welcome to my journal! these are mostly nonsensical entries rambling about my life. they have been indexed for your convenience!
12/18/24 note: changed wording from blog to journal because journal feels more personal and these entries feel pretty personal lol.
dec 18 2024
i'm back home in mexico after my third semester of art school! all i've been thinking about is how crazy it is that time has been passing by so quickly. things change but they're exactly the same. most everything back home is as i left it. weird time capsule i guess.
i don't want to lose my momentum re: art so i'm trying to convince my mom to go to figure drawing sessions with me. i'm wondering maybe going to events and classes will let me make like, actual friends back home because it gets pretty lonely. i've been considering calling someone i briefly saw back during my junior spring break because he's the only person here i'd even want to see but things between us are. weird. well it's entirely my fault but still.
the thing about him is that he's good at glazing over things but it makes me feel even worse!! where's your rage! where's your anger! rise! the only time i ever saw him get mad was during a group project where we disagreed with some girl we were working with and he literally took my phone and cussed her out in voice memo. and this was in middle school. i miss him a lot but i feel like i always take advantage of him and how nice he is. and also...cishet men just don't see me the way i'd like to be seen if that makes any sense.
i hope i can update the site more over break! it's pretty but i feel like it lacks substance. i don't want to clutter up my home page or any page with meaningless things but it makes things feel really empty doesn't it? what to do...my eyesight has been getting really bad lately so i've been prioritising readability above like everything in every website i'm on which translates to mine. mom and i are looking into getting me eye surgery. it's that bad.
been having weird intense spikes of anxiety that hurt really bad which is! annoying! i know why and it's entirely my fault but i still wish it wouldn't happen because it physically hurts and makes me a little nauseous! gah.
friday we're flying to another state...i really like the food there so i'm looking forward to that! then we're coming back soon after. i've been developing a roleplay group for me and my friends and it's a monthlong ordeal and it's starting december 26th and im SO EXCITED. when there's events i'm really looking forward to i tend to completely discard entire days just waiting for them to end so i can do what i want to do quicker. so i've been trying to really ground myself in each day and do interesting stuff with my time and awareness so it doesn't feel like winter break ended quickly.
i wonder how much people can infer from me based on this site. i'm never sure how much i want to share. i kind of wonder if anyone reads these entries? if you do uh hi! thanks for sticking around!
been writing an old friend. i always have a lot of fun figuring out what to say in those emails. i miss them more than i'd like to.
nov 17 2024
my friend is big on validating others. we were talking about struggles of getting random pains and he said something like "life is hard especially when you're disabled" to which i answered yeah but i feel hesitant to even label myself that way because i'm not diagnosed with anything. and he said very fairly: "let me be very blunt. abled people do not have shit like this happen to them enough that a new kind of pain this intense is mostly a question of "what do i do to make it mend faster" rather than "what the hell why am i in pain"
i've always struggled with having a body that's simply not as functional as the rest, but there's also this kind of inkling in the back of my mind that i COULD be functional if i tried. that i'm just not trying hard enough and using my body as an excuse to not do things. even when i am struggling it still feels like i'm exaggerating things for pity and understanding. and maybe i am, i don't know, but the pain and the fatigue are real too. i feel bad asking for understanding and talking about my pain because it feels like i'm taking the space away from someone who's "actually disabled", even though, you know. merriam webster defines disabled as: impaired or limited by a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition." but i don't have any conditions. we saw a lot of doctors this summer and there wasn't anything clear. my blood test results looked great aside from a severe lack of vitamin D. x-rays looked fine. the books say i should be functioning fine. stellar.
but most of this weekend i've been near-bedridden by a sudden and awful pain on my upper back. i don't know what to do to make it better, and i've tried, and i'm just resigned that i have to wait it out and try and stretch more in the future. i'd been doing so well since the semester started that i guess i kind of forgot that i'm not, you know. at my physical prime.
