Bag full of pills & and viral art direction

Much as I don't have the midas touch with music marketing and self-promotion, I do sort of love all the details. So, I was really looking forward to a design seminar I was registered to take today for my part-time day job (architecture firm). I thought it'd be useful for the music biz, too. After all, in the end, marketing is marketing is marketing.

Instead? I'm sucking down a bag full of pills for my chronic Epstein Barr virus and trying to make sure I can breath. I  am on 4 -- count 'em -- 4 antivirals. I probably take 20 pills with each meal. I only hope they kill all those little bastard viruses that are having way too much fun making my body totally anaerobic.

I'm looking for balance. I can't sing 'cause I get winded. That's not balance.

Back in the early 90s I dropped out of school for a semester due to mono and pneumonia. I was supposed to create and present my senior show, and I had grand ideas that involved large paper mache fruit and mennonite coverings. The mono totally changed my show. It was my new artistic director.

Instead of product I could only focused on process. And the process had to be gentle and small-scale. I moved home and bought myself a little watercolor block. Oils or other art were just too strenuous or chemical. So watercolors it was. I slouched on my folk's cream colored feather futon in the tv room and attempted to make 1 painting a day. Didn't matter what it was. And in the end I thought I'd have stacks of paintings to select from for the senior show, once I got well.

I didn't have stacks, but I had a lot of paintings, and I sold almost every single one of them. I was kind of proud of that. But I was most proud that I gave up the goal. I was delighted to find I became a better painter and more in tune with what watercolor does. It's talking all the time. You could look at the dates at the bottom of the painting and you could see me getting better. You could see me trusting the material more and more. You could see I became a better listener.

Having a hard time breathing is reminding me of this. I don't know how I continue as a singer-songwriter when I can't sing, and practice/songwriting is just too strenuous. Sitting at a computer fatigues me. 

I guess maybe my virus is my art director once again. I'll ask a friend to buy me a new little watercolor block. I'll set it beside my bag full of pills. I'll paint again.