school physics teacher said he didn’t believe in artistic temperament and that it was a copout. I struggled under the guilt of having one of those (an “artistic temperament”) off and on ever since. But you know, the key word there is “physics.” Naw. He didn’t get it. But I still try to hide it, even though it comes out here and there. It’s a lot easier to hide online, but Dude lives with me. He knows.

I’m never more emotionally stable than when I’m doing the bookkeeping and shipping and inventorying and filing. Or the sheer repetitiveness of coding e-books, building and fiddling with websites. It’s engaging. It’s cleansing, cathartic.

There’s only so much of that I can take before I must go back to the madhouse.

MORIAH JOVAN

Of artists and assholes

And another thing …