#personal progression

[severalspeciesofdogs]

In the past months I've been keeping track of what small changes I'd like to make or correct, like fixing my posture, and what I've noticed is that once that change is made, you don't get to reap the tangible benefits of a physical accomplishment. I just have better posture and don't remember what it was like having worse posture and can't mark down a "May 20, 2020: Posture is corrected."

Another example I want to give for the sake of giving one is working on my handwriting. At what point do/did I stop focusing on changing what my a's and i's look like? Would it have even been worth my time to devise some sort of quantity of mistakes, as much as I would have enjoyed doing so?

Its been a conflict for me: I enjoy my progress being so specifically quantified, but something changing so gradually, immeasurable by my own abilities, isn't something I can keep reasonably on a scoreboard or a notepad. I suppose the lesson here could be that progress can sometimes be made for the sake of progress with out some great reward.

Would I ever have improved beyond my own personal idea for adequacy? I struggle with the idea I cannot communicate my thoughts to people but several times (on this website, by my therapist, by a recent job offer), I was told its a strong suit of mine. Will I just grow better at communicating? Can I do that? Is self improvement a self-sustaining carrot-and-stick I've created for myself?

[nonstop-nostalgic]

What I want right now: To throw my phone into the sea and set off on my own; no emails, messages, texts, calls to answer. Just me and the open road ahead of me. No one to distract or detract from the purity unfolding around me, no one to question me or my actions. Time to myself to truly understand the beast inside, more complex than galaxies and endless space around our little planet - so paramount to us but yet so insignificant in the big picture of things - just like us individuals living in a broken society. And on my journey, I would hope to meet others simultaneously writing their story, and then we could write our next chapters together. 

[x-fliesenleger-x]

I was outside wandering around jamming to the tunes, I just came in and hung my robe then sat down and pulled my double layer hoody off over my head, you know like you normally would,

Well before today I couldn't do the over head I needed to do the sleeve tuck,

The past couple weeks I have been really doing a number on my shoulder, I had a couple injuries on it starting when I was 4-5,

Early 80's had the old external wringers with two rolling rough rubber pins, kinda like the marble ones for baking, well, I was doing what I shouldn't of been and told not to do but me being me was mesmerized by the rollers, I use to play very dangerously, so many scars, so as you might finger out a finger grazing the roller like a surfer riding a wave till the finger catches both rollers at once, pulled to my shoulder, no emergency break, no child safety, hell I probably created so many of those safety revisions, I could escape a jolly jumper ffs, that's why I always wanted a straight jacket, I wanted a challenge,

So not only do I play around with the wroner once, I had to play around a couple years later, at least this one had the side quick release " in case "clothing" jammed in the rollers"

Mmmhmmm

If I was using my other hand when playing with them again I could of released it myself, but no same arm,

Move on to school when I was in elementary and bulling and tossed around, I am sure a couple knots are still in there, the bad incident was getting sandwiched playing football wearing no gear, the guys dropped me on the spot when they connected,

Given the past couple weeks I have been living with a dislocated shoulder 🤣

Never ever had X-rays there "specificly" I probably got 90% of the rest done 😏

Yeah I push this meat suit to its limits and there again, fuck it, I found out and I'll fuck around again,

Just wait till the lower back is worked out and I pull them trapped nerves, ugh just got nauseous thinking of it,

Horror and gore 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It's tragic so I laugh because I ran out of tears,

Hmmmmm

I wonder if that's how I filled my well, from all the tears I shed and into the ground they bled

With nature embrace and her loving grace where there was sorrow her roots took place

Now I have the well and spring, I am now delighted when I hear the birds sing

Rolling back to my shoulder, today was the first time in over 30+ years I could pull over my head, I needed to break out all of my old injuries,

The one thing that's stuck with me since I had my hand dislocated on that arm when I was ran into by someone driving a golf cart,

Kid you not, my life has been one turmoil after another, what truck is it, "tried tested and true"

Yeah I eat that for school snacks, ye seen my truck(s)

🤣

Sorry, (Canadian sorry btw), slipped off the rails 😜

No pain no gain, that finally applied, for when you want to gain strength you resistance train whereas if you want to bulk or convert you lift, the pain forced the mind to build more muscles so you can bench a bajezus pounds but can't wipe your ass, no judgment, I just winter how you reach?!? 😂😂

Maybe I can play the guitar better not I'll have to tune her up and see how Incan strum,

