So tonight, the emotions are spinning me right round, baby, right round, like a record baby.

Which is the song I'm listening to so I can ground myself a bit.

Anyway, I've got a lot of feelings about my life and all the things I've done and especially all the things I haven't done.

I've always pushed myself in art and music. I've never really had a plan for anything else in life. School was what it was. I did it because I had to. And after that ended, I just kinda got swept away doing whatever I found myself doing, not really actively navigating life. Jobs came. Eventually. Jobs went. I stuck with some too long because I didn't want to search for others. I'm happy with my current job, but I don't see any real prospects for upward mobility or anything, nor do I particularly care.

The point is, I'm a terrible failure, afraid of everything, afraid of being on my own, and I still live with parents well into adulthood and can't afford to move out. All I really know that I do well is draw pictures and make music. And I'm out of practice at music. And I'm not good at promoting this stuff or at any of the skills necessary to make a career out of it.

Worse than that, I'm afraid to *try* to be successful in that way. I'm afraid of putting myself out there and being rejected over and over until I make it.

It's gotten to the point where I don't think I'll ever be able to be successful at any of the things that matter to me or my wellbeing. I can't move out. I can't get out of this state or this country. I can't transition. I can't perform as a musician. I can't promote my art. All because I'm terrified to try.

I feel like I've wasted my life.

And I recognize these feelings. They're all the same things I was feeling up to and around the 16th August of 2017. I don't want to explain that again here and now, but those same nagging feelings of failure and fear were there then.

I feel like these creative pursuits were a Purpose and a Meaning in a life that otherwise had none.

But depression stole art from me for years and I'm behind where I should be if I want to be successful at it. And I grew so frustrated with losing these things that I gave up on music for a few years too and lost a lot of that. Now I feel like I'm a mediocre artist and a mediocre musician. I've never had talent and always had to work *hard* for what I could do. So by stopping work on it, I ended up behind.

I have the joy in making things again, but I can't see a future for it. And that hurts more than anything. I don't want to be mediocre forever. I cannot accept being mediocre forever. And obscurity is a terrible form of mediocrity.

Yet at the same time, I can't let this be *all there is*. And what am I without it? What am I at all?

It's so hard to live my own life, for me, unabashedly and unfettered by fear. I've never been able to. And both knowing that I *have to* if I want to thrive and that there's no guarantee I'll be able to at all are terrifying concepts.

Anyway, heck and a half.

This is a real letter from the President Of The United States, to Norway, a NATO ally.