i'm in a lot of pain and i wasn't able to clean the bathroom and put away the dishes like i normally do. and my roommates say it's fine but i feel really bad because, again, i don't know if others experience this type of pain too or if i'm just being dramatic. maybe i am. maybe i really am taking space and time and understanding away from people who actually need it. because sometimes i'm okay and other times i'm not.
this is a far grimmer entry than usual and i'm sorry about that!! it's just what's on my mind and i don't want to hassle anyone with having to read about it unless they want to. in better news i watched arcane, it's wonderful, it's heartwrenching. i got myself to draw fanart for it yesterday but i think it was to my detriment because today the pain extended to my lower back. so today i've been in bed except for a walk outside in the morning to get breakfast at a cafe i really like.
finals are coming up and all i can think of is how awful this timing is. i have to go out and shoot for photography and paint. how am i meant to do that if leaning over hurts so much? how am i meant to stay upright for that long to paint? i don't know. frida kahlo had easels installed on the ceiling on her bed after a bad accident so she could paint while laying down. i kinda get it. being forced into stasis is maddening. i want to do everything but i just want one second where all the pain i'm in right now fades away.
still going to class tomorrow though! and i'll try not to complain too hard. and maybe if i'm lucky it'll just go away on its own.
nov 11 2024
it's been a little bit TTwTT
i always find that i stop at things once i get to a satisfying stopping point even if it's not the end product! i'm just not good at committing. but today there's a lull in my schoolwork and i haven't had a chance to dump my thoughts out in a little bit :p
today i went to the studio early to work on finishing a landscape for my crit tomorrow. i wanted to do a place that meant something to me in hopes i could magically convey my emotions into my work but i'm just not that kind of person. i got an old friend of mine to send me a picture from the top of a hiking point in my first boarding school, because sometimes it feels like i'm still stuck there, but i can't remember the details anymore. i remember there was a specific way the kicked up dirt smelled when it was particularly dry but i don't remember it anymore. that sort of thing.
i did fine the first layer--blocking things out alla prima, but coming back to work on the details has me stumped. i have a rock in the foreground that i decided to use a palette knife on, and that looks great, but i simply can't figure out how to sharpen the trees, and that's not even getting started on the mountains. they're lightly washed over in a yellowish-blue and i don't know how to mix the color of the sun on the rocks with that light effect. bob ross does not tell you about that.
speaking of color mixing: for about a month now i've been prioritising only working with primary colors, and i think it's been really great for my work. i've gotten a lot of compliments on my colors looking very cohesive and i think that's entirely because of that limitation. i had a friend in high school who had like twenty tubes of different oil paint because he hated mixing colors but i think that really takes away from part of the joy of oil painting. you have to create your own shades and work with what you've already mixed, otherwise that magic fades away. and the person and i aren't talking much anymore so i can say i never liked the effect of paint straight from the tube: i really think it worsened his work.
been getting these strange 2-5 second dizzy spells that i can chalk down to my ssri withdrawal even though it's been a little bit (a month now? i didn't write down the wellbutrin start date). luckily that's the worst of my symptoms from switching from a med to the other which i'm REALLY grateful for. and i have been doing so much since wellbutrin. i've hobby-drawn eleven things and two of those are fully rendered scenes. i've been going back and perfecting old work. i painted a BOMB ASS still life. i archived the entirety of my work in a roleplay group. i really feel like a roadblock in my life was removed. i'm really grateful for that.
i had crit for that photo project i mentioned last week. i was really worried about it for a week leading up to it because i thought my interpretation of the prompt was a disaster but the crit wasn't bad at all. i can never tell when my professors aren't super mean to me if it's because my work is actually good or if it's because they think i can't improve on certain things. but there were 2-4 really strong photographs i want to put somewhere in this site, because i'm really proud of them. photography is such a complicated piece of artwork because it's both extremely hard and extremely simple. if you find a subject that's pretty enough you can elevate your photograph by a ton, but that means keeping an eye out. and what if your subject isn't pretty or interesting? how do you make your viewer appreciate it?
i read that real estate photography pays REALLY good if you stick with it though so that's my current backup plan. which means i gotta get better at photographing interior spaces!!!!
