making a minute a moment

(ʘ ‿ ʘ) Horn player, bookworm, artist, writer, future linguist, professional procrastinator. More of a dreamer than a sleeper. I try to post a song every day. Due to the unfortunate rise of DMCA takedown notices being sent to many music sharers of Tumblr (that is to say, the music industry effectively shooting itself in the foot), I will only ever post music through Soundcloud, Youtube, or Spotify (but my music tag will still lead to posts that have not yet been deleted). My artblog is deseart (I don't update it very much). Other links:   ask   |   my junk   |   music   |   short films   |   [ + ] body, a, a:hover { cursor:url('http://www.dolliehost.com/dolliecrave/graphics/cursors-all/animals21.gif'), auto }

[thirty-second-note]

sending out echoes

Hi, hello.. is anyone still around? 

I’m doing great. At the best point in my twenty-somethings, so far. I don’t want to jinx it, but I couldn’t have imagined where I’d be only two years ago. College feels so far behind me but it’s really still only three miles away, firmly planted on the side of a hill among the redwoods.

23 felt like the safe padding between “student” and “adult” stage, and I was almost sad to leave it behind. Yet I have so much to look forward to. I’m a lead artist and manager, and, according to my boss, a Spreadsheet Queen. I also sell children’s books at my local indie bookshop when the weather turns cold. I have a wonderful partner (we’re about to make the next huge step). And I have or am soon going to have things that seem to exist on all Checklists for Real Adults: A car. A nice (seasonal but salaried) paycheck. My own (rented) place. Also the small but meaningful milestones since leaving academia: purchasing my own bike and learning how to ride it. Creating a mini-comic that was instrumental in bringing a famous graphic novelist to my bookshop for the first time. Getting my wisdom teeth removed. Finally taking driving lessons this year to alleviate my fear (car accidents are still my second biggest fear, sandwiched between earthquakes and spiders). Opening up potential directions for my future. So many things are falling into place, not without the help of some really awesome people. I’m content. It’s like reaching into myself and realizing I don’t have any holes that need mending and everything is balanced and weighted just right. How quiet my demons have been. How calm the sea. 

Of course, there are still things I’m only intermittently good at, like feeding myself better and drinking more water and using sunscreen and sleeping earlier. I had a health scare last May that I’m still paying off in medical bills. My eyesight is definitely getting worse. My back aches in ways my college self was oblivious to. I’m feeling the urgency in finding a way to acquire healthcare two years from now. I read less than I want to and draw less than I plan to, but it’s also due to the fact that I listen to politics way more than I listen to music these days. I’m slowly unearthing The Hidden Life of Trees at the moment, and if I were more science-minded this book could propel me to becoming a botanist (but alas, I only read for the magic of it, not hard numbers). 

My parents are coming down in less than 7 hours to visit me and enjoy their time off. This will be the second time in the six years I’ve lived here that they will be coming down to visit, for no other reason than to hang out and have fun, rather than to help me move or watch me graduate. That means a lot, because they work their asses off and they deserve this but I can only hope I can show them that I’ve grown up a bit. 

I guess this is a belated birthday post. I’m not sure what compelled me to come back to tumblr, but I managed to guess my password on the third try and figured I’d leave an update. Happy 24th year, self.

[marceloleary]

Here’s a painting test I did yesterday.  I’m really pleased with it!  It’s a technique I’ve been talking about using for a long time- using acrylic with digital inks.  I really want to use it more.

The character is from Ghost Town, a comic Mathilde made last year.  It’s about a young woman who discovers an old, abandoned town in the hills (inspired by the gold-rush era of America).  Each night she wakes up in the town as it was in it’s prime, interacting with the citizens there as they were long ago.  She hasn’t put it online yet, but she really should.  It’s great!

[marceloleary]

Hey!  Mathilde keeps reminding me to post things online, so here’s some dancing!  I’m enjoying these, so I’ll probably do more.  Using brushpens and black markers!

[salamispots]

Reached 1,000 followers recently thank you for all the love everyone

[thirty-second-note]

A Simplified Guide To The Sexualities

Homosexual: sexual attraction to houses and other building like structures.

Heterosexual: an undying lust for Macklemore.

Asexual: attraction to any and all things beginning with the letter A.

Pansexual: a desire for pots, pans, and other kitchen utensils.

Polysexual: sexual attraction to polygons.

Bisexual: Attraction to the 9th century Chinese army officer Bi Shiduo.

Demisexual: Never ending love of demi lovato

[willow]

i think its important to shut the fuck up sometimes

[h0odrich]

My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you’ve been mean to someone they won’t believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it’s time to stop being nice, then destroy them.

Laurell K. Hamilton (via h0odrich)

[girlsuggestion]

don’t do SHIT for a boy. don’t shave for a boy. don’t fake your interests for a boy. don’t leave school for a boy. don’t lose weight for a boy. and don’t cry for a boy. the world is full of boys but there is only one of you.

