Degenerated

As I have written about before, I wear a mouth guard to keep me from asphyxiating myself in my sleep. It worked great and I felt like I was actually benefitting from sleep for the first time in my adult life. But the left side of my jaw started hurting and causing nonstop headaches about a month ago. We adjusted the positioning of lower jaw vis a vis upper jaw and the pain went away.

After a few days I felt tired but I didn't think too much about it because I've been busy, drinking a bit more beer than usual and going to sleep a little late. By the end of the week I was a mess. My body ached, I couldn't keep my eyes open and had a hell of a time dragging myself to the studio. I realized that this is how I used to feel most of the time. I recorded myself sleeping and the snoring was back along with the telltale sounds of my breathing stopping and starting again with a grunt/ gasp. The mouth guard wasn't doing the job anymore. It's amazing how quickly I returned to my former condition and how (now that I can compare it to a much better state) shit it was!

I went back and we tweaked things again. Oh great god of dental devices, please let this work.

I got some small paintings done this week. They are much more thickly painted and more limited in colour range then what I've been doing but it's nice to do something different just to keep things fresh. I started another batch of 6 also and have done the first pass. Sunday I will entertain some friends on my balcony so I won't be able to work on them til Tuesday ("He said shut up! He said shut up!"). That's ok. I think I need to come back with fresh eyes.

I'm going to two art openings today. My first ones here. One is at CAP and the other at a gallery whose owner I've met. Familiar grounds and a good chance to practice my art opening small talk in Japanese. As I mentioned above, though, I'm not exactly in top form. I'm not really in the mood to be alive, let alone socialize and talk art in Japanese. Exhausting.