I Gave You My All

This is ”I Gave You My All”. It sums the year up perfectly well, just like the word Sorrowspride or possibly Proudsorrow that I’ve just invented. It’s a paradoxical portmanteau, like “humblebrag” or so; because it’s about how Proud you can be when you’ve done your very, very best and, in the same time, how Sad you may be when your very, very best didn’t help at all, not at all. Look:

I think that it speaks for itself, how you may pour everything out of you and yet…

I’ll sum up the lost months. Yes, my ambition to give you at least something every month in 2025 failed, despite trying my best... (I can say with Sorrowspride.) So what did I do in February, April and July, the months unblogged?
--- Happily, I keep a logbook or professional/private diary of sorts, so I’ve at least kept track.

In February I was recovering from a spell in hospital (but as you see in the archives for January I managed to draw while in there). And I tried to help a friend in terrible distress, almost homeless and on top of that not without enemies who made good use of this; an awful situation. It was such a harrowing mess that my pen and brush just died.

Ouch. Through April --- so sayeth my log, my notes --- this exhausting situation persisted. And on top of that I had one of those clients that suffer from the Ordering Aphantasia Syndrome, as I call that all too common disease: Being without awareness, their lack of imagination is so great that they can’t imagine that they can’t imagine. They are prone to say “that’s not what I wanted!” instead of realising they did have no idea in the first place. This’ll mean that:

1) The more detailed that their order is, the more likely is their rejection of the result they could not foresee. Their subconscious, attempting to compensate for their aphantasia by being intricately picky, will lead to more things to be aphantastic about,

- - - and even worse - - -

2) The closer you follow their instructions, the unhappier they will be. (As you come closer and closer to something that they could not imagine.) Most likely, their response will be that you must follow dictum even closer --- You can imagine what happens then! --- and/or to give you even more detailed instructions (1). This is one of those battles that can’t be won, a vicious, ever worsening circle.

- - - The best kind of customer understands the creative process, the necessary difference between the embryonic idea vs. final results.
The next best will give you free reins, as they know that they don’t know. They might at most say, “good, but now when I see it, could we…?” --- and that’s a different matter altogether. You’ll make it out, eventually.
This April, though, I had the worst kind, and after a weary while I decided not to lose more precious time. (A foreigner, a Continental Person of Civilisation, might pay me for the efforts anyway, but in this dismal Sweden one had better run away. Aphantasia is so common here that it has become a sort of undercurrent, and this is why many Swedes have such difficulties imagining …paying up.)

July: I was overheated, externally, internally, existentially. But my dear friend got a home! And I got to visit her in a safe place at last. We had such a great time, just a little bittersweet around the edges. I spent much of this month stuck in hopeless meetings with authorities and suchlike. And lastly, I got to do some happily detailed works for a book project that I’m not allowed to show you, so that’s that.

All the other months of 2025 give you but a hint of what went on behind the stage, and I think that’s how I really want it to be. I somehow sense that there’s a greater truth conveyed in giving you the actual feeling than just telling you bluntly. Look in the archives.