way too self-aware, or maybe that's a form of defensiveness, to trick myself into authenticity

Does anyone have any tips on how to avoid having a nervous breakdown?

They say that when you're uber-stressed, you're only functioning at 75% of your brain capacity. I think that could well be true. I certainly feel like at least 25% of my life is missing at the moment (my favorite 25%, the part including fun books and movies and time with friends and happy days where I don't hate consciousness).

I have been reading a book called The situation and the story about writing non-fiction (specifically memoirs) which states that one must ruthlessly examine oneself in all one's complications and implicit-ness with events in order to write good non-fiction. It also states that you cannot describe a sitation and have it be good writing; you must engage with the situation at hand and make something out of it, work hard to come up with some kind of wisdom from it, or insight into oneself, that you can then offer to the reader. Otherwise you might simply be whining and boring your audience to death.

So in this blog post I'm practicing: How do I engage with the stress at hand and make something out of my interaction with it? According to Vivian Gornick (author of the book mentioned above), this cannot be done facilely or quickly. One must mine oneself for truth and invent a speaking voice which is above all a truth-speaking voice.

First I'll probably have to implicate myself in my situation of stress: on Sunday I read a fun book instead of simply working my brains out. This simultaneously made me happy and miserable, because I escaped for a few hours and then came back to a world where two less hours remained between me and the deadlines of doom.

Implicating oneself isn't hard, in my opinion. Of course, maybe the implications I ought to be discussing are more along the lines of Do I want to complete these projects at all, let alone on time? Because maybe I don't. At least I'm comfortable with and cognizant of all the difficulties of my current projects and assignments. When they're gone, more will replace them. When I'm done with this semester, there will be another semester.

And when I'm done with that semester, there's a real grown-up life that I'm certainly nowhere near ready to handle, involving finding a real job, owning a car, finding a place to live, and things like insurance.

So is my driven, perfectionistic work ethic being sabotaged by myself?

And theoretically through examining yourself thus you reach wisdom. Of some kind. Mostly the examples Vivian Gornick gave were extremely depressing sorts of "wisdom." And I sort of refuse the adolescent ease of writing about unrelieved despair or bitterness. I refuse the adolescent impulse to write something that will simply be worth looking at because of its shock value.

So maybe that means I have to end this blog post writing about something lovely. Like the package Grandma Beulah sent me last week full of delicious foods (we've eaten all the butterscotch brownies already!) or the Diana Wynne Jones book I partially read last week.

Or maybe, to complicate things further, I should write about how much I love the printing process and my studio, how at home and centered I feel when I am there working, even though I am afraid this project will not be worth 8 or 9 months of my life, even though I am afraid it will not be done on time, even though I am afraid nobody will like it.

I should talk about the words painted on the floor under one of my newly-white walls: "THIS IS THE MEASURE."