Going... going...

I can feel it slipping away from me: the ability, talent, skill, however you define it, to draw. I just can't do it anymore. I've been trying and trying, but it's just not coming back.

I start the way I always have done: a line of action or direction; an outline circle for the position of the head; then a trapezium for the body, and the circles that mark the pelvis and shoulders; the elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles are circles now; and finally the blocks that function as hands and feet.

Normally I would then start filling in the character. Adding the outline of the body; blocking in muscles on the arms and legs; detailing facial features and hair... but that was before. By the time I've finished the wrists and ankles I can see that the drawing is already flawed. It doesn't look like a person. But I keep trying. Either starting a new skeleton, or trying to fix what I've done wrong.

By the time I've fleshed out a figure, it looks completely crap. I can't get the poses right, the dimensions, the angles, the volume, the proportions, the expressions. A character's face differs every time I draw it. The only way you know it's the same person is because of their hair or clothes.

I used to just pick up whatever was at hand and draw away without any worries. Whatever was in my head just flowed like quicksilver down my arm and into my hand. My pen would glide over the paper and I'd have a drawing there, just how I had imagined it.

My drawings were never priceless works of art; but they weren't supposed to be. They were just supposed to be drawings, sketches, or whatever. They came out just how I wanted them. But now I can't even draw simple things like stick men without it looking like a pile of crap. What the hell happened?

Not only that, but I can only write for a short duration. Reading is totally out. I'm struggling to get a page of reading done per day before my head feels like it's full of electric eels and is about to explode. A lightning storm is going on inside my brain. It's as if I'm waiting for a loud bang or something to come from behind me. Distractions that don't exist; whispered voices not yet heard; disturbances on the edge of hearing.

I feel like there are burning fingers being pressed into the back of my head; something incessantly worming around in my mind. I wonder if it has anything to do with my lack of sleep.

I had a strange dream the other night in which a woman came to me and told me to stop visualising things in my mind. I do a lot of visualisation; it's something I do almost constantly. I'm almost always standing in an alpine meadow, creeping through a forest bathed in sunbeams, talking to a wise and mysterious mage, settling negotiations between humans and extraterrestrials, sprinting over the rooftops of some fantastic city, going over the finer points of philosophy with someone far more experienced, or slaying evil beasts on a sweeping plain.

I don't know why, but (and this might sound crazy) the message in the dream was especially strong. It must have been at a certain point when I was almost conscious or something. But that "...don't even visualise things..." message was like a suggestion. A very strong suggestion. Because it came from inside of me. I've already mentioned my dreams: this one wasn't especially strange, but the message was especially vivid. Like someone taking me aside from the dream for a moment to give me a message before giving me back to the night's illusions.

It's late, getting closer and closer to early; so I'll leave this where it is before I sound like a complete madman. I want to sleep for a hundred years.