Yesterday was hard. I had a semi public meltdown, spent most of it sobbing in bed before a friend collected me and took me to group for the evening. In my pj’s. Work on the DI had ground to a halt this year as I’ve been so drowned. I’ve been hoping to get better then take on the task of restructuring how it works and either cutting back my responsibilities, or breaking up my role and parceling bits of it out to other people. No such luck, I’m going to fall apart first. I’m not making it out to college, I’ve closed off my other groups, withdrawn from a lot of my volunteer work, at the moment I’m down to the face and body painting business, running Bridges, and trying to keep my head above water. The cracks are showing and the boat is going down. So today I drew attention to the little green man behind the curtain and said help I’m not making it. People have swung into action to take various important DI roles and tasks off my shoulders or support me in carrying the load. Thank god for that.

So by the end of the evening I could breathe again. I’m off to the county today to paint faces at a hot air balloon festival, which I’m looking forward to. Particularly as Rose is kindly coming with me to help out with the driving. So I sat up all night working on my paint kit. A while ago I had the idea to stripe one side of my hand made split cakes so I have a bigger range of rainbow splits for painting, but still big patches of solid single colour paint for sponge work. So this morning I converted all my solid colours into multi split cakes. It was very calming and peaceful. I’ve been researching skin inks and free form glitter tattoos and other temporary body modifications lately and getting very excited about them. I’m booked into an upcoming workshop on creating temporary tattoos on skin, unlike face paint these are made with inks that stain the skin for a few days or up to 2 weeks! I am bursting with ideas and excitement, there’s so much more scope for artistry with these tools and I’m really looking forward to the workshop. It’s nice to have something on my life to focus on that feels peaceful and uncomplicated.