When the world pulls you down

Disclaimer: This article touches on topics such as depression and addictions. Warning so you can skip it if reading about these subjects triggers unwanted feelings.

All the photos in the post were taken with my Ricoh GRII compact camera and edited in Adobe Lightroom Classic.

These weeks, my mood has been quite volatile, and the moments when I was "mentally in the dumps" served me well to retouch several photos that you can see in this article, which had been in the pipeline for quite some time.

From all of this emerged a short story or something quite dark, along with a reflection on the impact that mood swings have on our creative activity.

Shall we begin?

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If you enjoy the content and find it useful, you can make a financial contribution to support the project through Cafecito (Argentina) or PayPal (Worldwide).

Another way to support the project is by purchasing prints and various items with my photos in my international store on RedBubble. I don't have a store for Argentina yet, but I hope to solve that soon.

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You can also follow me on Instagram, Behance, and Twitter. Sharing my articles helps a lot and is free :)

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Full album playlist

For this delivery, the playlist of complete albums is solely comprised of albums suggested to me through various channels (and is not at all related to the general mood of the post, haha). If you want to recommend an album (self-promotion not allowed!), I'll be waiting for you in the comments.

Short story?

Days like today, I can hear you banging on the bars of the cage where I managed to lock you up.

The air thickens, the walls close in, the temperature drops. Even the sunlight that enters through the tiny window of the cage loses its orange tones, as if unsure whether you'll be there tomorrow like all the other days, ready to extinguish it.

Your figure looms like an animal on the brink of a confrontation, bristling with fur, baring teeth, swelling with fury to intimidate even the most confident adversary.

"The barking dog seldom bites," goes the saying, but I know how much your fangs hurt because I felt them more than once, gripping my throat, draining my blood while my vision gets blurred and darkened.

Yet, you spared my life every time, just as I let you exist in this fragile and miserable state instead of eliminating you for good. Because, despite the overwhelming desire, you know just as well as I do that we are connected.

A perverse and sickly vital bond ties us, and I know you will accompany me until the end of my days, whispering in my ear with every misstep, watering my ears with your poison.

Because that is my great victory.

Now, I am the one who chooses when this ends.

And it's just beginning.

Afterthought

My workflow with photography involves two very distinct moments: the capture and the editing. When the work is for a client, there are usually deadlines for delivery, and things have to be done, no room for my mental cloud to have an opinion. But it's a different story when the "work" is strictly for myself. Almost all captures "for me" happen with my Ricoh GRII compact camera during a walk, and they end up in a single folder on my computer named "_roll" (the "_" is so it appears at the top when listing folders because I'm not an IT person for nothing). When I have time, I sit down to select and manipulate the images.

What's striking is that my mental state is not always the same between the moment of capture and the post-processing moment. Those two sub-selves sometimes understand each other, sometimes complement each other, and sometimes not at all. I tend to be more productive in my creative work when I'm somewhat depressed (not just with photos but anything involving creation), but I find it challenging to sit down and edit. On the other hand, I tend to be more efficient in reviewing, organizing, and editing work when I'm happy.

Sometimes, I capture the images and manage to sit down, but I don't understand what I wanted to convey, and they stay there waiting for another version of myself to grasp the message and complete the processing outward. Sometimes, I even feel like I have to take the photo, but I don't quite understand what I'm looking for. Still, I take it anyway, trusting that at some point, it will click for me. These photos are like a form of communication between my mental states, an exquisite corpse of sorts, "person with little mental issues" edition.

To all this is added the dilemma raised in the last installment, where sometimes I feel like I'm an amazing artist and can't understand why I'm not exhibiting at the MOMA, and other times I feel like I should grab the hard drive where I store the photos and drill through it. One would think that positive self-perception goes hand in hand with moments of happiness, and vice versa, but no, it's just that random.

What do I make of this brain mess? That we need to take advantage of those moments when we create for ourselves, let the processes take the time they need to settle, enjoy the absence of deadlines that comes with creating for oneself and just because (especially if you also practice a creative craft professionally). Ideally, recognizing ourselves in those ups and downs, embracing them, and putting them to our service, to navigate them in the most manageable and productive way possible.

Sometimes, some answers come on their own when you stop bothering them with too many questions.

Thank you for reading!

Focus is a free monthly newsletter written by Nacho Dramis. Subscribe.

If you enjoy the content and find it useful, you can make a financial contribution to support the project through Cafecito (Argentina) or PayPal (Worldwide).

Another way to support the project is by purchasing prints and various items with my photos in my international store on RedBubble. I don't have a store for Argentina yet, but I hope to solve that soon.

The links to Notion and Moment are affiliate links, which means that if you buy something from them, you pay the same and I earn a commission.

You can also follow me on Instagram, Behance, and Twitter. Sharing my articles helps a lot and is free :)

Este newsletter también está disponible en español.