Am I depressed??

It's 3 a.m. and although my eyes are tired, my mind is keeping me up again! This is the second night, and I was surprised I was able to sleep the previous night. There's a lot on my mind. I'll try to communicate it as best as I can.

I want to say that this feeling has been going on only for a few months, but I think it's been going on for years on and off, and I think that if I continue to just keep it to myself, it won't do me an ounce of good. I think the most annoying and frustrating part is working very hard and not having all that work be acknowledge and being judge for the lack of something else.

On top of this feeling, I work and work to try to improve my craft with the thought in my mind that I don't have enough time, and this in itself is stressful. I'm doing this everyday while constantly thinking about and trying to find work. Also worrying about whether or not my work is good enough, worrying about whether I'm qualified enough for the job. So I try to learn as much as possible.

Then when I lie my head down at night I start to think of all the other countless things I need to do the next day. The part that bothers me is that insane standards I feel I have to push myself to reach. There's too halves, the half of me that tells myself that these standards are way too high for one person to deal with, and the half that thinks I'm lying to myself and try anyways hahaha

Within the months following my graduation, I don't know how many tutorials I have watched, how many pdf I've read, how many times I've told myself that I won't settle for something mediocre and how many times it bothered me to ponder upon the times my mom has called me lazy and that I don't do anything.

There are so many times I've felt the need to prove myself to other people, and it's mainly to prove to myself that they're wrong.

Then on top of worrying about all of this, I worry that soon I will have to move out and go into the world and I don't know much about the working world and how I want to blame my mom for this,but that overall it's up to me to learn it. So I do what I can, and I pick up a book and I'll read about it, and I tell myself that no matter how many books I read nothing can truly prepare me for the world!

Then I worry that if I start to work, I don't have the skills they need, despite the fact that my sister says "your work is awesome!" and I know that is it to her because she doesn't have the trained eye that some of these employees have.

I'm aware that I sound critical of myself, and that's the problem. I think it's an issue to be able to pinpoint my flaws and not know how to fix them haha or can I even consider this a flaw?

I remember during my final year of high school, this guy I knew, we both wrote letters back and forth. In a way this made me feel that someone was listening. Anyway, he said once in the letter that I'm too critical of myself. No one has ever said that to me up until that point, and honestly it made me wonder if I was. Now this was years ago, and if I'm still the same way that I was then, then it means nothing has changed.

I've learned and learned, but I still stay the same. I can tell myself again and again that I should just do my best and except it, but a part of me says "Well, if you can go a step farther, why not go for it!" haha

I wonder if I'm not depressed and just a perfectionist. I've had countless teachers tell me I overthink things. And for so long I became defensive and said I'm don't, but now I wonder if I really do. I wonder why. I wonder if it's because I try to understand every little thing, and then when I can't I start to lose my mind over it. Something that may be so simple to other people drives me mad internally and then I start to feel like a weirdo. Then I start to tell myself that it's best to keep these thoughts to myself because some people just won't get it.

For example, for a while now I've gotten into tiny little confrontations with my younger sister about very simple things. One was helping out around the house, I've been doing a lot of the cleaning and tidying and it was bothering me and I would ask/tell her can't you do this and that. And she would say "why don't you tell mom this?" and I would explain to her that our mom shouldn't have to worry about doing any of it since she works and because we were both home not working, that it's the least we could do

So whenever I requested her to help out with something, she would use that argument against me. And because my mom doesn't clean very often, and neither does my younger sister I would do. I would tell myself that someone has to. The issue is that if no one does, my mom would get upset and call me lazy like she's done in the past. And this leads me back to what I'm saying, I have to prove to myself that I'm not.

When I was in school, my teacher was going to fail me. I worked really hard, but my hard work went unnoticed and I was frustrated so I took it to the person who overlooked my department, and he kind of got in trouble because he didn't have a true grading guide that he followed by, so he was forced to pass me to the next portion. I didn't want him to get in trouble, but it bother me that I expressed about how hard I worked.

It seems simple, but during that time I COULDN'T fail. Simple because my financial aid wouldn't allow it. If I failed, I would have had to pay for the course I failed out of pocket. My financial aid was running out. So without a job I had no money. I had no job because I focused on school and my work. This is what I tried to explain to him, but he felt I wasn't ready to graduate. This bothered me because I was willing to work as hard as I had to in order to graduate. Which I did. After spending three months learning a new software, coming up with concepts for three new characters, and sculpting them, I had to push that all to the side and come up with someone new and simple.

At that point I decided to focus solely on prop modeling and had to start from scratch, In the next three months, I had to capture reference (I'll make it clear that my family and I was in the process of moving), and model three props, while also putting together a website, and oh, I was learning how to create a website by myself because my teacher didn't know how.

