I don't know what I want to say here today. I have stopped and started a million times.

I'm feeling overwhelmed and overexposed. I lay in bed last night unable to sleep, contemplating where I am and wondering how well this site really represents my life and who I am or if it has become like every other diary in my life -- an embarrassing (and public no-less) chronicle of my trials with little mention of my fortunes.

I'm feeling a strong desire to shut this down and pack it up.

I feel conflicted. Because everything I have written about is true and this has been, in many ways, the most dramatic year of my life. An unprecedented number of extreme events have occurred over a short period of time. It is no wonder I feel overwhelmed in the way that I do.

But I struggle between wanting to reveal my vulnerability in an honest way and the compulsion to hide behind my strengths. I wonder if it is better to be truthful or to be stoic and graceful. But even that is complicated because sometimes I am vulnerable, sometimes I am strong, and sometimes I am both things simultaneously. That's a confusing grey area to navigate.

On Tuesday afternoon I determined I needed to work on being kind to myself. And by Wed night I had totally fucked that up. I feel stuck between the part of my life that is being carried out in a public arena -- from the gallery show that opens tonight, the book launch party next week, the countless interviews, the photo shoots, the appearances, this site, the gardening site, to simply getting on the subway and being in public physically -- and the heaviness that I'm carrying around as a result of recent events. I’m having a hard enough time dealing with all these conflicting emotions, but I have discovered that within that I am still trying to be what I think people want and expect of me -- still trying to be totally appropriate and proper in my actions and the way I present myself. In fact I’d say that I am suddenly super-hyper-conscious of things that formerly seemed shallow and trite like the current state of my hair and how that somehow reveals the depths of my inner conflict and the fact that I don’t have my shit perfectly aligned. I realized that despite all my hard work and my thoughtful, articulate, I’m totally evolving talk I actually feel ashamed that so many bad things have happened in the last year (even though these events have nothing to do with me and are completely out of my control) and that I’m not taking it perfectly, stoically or gracefully. I’m fumbling. A lot.

I need a fucking vacation. Bad.

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And on that note come out to the opening party for our show tonight. Ha!

7-10 pm at the Toronto Free Gallery
660 Queen Street E.