u/rinkydinkmink

This is inspired by a post in another non-art community made by someone with a brain injury who feels that it destroyed their potential. I suffer from broadly similar problems, and it was a huge relief to hear about someone like me. I feel quite overwhelmed sometimes, and the art community can be very competitive and advice can easily become berating "you have to work hard all the time! no excuses! too many people blaming their life for their lack of effort". This is all well and good for motivating a 17 year old (probably) but when people really are up against it ... when significant pain is stopping you doing what you'd like to do, when you just don't have the "spoons", when the medication is slowing you down or making you nauseous, or you just don't have the energy or concentration span ... or something else ... maybe you are or were homeless, or living in a bad place with bad people. What do you do? What did you manage? How do you manage to do art (if you still can) with the resources, time or energy that you do have? Have you prioritised certain techniques or studies over others? Found equipment that helps, like a bed tray or an ergonomic pencil holder? Learned to paint with your feet? (not even being sarcastic there)

And if you want to share some feelings, or backstories, good or bad, I'd love to hear about it and I'm sure there are other people who would too.

A little about me, to start things off: I have a psychotic illness (schizoaffective disorder "bipolar type", which means I get manic) and have been hospitalised on a section 3 for several months many times now. I've also got physical health problems - had major open heart surgery a couple of years ago and am still in recovery. Turned out I must have been suffering with the heart condition for a very long time indeed and it had been misattributed to mental health. I also had a very serious abusive relationship in my early 20s, which left me with permanent damage (physical and mental). I struggled again and again to get my life together, to study art, to gain qualifications in something that interested me and get a career, and every time it was like I was a toddler building a tower of bricks and bullies came and pushed it over.

I haven't been capable of doing any proper art for 26 years. I had a major breakdown after an incident in 2000 and haven't ever been the same since - I think it genuinely led to significant brain damage that is unrecoverable. However, recently I have shown some improvement, and been drawing with enthusiasm and creativity that I haven't experienced in decades. The skills probably won't ever come back, but I am trying, I've bought books, I've done studies, I'm learning things.

Oddly the thing which turned out to help the most was a recent medication change - and not even for a mental health drug. Just some boring physical thing that I had no idea was really limiting me physically and mentally. I'm so much brighter, my muscles don't get fatigued, I have more energy, and ... oh look, I'm drawing again.

I used to draw constantly, all the way through the time where I was stuck in the house with an abusive maniac. And before, since I can remember, and all the way up till 2000 ...

When I was growing up I always wanted to write children's books and do my own illustrations. Novels, for slightly older children, say 8 yrs and older. Not toddler books (which is what you may be assuming if you see my recent pictures). I've been writing stories for my boyfriend for months now, and really enjoying it, after not having written anything since I was 15. And now finally I'm producing illustrations that go with the stories, and I'm in heaven!

I know I'm never going to be able to draw the way I used to, or achieve whatever I could have if I'd studied more, but I'm having a good time and finding myself again. I think maturity is doing your best with what you have.

If this thread gets some answers I may forward it to the man who wrote the other post. He sounds like he's in a dark place.

This was inspired by a post I saw on here recently where OP mentioned having been in the middle of paintings for lovers when the relationship ended. I wondered if anyone had any perspectives to give, any stories about similar experiences and what you did, or perhaps ways of thinking about this and deciding whether to continue working on the piece, and how to deal with those feelings ...

I've been having a relationship with someone for a while now, and unfortunately it seems to be winding up. I won't go into the details, but I don't know if I will see them again, although I want to and I miss him.

I have been working on a painting for quite a while now that was intended for him, as it is inspired by something personal to us. Unfortunately I've been very slow, I haven't done any art in decades, and I struggle with chronic illness.

I have been trying to work on it anyway while communication between us has dropped off, but it's hard to know how much effort to make, or maintain motivation. I have actually progressed the painting a lot, and keep thinking "I could finish it today" and then I get too tired and don't do as much as I hoped.

(I told him I'd show him when it is finished, and I know he has been looking for me ... we keep missing each other ... I just don't know if he's given up at this point, and I would understand. It's not the kind of breakup where we are angry with each other or there were problems, but people move on).

I just thought asking this here would be interesting.

I just read this post where someone has translated a 14th century German text on table manners:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Old_Recipes/comments/1v0p7h5/manners_in_the_fourteenth_century_how_to_properly/

It includes the German/Viennese word "gouch" here translated by OP as meaning an unmannerly person.

I was immediately struck that this is identical to the word used to describe people who are experiencing a heroin high that makes them slouch, half asleep in their chair. Others have claimed that they use it to describe a cannabis high. The word is often used as in "he was gouching" or "I was gouched out".

Can anyone shed any light on this? It seems to obscure to bother googling for.

Like most people here, I've been trying to avoid UPFs.