It was stressful! He said to me that I had "tenacity", and I don't think I do, it's just that when I know the odds are stacked against me I realize that I can either quit or not. I refuse to just give up if I worked too hard to get where I am. Is that tenacity? Because honestly sometimes I feel like breaking down and yell that I quit.

Anyway, he told me that a lot of students came in with work they already had from the prior months. The thing is that I had no work from prior months. Previously, my harddrive had crashed and I lost all my work. Not just that, but what I learned from the Tinley campus, was very mediocre by the standards of the campus downtown. So I had to up my game and learn all that I could.

I found that my life is constantly like this and I wonder if I'm just running out of steam. Honestly, when I first started out at the school I said they were leeching me of my creativity. Everything was so fast paced and I didn't like it. Now, I can actually appreciate all that they taught me, but it doesn't mean it wasn't stressful.

I think it's harmful to always be placed under stressed, and perhaps it's getting to me. The part that worries me the most are the times when I think that perhaps not living a life like this is better than having to deal with it, but I don't want to die because I have a lot of things I want to do in life. Sometimes I feel that things would be better if I took a break from the people I feel that just don't understand me. The issue is that it's mainly my family.I feel so different from them, and honestly my mom's mindset is so off-putting and I never truly agreed with her way of wanting to deal with things.

Don't get me wrong, I love my family, and perhaps that's the issue. I love them, and it keeps me from moving forward. That somehow if I leave, they won't be able to go on haha it's ridiculous, but I try to tell myself that I'm sure they'll be fine if I go off and live my life. I will say that I fear that if I leave, I won't turn back or call them. I'll just keep going.

Why do I feel this way? Well, it's because it's what I'm use to. Growing up, we moved a lot and I went to a lot of different schools. When I made friends, I got use to leaving them behind. It became natural. And this worries me. You see I worry about a lot o things! haha and this is why I'm writing. Because I have a lot on my mind.

Anyway, I'm under the impression as well that it won't be this way. That I'll call sometimes. But I think sometimes I get so caught up in life. And sometimes I notice this, and I'll just stop and sit outside and think absolutely nothing. I feel at peace.

So with all this being said, I don't know if I'm depressed or if I just have a mind that is ahead of what my body is capable of. But whatever it is, it is very annoying and very frustrating. Sometimes I just throw my hands in the air and say "screw it! It's just the way I am" haha  So screw sleep, who cares if my eyes are tired? I'm going to work on something! haha like now.

I will say that I'm conflicted a lot. Trying to understand my situation and myself. Because there's just a lot going on. To the outside world it may not seem like it, and I will say that probably sometimes it's not, because I will often live in the moment and those feelings will go away, but they always come back.

I'm sure it's something I have to face, but I'm not sure what. Maybe I should write a list?? The thing is that the world is very beautiful to me. When I remove my concern of having to create my portfolio and my mom and sister are away working, I'm at peace. Sometimes I wonder why I can't just go off and live as a monk or something. Or just go far away and not deal with any of this. Just live and not worry about loans, or getting a good job or making money.

I could just work on a garden and draw whenever I want to.

Yet, it's confusing because I think I couldn't live without a bit of stress hahaha and I wonder if it's simply because I'm so use to this. Actually, it's funny, because for a weekend I was staying at my older sister's house to look after my nephew because she had something she needed to do. Anyway, I stayed there for a weekend and almost lost my mind because I couldn't work on something. I wanted to smash my head into the wall because my only options was to stay indoor, read a book or watch t.v. haha

I have to say that one of my greatest worries is any guy who would date me hahaha I feel sorry for that sucker!! hahaha

Whats more is that I'm sure this is a fleeting feeling. I honestly can't stand it. I feel that I'm a true Cancer at heart and the changing of emotions define me so well. I don't like to think that one's sign define them, because we define ourselves, but me coming into this world this way, what the heck was I thinking.

Whelps! I feel better!! It's a lot to get off my chest, and honestly I'd be surprised if anyone made it this far hahaha Am I okay? I'd like to think so. Hm....actually, you know I once read my birth chart and it said that I become restless when I have to deal with mundane situations and I can't stand staying in the same spot forever and that I'm in need of constant change.

Seriously. I'm kind of lazy, but I don't think I want to move around all the time....but then again, today I did just want to go walking just because the whether was nice *sighs* I'm in for a long journey of self discovery, aren't I?

I'm just going to work on something until I feel sleepy. No need in trying to beat myself over the head. If you read this, thanks for reading. I'm going to try my hardest not to draft this like my previous entries. I get too self conscious when it comes to me writing about how I really feel. But who knows, how I truly feel may not be as strange or as wrong as I think it is.

Mon