Time to be serious, the art of depression

This post is about beeing serious, it´s about painting, taking care of yourself and about life.
Not many of you readers know much about me more then I paint some minis once in a while. This is a few word why and some thought´s about the purpose of my painting.
I start from the beginning. I have been intresded in table top games since the mid 90´s. I have never been much of a gaming, but insted I enjoyd to collect the minis, planing an army but rarely got the time to play a game or two. I have been of and on this hobby for some years, but I always seems to find my way back. This is something I know.

Last autum something happened, call i a life tragedy if you will. The result was the same, I feel into a deep depression. I had to struggle with the everyday tasks just to function, the result was that after a few month´s I went home from work. that´s the bakground of what I wanted to talk about. The next part is handling your inner beeing with art.

Having enourmous problems with simply thing´s like reading, painting was not something I couldn´t do for more than a few minutes at a time. My motiviation was missing, inspiration gone and my belives in myself lost. Still I tried to paint, "this I know", I keept telling myself and slowly as the weeks went by, something happened. I found out that the preperation work on a mini was kind of therapy for me, a symbol of something new. So I tried to prep minis for a while almost every day. the painting followed as I slowly begun to put layer after layer of paints on miniatures. Still the concentration was a big problem, you all know that you won´t get much painting done if you only would sit about 15 minutes at the time. This to improved as the weeks went by. I still have problems sitting longer than 30 minutes but I have embraced that feeling and try to say to myself that it´s an improvement instead of "why can´t you do some more?".

Long story short, nowday´s I can see a plan with some miniatures, I can visualize the mini beeing painted, and that´s a huge step for me! Mainly because that have helped me to set up a plan for my self, and my life. In a few word, my conclusion. Handling a depression is painfull and it eat you alive if you don´t find the tools for it. For me the first step was to raise my confidence in myself. I do that by painting. Small thing´s that makes you say "it´s good" instead of saying "what could I have done differently?" will in time bring you back to the person you once was, or even a better one!

What I want to say is, I take responsibility for my life, I´m handling my depression, one mini at a time. What´s working for doesn´t have to work for another, but somehow I have found a small path throu this dark lands into the light again. This isn´t entierly the thruth, there is another thing that have helped me a lot wich I don´t talk about a lon online, my two kids. They are fantastic, and without them the will to walk throu this and come out of it as a stronger person wouldn´t have been there at all.


So if some of you had the intrest of reading all this text. Thank you, I wouldn´t been here without all encouraging word both on this blog and on other forum as well. You can help a stranger even without knowing it.


Untill next time, happy painting and take care.