I've been experiencing a lot of artist block lately. It's not something I believe in much, but it's been four months since I painted anything. I simply havent felt like anything I can think up deserves to take up the space on a canvas. It's all been done before. And I'm better than to just rehash old ideas. So I've done nothing.

Its not something I'm proud of. Just a profound part of my existence as of late.

This weekend Caity and I went with some friends down to Salt Lake for a pub crawl. It was more of an unofficial thing but earlier in the day there was an offical, sponsored pub crawl. Val was there, and for the first time since we ceased talking we caught eyes. It was only while she was round up friends to leave, and she didn't even acknowlegde my existence other than to match my awkward wave. But, somehow, it was cleansing. Later I texted her to apologize if I ruined her evening and she sent a few simple lines to sort of mend bridges. And that was enough for us both for now.

I found out later that Caity had also texted her and had spent the more part of Sunday emotionally unsettled by the idea that I would/could/should leave her to be with Val again. It makes me unhappy to know that I was open and honest about my texting and Caity wasn't. And equally I'm annoyed by the generally unsettled nature of Caity's emotional stability.

I'm tired of being understanding.

I'm equally as tired of being misunderstood.

I suppose that's, more or less, the nature of being human.

The rest of my saturday was filled with drinking (god how I've missed drinking out) and meeting strangers while I wandered through the city. It was relieving to be social, to be doing SOMETHING. To just be out and be a part of the world! It's been an incredibly long time since I felt a part of that and it's something I hadn't even realized I missed. I knew vaguely, but it didn't have a voice.

I feel recharged, but still empty. I feel cleansed, baptized, renewed. But in a dirty secret way. Everything I feel that makes us ALIVE makes us vaguely less human. It is the contradiction of being sentient, but also animal. And being animal might be my favorite part of being human.

I've spent much of the past several months trying to bridge the opinions of my liberally minded friends and my Trump-supporting, conservative family. Its been incredibly exhausting. But it's also been kind of grounding and relieving. I feel like I've been trying to maintain liberal ideology without any criticism. The more time I spend researching the folly of my families ideology, the more I'm also finding the folly of liberals. They are two sides to a devils coin. And whether it lands head's or tails, we all still seam to lose our soul. The funny thing is that most people seam to vaguely agree with that sentiment. But we believe so strongly in political ideology that we can't seam to get past the pettiness and make any real change. Most of my news still comes from liberally mined sources and I can't seam to help but think that a republic might actually be a better form of government. The power of any political system might be in the proletariat, but people be DUMB!

Any time I see a peice of news that reports facts, I feel like I have to take it as untrue, or google every fact.