[catbuddy-deactivated20161201]

anyone else have that classic middle school experience™ where you lost a nice pen and you saw someone else using it a day later and they’d never used it before so you asked them where they got their pen and they hesitated but then they said “from my house” and you didn’t have any evidence so you couldn’t accuse them of stealing it from you but you always knew deep down

[pornstarch]

why do cats run through the house like they forgot to pull their dinner rolls out of the oven

[ofsparrows]

I thought it was a bit mean of Millais to forever immortalise The Blind Girl in a painting surrounded by things she wouldn’t have been able to enjoy, so I drew her having a bit more fun.

(fullsize | curlicue brushes by ro_stock)

[ofsparrows]

Dear diary, I still don’t know how to mountain (or tree, or waterfall). Send help. Studies from photos, as always, although the first one no longer resembles the original.

[thirty-second-note]

Gorgeous!!

[ofsparrows]

Summer twitter doodles ☁

[thirty-second-note]

inspiring!

[ofsparrows]

Look. I know a slightly chewed up flower isn’t quite on par with those brandy barrels alpine rescue dogs purportedly have, but someone might need an emergency flower or something. It could happen.

[terezasuniverse]

You can’t spend the best years of your life waiting for somebody to love you back.

8pm thoughts (via sisterly)

[reginaldsquivmem]

The Staying Philosophy

This piece by Isa Garcia is exactly what I needed. I hope this will help whoever needs it as well.

—

In one particular episode of Veronica Mars, Kristen Bell, who plays the show’s leading lady (um, Veronica) says something that I always believed to be quite poignant. Sitting in her bedroom, she turns to her sheriff dad, Keith, and says: “The hero is the one that stays.”

This particular quote became my life motto for most of my college life. But almost four years have passed since CW’s cancellation of the show and I find myself questioning the worth I once placed in (what I’d like to call) the staying philosophy.

At 23, I’m starting to believe that it’s unhealthy to take leaving against one another.

Because leaving does not always mean betrayal. And I think that, sometimes, we’re not particularly afraid of losing people. What we’re really afraid of is having to learn to do life without them. Because, ultimately, we are creatures  of habit and comfort.

One day not far from today, that just might be our demise.

Because the world is changing and we are changing, all the time, forever and ever. And, sometimes, by holding on too hard, we lose.

And loss can be ugly, beautiful, scary or all of the above but I have found that it is, more than anything, necessary.

When we say things like ‘people don’t change,’ it drives scientists crazy. Because change is literally the only constant in all of science. Energy, matter, it’s always changing. Morphing, merging, growing, dying. It’s the way people try not to change that’s unnatural. The way we cling to the things that were, instead of letting them be the way they are. The way we cling to old memories instead of making new ones. The way we insist on believing, despite every scientific indication, that anything in this lifetime is perfect. Change is constant. The way we experience change, that’s up to us. It can feel like death, or it can feel like a second chance at life. If we open our fingers, loosen our grips, go with it, it can feel like pure adrenaline. Like at any moment, we can have another chance at life. Like at any moment, we can be born all over again. (Grey’s Anatomy)

So when people leave, I’ve learned the secret: let them. Because, most of the time, they have to.

Let them walk away and go places. Let them have adventures in the wild without you. Let them travel the world and explore life beyond a horizon that you exist in. And know, deep down, that heroes aren’t qualified by their capacity to stay but by their decision to return.

All great people leave.

And, yes. One day, a great person just might leave you.

But our lives are made of revolving doors and for every person who leaves, a new person enters. Not as a replacement but as a completely new character in the ever-evolving story of your life.

When you leave, you begin to understand the worth of what you walked away from. You discover that walking out is not always equivalent to closing doors. Sometimes it means leaving them half-open for the journey back. It is not a virtue possessed by the easily contented. It has always been the beaten down path of the brave.

One fine day, it will be your turn. You will leave homes, cities and countries to pursue grander ambitions. You will leave friends, lovers and possibilities for the chance to roam the world and make deeper connections. You will defy your fear of change, hold your head high and do what you once thought was unthinkable: walk away. And it will be scary. At first. But what I hope you’ll find in the end is that in leaving, you don’t just find love, adventure or freedom. More than anything, you find you.

Maybe the truth is that Veronica was wrong all along. It’s the coward who is the one that stays.

“I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change because it is God’s way.I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near dear friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to recognize and cherish and preserve the things and people in my life that I have kept coming back to no matter how far I have gone. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.And my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you, about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around dear friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it?

It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out. I want to repeat one word for you: Leave. Roll the word around on your tongue for a bit. It is a beautiful word, isn’t it? So strong and forceful, the way you have always wanted to be. And you will not be alone. You have never been alone. Don’t worry. Everything will still be here when you get back. It is you who will have changed" (Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God, and Beauty on the Open Road)

[seattlegracegifs]