i really need a section to talk about only art in the website so it doesn't mix with my personal life. i guess that's how all artists are, huh? we all have to be at least a little self-centered. i love referring to myself as an artist, though. it's all i wanted since i was in elementary school. oil painting and photography and all my serious projects make me feel properly respected both by myself and my family. crazy!
one more month until the semester is over. it's been a really nice one and i think i've learned a lot, but i'm so not ready for the final crunch to start. luckily i might genuinely submit part of my neocities as a final assignment so it'll give me an excuse to devote more time into here? lol
been roleplaying a lot this week. feel really invigorated and excited to connect with other people again. super missed that feeling--think that's part of why i've been drawing so much!
hopefully i update quicker next time. and i REALLY gotta put things on that damn side bar.
oct 23 2024
wednesday is such a weird weekday. just in general.
i had fun exploring my city's architecture and taking pictures of it on saturday, but i realised that taking pictures of tall buildings is CRAZY HARD. you have to cross the street to do it and even then you can't capture the whole thing and it's all distorted and lord help you if there's people or cars. coincidentally my city had a parade in the street i was shooting in. that was insanely inconvenient.
but my roommate and i also got to discover the architectural wonders of a lot of buildings we pass by every day! turns out a building we have class in is a heritage monument in wikipedia? who would've thought...
i still have to edit the pictures however which i kind of dread because it's proof that they're not superb. i made the mistake of going in the afternoon without thinking of how light would hit the buildings and now i realise i totally should've gone in the early morning! less people and better light, but i have to get up early -_-
i plan to reshoot this weekend. i have to do more stuff for my class but i'm really determined to get these photos right above any assignment. i mean teachers always tell you to make things to build your portfolio right? it's such a weird assignment i'm having a hard time twisting my architecture pictures into things to fit it. i keep being worried that the teacher will say my subject matter is too narrow and my compositions are bland. that's the crit i got last time. i've always struggled with composition--conceptualising space in general has always been a challenge for me.
anyway. i've been more motivated than usual which feels really nice. picking up old projects and this! working on my site every day! i started this med hoping it'd make me draw more but the only thing it did was give me an interest in coding. what the hell....
tomorrow my roommates and i are going to a The Front Bottoms concert. it's gonna be the first concert of a band i listen to that i ever go to, so i'm excited and scared. we recently recovered from COVID so our immune systems are still not the best. i'm planning on masking. i really hope they play the songs whose lyrics i know because i think screaming would be super cathartic right now.
i had painting class today. we got to paint a live nude model! super exciting for me and my fixation on painting skin but dear god am i rusty doing figure drawing. i always make the heads so weird if i dont watch out. my philosophy going into drawing from life is always "convince the viewer that you're in the right." you can't draw the model to picture-perfect accuracy because they move and you move. the whole point is to compromise and work on it to make it look like it's right. at least that's how i see it.
anyway i had a blast even if i didn't know what i was doing. whenever i paint it's like something other than me possesses me sometimes. i go into automatic and i don't think about what i'm doing. i just do. i think that's the miracle of art and one of the greatest things to come from it.
but also: DID IT HAVE TO BE OIL PAINTING FOR ME???? it is SUCH. a HASSLE.
still though it's a beautiful medium and acrylic can't measure up to it. working with oil and its textures and scent and pigments is just such a pleasure. i love learning how to work alongside the paint instead of trying to bend it to my whims.
i also have been working with only primary colors to get better at color theory. so far so great!
the next thing i want to do in the site is make subsections for my different hobbies and passions so i can talk about them there because otherwise you get a really long rambling about oil painting here. the bad part is that i don't know if i want to upload any of my art just yet. i do big talk but i'm still not that experienced in oil paint.
ok this is really long i have more to say but this is getting extreme. if you read this i love you. ok goodnight!!
oct 19 2024
first of all, this week I've been switching from my previous antidepressant to wellbutrin.
