I’m not proud or happy to say that I hit something of an emotional stumbling block today. It’s no surprise or revelation that I tend to struggle with most social settings. While I’ve come to accept that quirk about myself, it’s something that I’ve spent quite a bit of time trying to work on.

I have a lot more work to do on this front yet.

One of the producers for Heroes of the Dorm was kind and gracious enough to invite the casters out to their birthday party today. The thought of implied social interaction with a group of strangers was pretty daunting, but I’ve come to really appreciate the producer’s friendship and wanted to show my thanks and support.

All in all, the party was really cool. The people I met were nice. I just have this irrational hiccup about feeling accepted in uncertain environments. And those anxieties came to the surface in full force today. I thought I had gotten past this to some extent. I thought I had come to grips with and had reasoned with this feeling, and when push came to shove… I just haven’t. I wanted to get away. I wanted to withdraw. And I really did not like feeling that way.

It’s like building a dam, and it breaks. So you spend a lot of time reinforcing the dam, and you feel confident that it will hold the next time the water rises. The time comes and, sure enough, the dam breaks again. In spite of the failure, I have to start to rebuild and perhaps rethink the way I go about making the dam. Or maybe find a better way to divert the stream and be better about ‘going with the flow’ of it all. I don’t know.

Something that was particularly interesting about the party was that there was a group painting session. An instructor set up a bunch of canvases and we had paint brushes and paint to make a landscape painting of sorts. I thought that was a really cool idea. I never heard of a business where they made something like that part of a social experience.

At first I was too locked in with my want to withdraw to participate, but I decided to give painting a try. I’m not an artist by any stretch, and I took a seat having already accepted the fact that my painting would be sub par compared to anyone else’s. But it wasn’t a competition or anything.

I followed along at first, creating an orange sunset at the top that was serviceable, if a bit heavy handed and plodding with my strokes. I never appreciated the nuance that goes into paint blending for colors, how to manipulate a brush, or how to manage the brush’s wetness or amount of paint. I got a better sense of how a painter can put their souls into a painting, so if anything I felt that was a victory of sorts.

When we got to the beginnings of the actual sun itself, I left too much water on the brush, so my first stroke sent a bead of yellowish white streaking down the canvas. I initially panicked. I ruined the painting ten minutes top into making it. I can just paint over it, I figured. The paint was heavy enough that with a few strokes it’d vanish and no one would be any the wiser, right?

I’m not someone that likes showing imperfections, and here I am sitting here plotting the concealment of another mistake of mine. I don’t know. Something about it didn’t sit well with me. I decided to stop trying to make what the class was supposed to be making and to do my own thing.

I tuned out the world, picked up my paper plate easel, set my jaw firmly, and became an artist for a short while.

The end result is nothing to write home about or praise. My technique is likely elementary at best, but at the end of it all I created a painting of a setting sun above the ocean. In the foreground, a figure stood alone on a beach, looking out toward the ocean. The bottom right portion of the canvas is untouched.

The painting represented something vulnerable for me. Showing something that falls short of my general expectations is difficult enough, but there was something ‘meta’ about the painting and its intended meaning for me.

The figure in the painting is me, standing on a beach of my own imagination. I’ve separated myself from the world around me, in part out of anxiety, and in part out of self doubt. I didn’t want to be there, and the feeling of defeat in not wanting to be there made me not want to be anywhere. But even that respite of withdrawing to the depths of my own mind felt hollow, as I was fully aware of what I was trying to do. In that awareness, I had failed at even achieving the comfort I sought, so I wasn’t really separated at all.

The incomplete portion of the painting represents that; the realization that my escape to my mind had failed and that I was very much in tune with the very reality I was trying to get away from. And the streak of yellow I aimed to cover up was on full display in that break back to reality.

My imperfection. Laid bare.

It made me feel tortured in a way. Defenseless against the anxiety of imposed extroverted social interaction. Being out of my element. Not being in control of my surroundings or my situation.

The instructor had walked by at some point, taking a cursory glance at the painting. I wondered what he thought of it. I assume he thinks I didn’t care too much about the class; so little that I didn’t even finish my painting. And what was actually there had to look like the work of a six year old to him. I wonder if he felt disrespected by that. Part of me wanted to go over and explain to him the meaning behind the painting.

But I didn’t.

I don’t know what I’ll do with the painting. I aim to keep it. It’s hard to feel good about it, even if part of me is proud that it at least represents something I’m feeling, or at least felt at that moment. Expressing my feelings is why I started this blog, and why I started casting. So that has to count for something, I feel.

I sat and stared at the painting before I started writing this. Part of me wants to try to paint a series of things and call them all Solitude. Maybe even stream it, where I don’t say anything and just have the camera pointed at the canvas and then when I finish I just end the stream. I don’t know. I don’t know if anyone would even want to see someone who has no artistic talent or experience put their woes and insecurities on a canvas while they felt too humbled or embarrassed to even really talk about it.

I don’t know.