a dark place

yeah, it's night... but that's not necessarily what I'm getting at.

I came back from the weekend feeling totally unrested, and today I've been kind of out of it. Some of this can be rationalized, but for some reason I find myself generally in a bad mood. I will blame part of this on hormones. I could blame some as well on the cooling weather and shortening days (I can smell SAD in the air)...

Sometimes I wonder how much of our temperments, our moods, are intrinsic to our beings. Sounds a little ridiculous and esoteric, perhaps, but our minds are all built differently, and the network within is all interconnected. In this age of Zoloft, Ritalin, Vallium, and Xanax, I wonder about the affects this has on our personalities. What is innate, and what is fixable or expendable? Our individual creativities... substances that alter our brain chemistries most certainly do alter us as people, if only temporarily.

I get very frustrated when I can't find my keys about 2/3 of the time I go to leave, or continuously forget things at home. I am embarrassingly disorganized at times. Sometimes I'd like to take a pill and have it all fall into place- I fold my clothes and put them away when I take them off. I put the bread back in the drawer when I'm done with it. I file my bills rather than strewing them about the kitchen table.

But it's not my nature. I don't focus my energy on the routine. I am creative, and though rational, somewhat frenetic. If I were to alter my mind to be more routine and focused, I would likely lose the part of me that sees humor in junk mail advertisements, that can find a use for a random found doll leg (friends' mailboxes, of course), or can devise grandiose collages out of bus transfers gathered over 9 months. The part of me that can add coconut and almonds to a cupcake and get a creature that's a striking bunny resemblance, without recipes. I'd probably lose the embarrassingly explosive laugh tendency, or my excessive inquisitiveness, both that define me. So who would I be then? I guess that's what keeps me putting up with repeated incidents of leaving my travel mug full of coffee at home in the morning. Sometimes I wish I wasn't the person sacrificing sleep hours the night before a client meeting to repeatedly adjust the size of a picture of Salvador Dali with a funny looking cat to fit her blog entry.

I think about famous artists, the crazy ones. The Pollacks and the Van Goghs and the Dalis. We all know that plenty of artists experimented with drugs in the name of creativity (Toulouse Lautrec, Jimi Hendrix...), but where would the odd souls have been, creatively, had we had the magic back them to diagnose disorders and tendencies and made them more even-keeled? What would our playhouses, art galleries, and concert halls be like?

When it comes down to it, we are all both individuals, responsible for our own happiness and well-being, and members of a society, responsible for the effect we have on our communities and societies. We have to strike as healthy of a balance as we can between those responsibilities.

I'm going to chew on that. And go to sleep- and I hope I wake up a little happier version of myself tomorrow.