I'm not 100% but definitely 90-95

It's good to see your progress when putting f in the work, I spent over two years stretching and massaging, it was a lot of work and now the progression is paying off,

It's like Pinhead from hellraiser, every pin hurts the exact same so the pain doesn't go away till they are all gone but with the ones removed it does feel so much better, the amount of relief I am experiencing is nothing have ever felt in this life time, when I last saw my doctor in 2023, my body was still in complete hyper spasm, most of my muscles were "engaged" even at rest,

Every waking moment was a 7 on the pain scale when I moved it spiked to 9, 9.5-10 you pass out, I can pull my own tooth out and only need to shake it off, I know it shocks people because it still shocks me that I am tolerating so much unknowingly,

My breath is probably x4 what it was during my last check up,

The cocoon broke I am a butterfly, you know what I mean, no? Ohh let me remind you

[severalspeciesofdogs]

Joke about Stardate I didn’t Research Enough to Make

Everything has been kind of fluctuating this week. I wrote down all of the bad but not much of the good because I think that overshadows.

I realized this week that I’ve made all these changes to myself in the past months I’ve been home and while I’m proud of myself, I feel like nothing has changed in terms of how I view myself. I still feel behind everything and everyone I want to work toward.

I feel like everything and everyone around me is moving forward and I’m stuck stagnating and watching people enjoy their lives and go forward. I think that my distance from Long Island the past few years has separated me from my friends here and I feel like an outcast. I’m afraid the same would happen with wanting to go back to Buffalo.

The idea that I'm going to wake up and be somewhere I don't want to be is my greatest fear right now. It’s been almost a year at this point and I feel like there’s been very little forward movement towards where I want to go.

I think it’s likely that what I’m going through is a symptom of me “shopping at the wrong stores.” I’ve ruined the original context of what was said by writing a short quote and not ruminating on it. If I remember right it’s about me not looking for the social interaction I need in the right places. I need to search outward in order to find something better. I can’t wait on all of the “what ifs” and just get out in the world.

I’m working towards what I want but the frustration is coming from that it all may be for waste or useless in the hands of others. I have to start proactively contacting people and maintaining friendships and not isolating myself from what I assume is disinterest. That assumption is possibly what is isolating me so severely.

Lastly, I need to be the one to lift myself up and tell myself that what I’m doing is adequate or that I’m worth anything.

[md3artjournal]

Now this was very relavent for me today.  Maybe it was just this weekend's bout of depression talking, but ever since I stopped sketching tigers for Inktober, it's become painful for me to check out what ever one else in doing on the Inktober tag.  Today I even decided that I should just stop looking at other people's stuff.

It's so weird, because I was PROUD of the stuff I had managed to accomplish for Inktober so far.  And it's my first Inktober, so I'm pretty impressed that I've been able to even just draw _something_ each and every single day, unbroken, so far.  I beat all my midnight posting deadlines, even if it was just by a few minutes a couple of times.  

So why did I feel so bad now?  Well, there's my depression, but there's something else too.  I KNOW that I should be comparing myself only to my past self, and that MY progress and CONTINUING to progress, are the only things I should be thinking about.  I grew up too much martial arts anime to think/feel/believe otherwise.  So why was I reflexsively comparing myself to others in the Inktober tag now?  

I think my problem is less the fact that everyone is so good and "oh I could never be that good" or anything.  It's more that some subconscious part of me was *looking* for (external) somethings better to compare myself to, to JUSTIFY all my hidden self-doubts and hopelessness I ALREADY had in myself.  

