I’m feeling lost.

In August, I was arrested and charged with a crime I didn’t commit. I’m struggling to articulate the effect that my arrest had on me. It stole my momentum, erased my confidence, and cancelled all my plans.

I had an exhibit booked in Seattle for the month of November. That was cancelled the same day that the news of my charge hit the internet.

Being out on bail in September meant that I couldn’t risk selling prints out on the street (since it’s technically illegal without a vendor’s license). And given the nature of the charge against me, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea for me to be out like that in public anyway – underneath a banner with my name on it.

Now that the case is over, it’s too cold here in Chicago to sell outdoors. When I tried last year, I found that once it gets this cold, people just walk right past me without stopping.

I’ve got no money.

It hurts to admit that. Especially now that I’ve just turned thirty. I suddenly feel like a total loser.

If I had turned thirty six months ago, it would have been fine. I had money then, I felt accomplished then, I had things going on back then, and had more plans for the future.

I don’t feel like I’ve got much of anything today. Consequently, I suddenly feel a whole lot older and like a whole lot more embarrassed. I feel like a failure.

I need to relocate to a warmer city where I can make money but I signed a lease in Chicago so that I’d have somewhere to live for what I thought would be a long drawn out legal process. And then the case was unexpectedly dismissed less than two weeks later.

I’ll leave anyway when I feel the time is right but I don’t know where to go. Like I said, my momentum is gone and my confidence is shattered.

In the past, I could just pick up and leave because I was living out of my van. But now I have Wallis with me and we need an apartment. She needs to be able to work and have her own life. That’s not possible when we’re living out of a van and constantly on the move. We need to settle in somewhere.

That job offer from Elite Daily came in at just the right time. It was right at the moment when I was starting to figure out what my next move ought to be. I was still all fucked up by the events of the last couple months but it seemed perfect; like it was maybe exactly what I needed. And it seemed to be going really well – right until it wasn’t. And then it was a huge disappointment when it didn’t work out.

I looked into the possibility of writing for another company but ultimately decided to start my own. Time will tell whether or not that’s going to develop into anything or just be a short detour in the path of my life.

My older sister just called in the midst of writing this post. After talking to her, I’ve decided that I need to figure this out and get it over with already. I need to stop waiting for things to work out and I need to just make something happen.

To that end, I’m packing up and leaving Chicago. There’s nothing here for me. It will be obnoxious having to travel back to Illinois on December 4th for the next hearing in my stupidly drawn out Adderall case from 2014 but I don’t want to sit here rotting in the meantime just so that I don’t have to incur extra travel expenses.

It looks like I’m going back to Florida. Sarasota-Bradenton to be precise. I’ll be able to work on Vapid Planet from there, Wallis and I will have a place to stay, and I’ll be able to make trips to other nearby cities to sell art every so often.