i return !!

October 17th, 2023.

song otd; you didn't see - andy shauf

holy fuck i remember how html works. almost exactly 7 months since my last entry here lmao.

life is decent! in my first apartment, doing a lot of schoolwork and maniacally hunting down a job. trying to find one without a car is genuinely one of the most soul wrenching agonizing experiences of my life. i got realliy lucky getting my last job, but this time i'm going through it a bit. i feel confident about one in particular though!

trying to get work done with creative stuff too, as you can see with the site revival lmao. i feel like i have a bit of a battery in my back for once. usually it dies out after 3 days or so but heres to hoping i can preserve this drive for as long as it can be.

it just feels really good to be fully settled down now. the entirety of last year was such constant back and forth between home and college and it was exhausting. it's very reassuring to finally have a place where i have my own room, and know that when it's time for summer or other school breaks that i don't have to pack up all my stuff with me again. living with my gf is also a blessing. having a ton of fun making food for her pretty much everyday lol. pretty wild to think that i'm just now actually living the part of my life that you kind of just daydream about when ur growing up.

just realized i also said "battery in my back" in another one of these posts, but i don't care !! that's it for this post though, just a little update to accompany the site revival lmao. i also wanna get around to putting more stuff on the music blog, i had a ton of fun doing my post about that maxo album. anything after that will probably be a lot shorter and more concise though. art is a given too, hoping to put up more of that.

i'm really excited to finally in a place where i have the time to maintain this site ^^ i hope it comes to b a place more ppl can keep up with, assuming i keep up with it myself. until next time :3

a breather

March 16th, 2023.

song otd; i hope you really love me - the family circle

i finally have a fucking break! it's honestly kind of weird to not have any schoolwork. the whole quarter i've thought the second break starts i would just be so excited to start working on personal stuff but i think i've realized that i need to be able to let myself actually relax. lately i've been trying to play elden ring to let myself just let myself let myself get distracted by it fully, but even when i play it's hard to fully get rid of the thoughts in the back of my mind that i'm wasting time i could be drawing or writing or adding to the website.

smoking helps with that at least, i feel like it amps up whatever neurodivergency i have and makes me get hyperfocused on whatever i'm doing so that i can actually get fully lost in the thing for once.

as long as i don't treat that as the solution though, it's still just a bandaid until i genuinely find ways to make the issue more managable. i think another factor going into me not wanting to be super creative right now is the fact that one of my classes this quarter was such a work heavy drawing class, so honestly i just need to let myself take drawing easy for however long i need.

on the bright side though! this website doesn't need to adhere to the restrictions of the class i was originally making it for! i don't even know if i'm gonna get a good grade on it, cause i was supposed to have it be a boring modern layout with like sticky navbars and shit. would very gladly sacrifice a grade to make something actually cool though.

gonna try to keep my optimism up as much as possible! official goal for this break is to just be nicer to myself :0

ups, downs; ?

March 7th, 2023.

song otd; wooden nickels - mach-hommy

it's really tiring to be an artist. i know, hot take !! but it's just really demoralizing sometimes. in fact it's demoralizing most of the time for a lot of artists. it's a really fucked up concoction of the way social media gamifies our concept of success and the confusing concepts non artists have of what it means to be an artist.

it's really hard !! because the thing is, first of all a lot of the time people do want to be artists, but the first hurdle is not even knowing what that looks like when it comes to having it be your job. when you're a kid it's not like you're ever told what being an artist even means, it's so broad, and along with that all of the people telling you what you should do are probably beyond out of touch non artists saying you should do things like getting a comic strip in your local paper to somehow pay all of your living expenses.

it takes a huge amount of faith in yourself to apply yourself fully to artistic dreams sometimes because the vast majority of things you do are just a losing dice roll. it can add a really pressing level of stress to your life sometimes. if you're posting art trying to build an audience and nothing is popping off, it's discouraging. as much as we would like to ignore the numbers we tie to our online presences, we do have to pay attention to them. if you're somebody wanting to take commissions but aren't getting any offers, every passing second that you don't get an offer can feel like a losing dice roll. the rise of ai art bros don't really help either, but i really don't want to think about them right now.

the stress of all of that can really take its toll, and sometimes it really gets to me. it can be incapacitating at times, preexisting anxiety and depression don't help though lol. i think recently was the first time that stress has really manifested in a way where i wasn't able to brush it under the rug and i realized how much of it i've let build up passively and deem an "acceptable amount".

i think though, that i've finally began to break through that a little bit and learn ways to manage it more. along with that, i had somebody really fucking cool reach out to me today for an offer that kind of felt like a dream come true. it feels surreal, crossing my fingers that it plays out well so you guys can actually see what it is at some point, but the offer alone was honestly enough to put a battery in my back.

im not even sure what my point here is exactly. i think i just want to say that being an artist is really fucking hard and that it's important that we as artists acknowledge it more widely and that we lift each other up when we need it.

as much as you can, do not stop creating. celebrate the act of creating as much as you can. fuck ai art, the reason we create is so much more important than to pump out end results that are only deemed "content". remind each other how much what we do matters<3

first entry!

March 6th, 2023.

holy shit yay i finally have a website. and it wasn't made with squarespace or anything. welcome welcome welcome!

for the blog section i think i'm planning on using it just as a journal type thing and a place to do little art tips. follow me on twitter to know when updates are made, or just check in often :D