First Post! I am only mildly terrified!

Hi, Steemit! This...this is scary. I have no idea why, since I've been blithely prolific on who knows how many websites, but I only know one person on Steemit, and so this seems scary. But I'm pushing through and making the first post, and hopefully that'll break the ice for me.

My name is Rachel. Here's my favorite picture of myself for reference:

That lion hat is for fashion AND function, by the way. I get earaches in the wind and the desert is windy. It serves a most noble purpose.

Anyway. Life is long, and I'm not sure which personal facts about me are going to be relevant for this audience. Here are 10 of the most salient:

I am mentally ill, with bipolar disorder. Misdiagnosed as depression at 17, and my first psychotic break was at 22. It has been hell. But it makes you very grateful for the good days, and that's nothing to sniff at. I also have markers for PTSD due to sexual abuse in adolescence. I will likely blog on coping with that, because even after 10 years, I'm still learning things, and I would have loved to have more support and counsel back when I was really in the darkest bit of it.

I love art. LOVE IT. It lends life meaning. I play music, write poetry, and paint, in that order, and hopefully I'll just be spamming all my art on here, since it's the one thing I never mind sharing with the world.

• Musically speaking, I play mostly acoustic jazz and folk for myself, although I play bass in a classic rock cover band. Laura Marling, Counting Crows, Billie Holiday, Julie London, and The Killers are probably my top five favorite artists.

• I write mostly free verse, although I love working with form and have done haikus, sonnets, terza rima, you name it. Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, and certain poems of Billy Collins can always punch me in the gut.

• I took up painting about two years ago, so I'm not really honed on anything stylistically. I do mostly abstracts, I love working with color and texture more than shape. I love Klimt, Francis Bacon, and I'm lucky to have a lot of acquaintances that do really amazing work, so that's inspiring.
  Here's a smattering of art I've done.

I'll be honest, I'm not really sure in what direction this blog will go. I've done comedy blogs with moderate success, and I love comedy blogging, and doing absurdist rants, but I also have enough specific interests that I could take it in a more content-specific direction, like finally putting my Comparative Literature degree to use. I honestly don't know. But in any case, I'll try to make it worth your while. Thanks for reading!