Early Morning art: Insomina or Mania?

It seems about every morning, I wake up between 3 and 5 to go to the bathroom. I know I'm old and have a week bladder. Also probably TMI, but this is where we are. I usually can't go right back to sleep. A little secret about me: I sleep with a CPAP since I have severe sleep apnea. I also wear headphones to bed with music playing, usually Taylor Swift. This is in order to drown out outside noise.

So when the time hits for me to go, I have to unhook a bunch of crap to get up, so I just stay up so I don't have to go to the whole ritual of setting my machine back up. (He's more machine than man now) Pardon the old Star Wars joke.

Once I'm up, I spend the next hour or so doing a painting on my tablet. Usually similar to the one above. Fun note, in some art groups on Facebook a few people thought these were physical acrylic pours. When I said they were digital they got mad and accused me of using AI. I don't use AI as I talk about in my blog about AI. But I do use a Samsung tablet, an app called Infinite Painter and an S-pen. Its tricky to get it to look right. No its not like pouring actual paint, but its its own thing.

Once the painting is complete, I usually start on a blog and how it relates to the painting. Sometimes its not always a direct relation. Usually its more of what does the painting make me think or feel, its a prompt to start writing and once I'm off I usually can't shut up.

Some of my art looks very similar. I guess its my style. I'm often worried about copying myself, but thats likely hard to do with this given style. Similarities maybe, but not copies. That said, is this all because I had to go to the bathroom? I usually fall asleep a few hours later for a bit. I take my morning medications. Perhaps its a combination of mania and insomnia. Maybe its neither. I like to think there is some kind of message I just have to get out.

Why am I writing all of this out? I don't know to be honest. Part of it may be because it feels good to unload it. The other part is maybe someone else out there goes through the same thing and can relate. I've been shocked since I've had this blog at who reads it and will give feedback. I have ten email subscribers, but apparently more people read it than just the subscribers, which is a nice feeling.

Also, because of my whatever it is going on with me, I usually don't have trouble making my 1000 word count for my blogs which I usually target for. 1000ish words seems to be the magic number for SEO for Google. I actually played around with the new Deepseek AI and had it write a test blog, just to read what it read like. For one, it was far better than ChatGPT, but it was still AI, just very cold, technical and soulless. I guess if you are reading tech blogs or just want an art blog that dissects a piece of art, that may be great. Apparently some bloggers have multiple sites and news letters and they just use AI to churn out content. To me that feels deceptive and self defeating.

You may have also noticed I tend to go on Tangents. That is because I don't outline my blogs or often have a detailed plan going into them. I start with a general idea and go from there. Maybe thats not the way to do it, but I want this place to be genuine and organic. This is how my thoughts work, so this is what I want to communicate to you. You're getting the authentic me here. In the age of AI slop all over the internet, I hope this is something that is welcome.

Maybe my problem is I go to be too early. Before I started taking my Abilify at night, I'd got to sleep between one and three. Now, between eleven and one. So maybe I'm just inclined to wake up a bit earlier. Maybe I'm just old or even more likely, I'm just overthinking the whole thing. That's another thing with bipolar disorder, we over think EVERYTHING. I talk about this in a few previous blogs, but it is frustrating and often the cause of much unneeded anxiety.

It reminds me of an article my wife showed me yesterday how 50% of the population doesn't have an internal monologue. How does that even work? My brain won't shut the hell up for two minutes. I can't imagine my head just being silent. And how do you make any decisions without your inner voice to guide you or to reason things through in complete sentences? Madness I tell you. And they say I'm the crazy one. Well, I probably am, but that is beside the point.

When I started this blog, I promised myself no matter how much I'd like to monetize it, and I do plan on adding ads and may be an ad free paid tier later. But I will not to stupid click bait/rage bait post of made up nonsenes just to get people to click or sign up. There is way too much of that on the internet, and one thing I've learned from watching current events this past year, I think people crave authenticity. Too much stuff and too many people are living as a brand. They are putting on a show and showing a face. I want to just be kind of raw and real.

But Eric, you say, You're not even using  your real name. No, that's true. Eric Ravenwolf is a name I chose or that was chosen for me several years ago after my bad mental health break. I'll spare you the woo woo parts of it. But I was developing my online occult store as I was coming out of my fog. I felt I needed a name that better reflected the person I was becoming, as well as give me a tad bit of privacy. So, through much meditation and some little witchy rituals, Eric was born. It's still me, I don't put on an act or pretend to be something I'm not. Its just a name I tend to connect with more than my birth name.

Honestly, I think as adults we should automatically get one free name change and with a few easy changes have all our legal documents updated without all the hassle. That is one of the main reasons I never had it changed, but some days I feel I'm closer to Eric than my legal name.

So there is that. I'm not sure I ever really talked about that online before, but there it is, and here is my just sort of putting myself out here. Its almost time for me to take my morning meds, so I will leave you for now. I hope that this has been in some way entertaining or enlightening. As always thank you for reading! Until next time.