It's difficult to enjoy things when nobody is looking.

I thought it was depression, at first. A loss of interest or pleasure in everyday activities. But that wasn't quite right. It wasn't that I didn't feel pleasure, it's that it turned swiftly into an acidic sort of misery when there was nobody around to share it with.

I picked up hobbies to pass the time. I painted sticky-sweet children's book illustrations. Cats baking muffins. I smeared black and brown acrylic over someone else's Paint & Sip sunset that they abandoned at the Value Village. I covered butcher paper in chalk pastel. It felt good, but all I could think about when I was finished was now what? It never stopped feeling like my hands were full.