Last night I decided to treat myself and get a burger from our local kebab shop. I asked for garlic mayonnaise, as usual. Never had any problems with garlic mayonnaise before, or with anything else garlic, use a lot at home in my cooking.

In the past I tried their own "garlic sauce" that they use for the kebabs, and I refused to eat it ever since. It just had this really strong taste that clung to my tongue for days. I noticed the same with tzatziki from the supermarket. So I switched to asking for garlic mayo with my orders, and I tend to make my own tzatziki if I want some.

Well, I don't know if they maybe accidentally put their own sauce on my burger, or perhaps used a different brand of garlic mayo, but the stuff stripped the skin off the inside of my mouth. Took about two hours to really affect me to the point that I couldn't ignore it and had a google. Turns out a chemical in garlic can do this, but I was worried in case it was an allergic reaction. I did feel some weird pain throughout my body, and it also gave me a headache immediately after I ate it that perhaps lasted 30mins? I took an antihistamine just in case, and some paracetamol, and went to bed early cos I felt dreadful.

I know this is a "borderline" post where I'm not certain if this has anything to do with the mayo being UPF (if it even was), but I just had a strong sense that this was a chemical in the mayo causing the problem. My guess is that it contained a lot of some type of "garlic oil"? There weren't any bits of garlic in it, so I don't think it's a home-made variety.

The first thing that I noticed was the headache, and straight away I was kicking myself for eating UPFs because clearly something was happening that my body didn't like. I immediately assumed that not eating UPFs for a while had sensitised me, or that maybe I just hadn't noticed how bad it made me feel before.

I don't really know what to make of this at all. I'm not allergic to any foods that I know of. The burns on my mouth were chemical burns.

Anyone have any similar experiences to share? Whether with UPFs or not, or garlic or whatever? Or anyone know how these sauces are made in factories and got any ideas about what happened here?

I'm hoping I'm not allergic to garlic and that I can eat garlic mayo in future and that they just gave me the wrong sauce.

I'm not asking for medical advice, I am feeling fine now. I'd just like to get some kind of insight into what on earth happened there.

Hi, I'm a 54F and I've recently started using the gym. I'm just using some of the cardio type machines at the moment. I was quite fit in terms of muscle strength/flexibility from doing a lot of yoga, physiotherapy exercises and walking, but lacked cardio which was giving me issues (heart problem, long story). Then I've had about 6 months of no exercise and put on quite a lot of weight. Finally I've started going to the gym, and doing a bit of yoga.

The problem is that after using the gym yesterday I gradually became more and more tense until I was in a fair bit of pain last night and had to take codeine to get some sleep. I'm still tense/sore this morning. Obviously I can't keep taking codeine.

I noticed this issue the other week as well, when I went to the gym about 3 times, and it stopped me doing yoga for a few days.

I don't really know what to do to alleviate this or ideally prevent it in the first place. I had a hot shower last night but maybe left it too long after I got home (made dinner first).

Would doing some stretches/yoga today help? How about some sort of stretches/cooldown after I've used the machines at the gym? Am I doing something wrong?

I'd be really interested if anyone can recommend a youtube video I can follow if stretches would help, because I use YT a lot anyway for yoga at home (I was going to classes as well twice a week but have transport problems).

I feel this is a really dumb question and common sense should be enough but, I'm in pain, and writing this is a coping mechanism. Lol.

Machines I used: stationery bike, cross trainer, running machine, rowing machine.

Edit: The bot thought I wanted medical advice but it's got nothing to do with my heart, that was just a bit of background info.

Hi, I made an ox heart stew last night (with dumplings) and although it was very nice the actual pieces of ox heart were somewhat bland, which I wasn't expecting.

I have cooked heart before but not specifically an ox heart (well it may have been a cow heart but ...).

As I had been making fresh vegetable stock, I simply scooped out the vegetable scraps and then tipped in my other ingredients without frying any of them first because I was short on time and patience and making another meal at the same time.

The "gravy" was lovely and meaty, the vegetables were perfect ... I had added salt, black peppercorns, and later on I added worcestershire sauce, a selection of dried herbs, and finally some garlic and bit of red wine. To be honest the gravy was lovely without anything more than salt and pepper and a bit of worstershire, but I felt that was low effort ...

I was disappointed when I had a bowl and found the actual pieces of meat were a bit flavourless. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas of what I could do to improve this? I know I could have fried everything a bit before I added the stock, but I worried about making the heart tough. I was going for "low and slow" and it did come out nice and tender.

Should I have salted it and let it rest for a while before I put it in the pot? Or perhaps some sort of marinade? But I don't know what I'm doing with marinades really and don't want to make it tough. Could I mix up some spices and rub them on maybe with a bit of olive oil?

Or perhaps I should just have used a different method from the start. Any ideas?