i'd been meaning to do this for a while, but a switch a few years ago brought really bad psychological effects that I didn't want to repeat again. my body had built tolerance to my previous SSRI though and i'd been recommended wellbutrin before. i read that it works differently and helps with motivation and energy, which are my main problems, so i pitched it to my psychiatrist and managed to convince her to prescribe the switch. this was in late august. i've been putting it way off (until i ran out of my previous meds, actually).
i don't know if wellbutrin is fast-acting or i just got lucky, but i actually have a solid weekend plan that does not revolve around a school assignment but involves making art. if you don't know, wikipedia has an annual wiki loves monuments competition that revolves around taking pictures of historical and heritage monuments around the world. i live in an architecturally relevant area and am taking photography classes at school so i was already interested.
then i found out that this week, my city hosts an open house to architectural buildings. so i had to make a map. i wouldn't normally sign up for going around the city taking pictures of stuff but i felt genuine passion for what i was doing and what i will do (haven't yet, roommate is resting before we head out). and during class on friday too i was excited and eager to learn.
is it just a random surge of inspiration or the med switch? i'm not sure. i feel oddly fulfilled about it which i think is all i can ask for right now lol
i'm really passionate about archives and accessible documentation so people all over the world can look at things they're interested in online. some of these buildings barely have photos, or have really shitty ones (huge shoutouts and thank yous to the people who took pictures on the early wikipedia days though! it's the same user for all of the pictures). i'm going out with my nice fancy camera and i'll edit these pictures in post and i'll get detail shots. and if anyone cares about these buildings they'll be able to look at them clearly too. (not that anyone does, i think, because these buildings are kind of boring but you didn't hear it from me).
anyway. coincidentally i also have a photo assignment due on monday but instead of fretting about the prompt i'm going to do my own thing and twist the prompt to fit my projects. i think that's a way better way to do art school, even if i'm kind of worried i'll get flamed during crit.
i hope i can put up these photos somewhere in my site, but i'm worried they'd reveal my location too closely. i do want others to see them though. they're also like heavy files and i don't want to run out of my 1gb storage in three photos.
someday i'll add a proper photography section, though. i'm coding the site from scratch so it's uh. very bare bones. sorry about that.
oct 14 2024
yesterday i turned 20 years old, which is a pretty significant landmark in a life. it's your second decade and your first one as a full fledged adult. in some countries you get extra privileges to go along with this as well. i was sick for most of last week so my celebration was pretty dull. my roommates and i went to a bookstore. for the most part i was just sad. isn't that funny?
something about milestones always makes me sad. when i was younger i was convinced i wouldn't make it to adulthood, not because of myself but because there had to be some form of fate guiding me against it. i thought i was going to die in a plane crash to be honest with you. and i just accepted it. i wasn't scared of dying but it was kind of something i was sure about. but i turned 18 and nothing happened and, two years later, i'm still here.
to be honest i don't feel like i've aged a day over sixteen sometimes. everyone agrees because of covid but the reassurance doesn't make it any less weird. the older i get the more i accept the cards i've been dealt in life, good or bad. i think i'm shaping up to be a sad adult, which is totally okay! but i feel my whimsy leaving my body most days. it's nice to have a sound ambition and it's nice to accept my dreams are better off as hobbies. i'm lucky to go to art school, if anything, and i'm trying to stay pragmatic about my future career. isn't all that good? i hope my parents are proud of me.
i did cry close to midnight though. and during the day. and i was kind of annoyed at people for not reading my mind. i'm usually not this moody so it was even more annoying. WHY AM I MOODY DURING MY BIRTHDAY! etcetera etcetera etcetera.
there are a lot of things i wish for but most of them are pretty impossible. i had no cake to blow out candles with anyway. i didn't get a lot of presents. i miss my parents a lot. and my dog. i live with a cat and he's kind of annoying sometimes.
i'm grateful, though, that i'm not falling apart and that my ambitions and desires are falling into place. i feel put together, and i'm willing to sacrifice a little bit of extreme happiness for it. nothing feels nicer than knowing you have a steady way to feel and a steady path to head to.
adulthood is boring like that i guess! i hope i'm not sick when i turn 21 so i can do something fun. i hope to be well and i hope to be happy.