*dusts off dA journal*

Long time, no journal post and few art posts. You might be wondering why. Well, there are many reasons why, but one of them is that I seem to have developed the beginning symptoms of carpal  tunnel syndrome. Sometimes, I don't have any symptoms for a while and suddenly, I start drawing and it's back in ten minutes. The last time I drew a little something, every five minutes, my fingers would go numb and I'd have to shake it out. The next day, I'd wake up several times, each time with one of my hands numb. Then they'll feel swollen all day. Not cool. It's really annoying, irritating, and frustrating. It shows up mostly when I draw or when I drive. It can be connected to rheumatoid arthritis, which my mom has the early stages of; RA's genetic and while I'm too young to have it now, I could end up with it in the future. I'm not really sure what to do about this aside from sleeping with a wrist brace from time to time since I'm too poor to afford insurance.

I have no shortage of ideas, but I'm just reluctant to start anything large for fear of the CTS symptoms starting in. I didn't have CTS symptoms until last summer and I'm inclined to think it's because of my job. I work at a party store where one of our biggest selling items are balloons and sometimes my fingers go numb when tying them. I've worked there a little over two years now and I hate it, but I'm not having any luck currently in my search for something else.

(I hate balloons, by the way. HATE HATE HATE. They're useless and unnecessary.)