Living with Mental Illness - Part 1: Fatigue

Blog Post

Oct 27

Since it’s been on my mind and living there rent-free as of late,
I wanted to take a minute and talk to you about being a creative who lives with mental illness.

A lot of people don’t really discuss mental illness, but in my life, what I live with and struggle with is critical to my work. This can sometimes mean that I produce art much more slowly when compared to other artists, because mental illness plays a huge part in the manifestation of what I live with. And I believe very strongly in people knowing the context of my work, where it comes from, what I’m exploring, and what I am trying to say with my art.

I recently had a huge breakthrough in being able to actually find doctors who were willing to
1) speak to me;
2) listen to me; and
3) believe me - and assess me accordingly.

Mostly.

As such, I officially have diagnoses to my name, and unfortunately, what I am learning more and more is that the conditions in my head make a number of “normal” human-doing things really difficult. I deal with things like brain-fog, fatigue, inability to concentrate or focus on something, and I can go through periods where I feel and have zero vitality. Depression, anxiety, and exhaustion have been long-time companions of mine. Every so often, however, exhaustion can manifest as something akin to paralysis - where I feel unable to do anything except sleep.

In short, mental illness is a bitch.

It’s really difficult to live vicariously, intentionally, with purpose, however you want to call it — when one can barely “human”.

Image ID: Black-and-white self-portrait of me laying on my side, naked amid blankets and pillows in my bed. My face is mostly obscured by shadows.

So let’s talk a bit about fatigue.

I won’t patronize you by defining it, because I’m sure you are more than capable of finding that out yourself. But what I do want to talk about is specifically how fatigue can crop up in the artist based on my own lived experience, and how it can sometimes be realized in photography.

I don’t intend to speak on behalf of anyone — individual, group, or community/ies of people. Just my own experience. Because fatigue presents differently to everyone, and fatigue indiscriminately screws folks over in a variety of ways, and I don’t think it’s correct or just for me to assume that what I experience happens to other people.

I also say this because I am currently enduring a massive episode of ongoing and relentless fatigue, and as such, I think it’s important to be honest with you on the account, because it is currently and rather negatively affecting my ability to make art. To be honest with you, the latter issue is probably what I am most resentful and bitter about when it comes to living with ongoing fatigue.

Fatigue, for me, shows up in the following ways:

inability to consistently maintain hygiene
lack of interest in doing anything - at all - other than going to sleep
executive dysfunction wreaking havoc on my productivity at my day job
lack of appetite
taking the bus to my day job rather than walking the 10 minutes from the Skytrain station to my office because the thought of walking is far too overwhelming
forgetting important dates, appointments, and meetings — even with multiple reminders

… Yeah. It gets pretty harrowing. The above is not an exhaustive list. I discuss it a little more in my book.

(Fun fact: As it turns out, indomitable fatigue is one of the ways in which ADHD manifests. Who knew?)

The really annoying thing about fatigue is that
it can show up at the most inopportune times.

Image ID: A man sits on the top step of an apartment complex. His head is down, looking at his phone. He is backlit in yellow by the interior lights of the apartment lobby.

For instance, as you saw me mention in September, I had a very grand plan to shoot 1 roll each day for Holga week. I’d mentioned in my last post that Holga week was not going as planned because I was experiencing some intense exhaustion. The reality is that I’m still working on that first roll of film, and there are only 3.5 days left to this month.

I know I said that I was going to use this as a teachable lesson to myself not to shoot quite so high in terms of goal-setting, but the truth is that I’m really pissed at myself for setting such a high bar for myself during a decent period. It always seems to be in the moments where things seem a little brighter that I have these aspirations of grandeur, as though The Fatigue™ will never appear again, and then Neurodivergent Me has to do the work of picking up the pieces and doing the housecleaning and trying to be gentle with myself when The Fatigue™ makes its rather literal comeback tour.

It’s in these moments that I think of the Disney-Pixar film Inside Out, and the ongoing conflict between Joy and Sadness, and get deeply uncomfortable about how hard that resonates.

Aaaaaanyway ~
Let’s talk about how my fatigue shows up in my art.

Generally if I’m in the throes of fatigue/exhaustion, very little is actively done. But I’m constantly writing down things like

project ideas
things I need to do in the studio
what art I should print for my Patrons (thanks to each and every one of you for believing in me and supporting my work)
publications I should pitch to when I’m feeling better
art contests that I might be able to submit to once I’m feeling more energized

et cetera!! Just because my body isn’t working doesn’t mean my brain shuts off.

When I do make photographs during an exhaustive phase, I’ll generally do more experimental things (if I can), or I will simply point my lens in the direction of something I find beautiful or interesting.

In short, I try to keep things as simple as possible.

I tend not to do any serious editing to any images during that time. I’ve recognized after years of trial and error that editing while entrenched in fatigue results in stupid mistakes, and photos not looking how they should. At the very most, I might scan some film, but that’s it.