Because I know my personal art goals and the progress I want to make, and I know when my progression is stalling.  I've been drawing animals all this time, and I like animals, and my sketches look good.  But that's because I'm sketching from photos.  That means there's an "objective" "correct answer" for the work I've been producing.  It's all simple "yes/no" answers and "simple" goals.  Not that I'm craving difficulty, but knowing I'm only doing well because I shot for the low bar, isn't really as impressive as when I look at all  the original illustrations that everyone else is doing for Inktober.  I mean, sure I could copy a photo and make it look photorealistic, but drawing a cartoon or something from your own imagination is much more impressive.  ...Only because that was what I WANTED to be able to do.  ...But I can't seem to get it right.  I never can.  ;_;  I even started collecting anime figures so I could draw unreal characters with stylization and still look good (realistic volumes, weights, lightings, etc.), and it still sucks when I do it.  Or maybe, the only reason my tiger and anime sketches look good, is because humans are only hard-wired to discern minute uncanny vallies in human subjects, so all the mistakes I make in sketching animals simply don't get caught (so easily) by the typical human brain.  The problem is that my real goal isn't to draw animals.  Even tigers, are just a subject I latched onto because I was too inadequate to draw my favorite character Sanada Yukimura, the "Tiger Cub of Kai".  I can't draw humans, but all the characters and scenes in my head that I want to make tangible, are humans.  ;_;  I know that I should practice drawing real life / photos of humans, but my social anxiety makes staring at humans for long periods so distasteful to me.  x~~~~~~~~x;  (Back in the day, I couldn't even look in mirrors for too long.)  So how do I reach my goal of drawing human characters, when I hate looking at realistic humans?  

Well, truthfully, I don't want to learn to draw photorealistic humans.  I hate realism.  I want to draw stylized characters from anime, videogames, and other fandoms that bring me joy.  (Sometimes, the only joy in my life.)  I collected a bunch of books and some Tumblr posts that focus more on the generalized realistic traits of human anatomy, like proportions, muscle groups, joint positions, etc., vs just drawing photo after photo of real life humans, until I just somehow, magically "get a sense" of real life human anatomy traits.  Just tell me the body landmarks!  Don't just sit from your high towers, telling me to just emmerse myself in sketching humans until I "pick up the jist of it"!  It's like getting dumped in full emmersion into another language, without just being taught the grammar and vocabulary.  It's ridiculous.  And maybe self-discovery better embeds learning new information into the brain (otherwise, we wouldn't have the Socratic Method), but I can't afford that full emersion into photorealistic human images.  Not with my social anxiety.  You know how most girls fill their bedrooms with photos of friends?  I could not stand that.  Ever.  That's how bad my psychological reaction is to looking at real life humans.  I don't even watch live action movies or series, if I can help it.  I just can't look at real life people as a drawing reference source for hours and days...And maybe that aversion to the one drawing prescription I was taught, is the reason I was feeling all this hopelessness in ever learning to draw or be able to draw my goals of human anime characters.  

Alright.  It's clear now.  I just have to focus on making cheat sheets and compiling research.  Body landmarks, learning the necessary anatomy, gathering all my sources into one spot and practicing those.  That's what I'll do instead of Googling a bunch of real life people photos and sketching them.  Because, no matter how "good" I could make sketching of real life humans, they'll never be encouraging, if every time I look at a realistic humans, it makes me feel sick to my stomach---even if I proved capable of producing such a sketch.  Ok.  I think I know what I have to do.  What I have to focus on to reach my goal and no longer feel so hopeless, even when I look at how good other people are.  I can focus on my own progress again.  

[joe-bungey]

In preparation for my Carpentry and Joinery apprenticeship interviews I displayed all my current projects that I created throughout the year onto A2 boards. These summarised the main aspects of the work I produced and this would help me show employers my creative thinking, how I used problem solving skills to produce art and design. This would also help me present the skills I learnt not only in terms of creative problem solving but the materials and processes that I used to create these different outcomes.

The top two boards for the Kilve and Synoptic projects I placed more emphasis on presenting the outcomes (using more pictures) because they displayed my abilities in using wood. Describing aspects such as my use of joinery, choice of wood, cutting and finishing details such as how I sanded/varnished wood. These would help show my practical skills which is what I feel an employer would like see within the Carpentry and Joinery role.

The two bottom boards included other projects I created showing my thinking and creative problem solving. This would be effective in conveying the thinking as to how I would research, test out and then solve a brief or clients needs in a final outcome(s). These would be taken to the apprenticeship interviews thus which I would use these to talk about my work, my creative problem solving skills as well as my practical skills.

[mikeholdher]

I feel like I got away from Chivalry real quick.

I know I joke alot all the time but I feel like I got away from the Chivalry Isn't Dead part of this blog. The concept being that it's trying to keep my sanity and chivalry in a world were pretty much everyone I know lost their respect for people. I've learned so much shit over these passed couple of days and no one had the joy of even hearing about it. So what you can expect is just more me. The crazy girls I have to deal with, style tips, writing, of course there is alcohol involved, and no Drakin' and driving. Like they said he may have you end up at your ex's house. You may just get a laugh out of the stupid shit that I do sometimes.