text /// Chris Rusak

01-17-09

Worth.

Does an artist value his works based on the worth of the experiences lived during that period of production? Is it a proportional equation of self-worth? Even if only subconsciously?

What about local worth… the self-worth one gathers in the more recent period of their life? Do we value our production relative to what we have recently experienced prior to assessing this equation? Do we create an irrevocable trust?

Cognitive behavior therapy prescribes dissecting the emotional-reaction value from the reasoning of one’s experience. When experience, whether immediate or relational values of the recent past, feels as such, it doesn’t necessarily mean that reality is as such.

I have had the experience of realizing that I have had an obsession with symbols, lately. Unhealthy obsession. A compulsion to determine the meaning of everything around me. Complete causative cacophony. But, for me, it reached a religious stasis.

I utilized cognitive restructuring tonight, and refuted three major points to one major underlying root anxiety. Do not let your vision imagine sudden repair. It is a task that must be repeated five-hundred times before the real repair begins to emulate.

What amazes me, though, is the sudden and instantaneous alleviation of pain. Immediate. It was as if a mouse had suddenly been reconnected and a cursor was moved.