bouncymischa

So far I haven't done very well at being more active this year.  There have been times I sat down to do some random doodling, and I've got some half completed sketches.... but not much I felt I could post.  There's been a lot of different sources of stress over the past few months, which is probably one of the things making it difficult... but I still feel like one of my biggest problems is the difficult I feel in actually coming up with ideas for things to do.  I wish I was better at nurturing the occasional idea that comes to mind... maybe there are tools that I can use to help with the brainstorming process.  At one point, I think I'd just randomly write down ideas in notebooks I carried around, sometimes just stream of consciousness stuff.  I should do that again.

The past couple of days, though, I've come across some various transformation stories that I absolutely loved reading -- I loved many of the ideas, and the details that were provided... they felt so rich and intruiging to read.  I've occasionally written TF stories, although I've never posted any -- I think the only stories I've really posted were the Desire tournament ones.  I've talked with a friend recently about getting back into writing.... but seeing these wonderfully-written stories currently has me feeling more motivated to give it a try.  I just find myself facing down the same bugbear as I do with my drawing -- ideas about exactly what I would do.  It feels a little easier to dance around with writing, because I think I can take an idea and run with it more... but there still feels like a bit of a chasm before me.

Still, thinking about it... if there's one thing I've learned lately, it's that just thinking about something isn't enough.  It's far better to actually act...

Just some random thoughts this morning.

I realized this morning I hadn't thanked people for all of the birthday wishes yet, so I figured I should sit down and write a journal to keep those who were wondering abreast of how things have been going.... although I'm in a rather introspective mood so it might end up having a rather melancholy tone.

Firstly, I do what to thank everyone for the birthday wishes... I'm a little surprised so many people follow this account...   Particularly since I haven't been very good at posting things.  Despite the desires I expressed in my last journal, I largely failed at my efforts at being more active in drawing and posting things.  I've been trying to make a better effort with the start of this year, but it's still something of a struggle.

My personal situation is unfortunately rather worse than it was this time last year.  A lot of things happened over the course of the year, some of them good, and some of them bad.  At the moment, my financial situation is pretty precarious, as I lost the steady job I had last year and my savings have been depleted.  I've got some supports in place for now, but things still feel pretty uncertain.  What's worse is that I've started to feel creatively stagnant, as I look back over the past couple of years and feel that I haven't really been able to accomplish much with transformation art or stories.  I rarely can seem to come up with new ideas, and can bring them to fruition even less... and it's gotten particularly frustrating at times when I see other people accomplish that, bringing to life ideas I wish I could have.  My depression has also gotten a lot worse over the past few months, particularly in the way I obsess about certain things.  I suspect it's tied to the lack of accomplishment I feel... at the moment, I feel very empty inside, with nothing to really support or encourage myself with.  I have distractions I can use to divert myself, but at the end of the day I don't have much to push myself forwards with.

So I'm still trying to push forwards with my art... the characters I've created and the ideas I have been able to realize are still one of the things that make me happiest.  I just feel I need to figure out how to get those rusty creative wheels turning again, so I can actually get more done...

Okay, so I've been pretty bad about being regular with journal updates in the past... so as part of trying to be more active on DA this year, I've been considering posting at least the occasional journal with some of the thoughts or background details regarding some of my characters.  Would anyone be interested in reading that sort of thing? XD

It's been almost two years since I last wrote a journal entry, so I figured I should at least take the time to thank everyone that wished me a happy birthday, whether here or elsewhere.

My birthdays are usually a rather depressing time for me, because it's always a time where I become painfully aware that I've gotten yet another year older, with very little to show for it all. At least this year I've had a couple of successes I can look back upon -- I've been able to finally achieve a measure of financial solvency, with my student loans finally paid off and some money actually saved up in the back, so I'm not living paycheque to paycheque. I've also had some success with my efforts in modding video games, with a couple of well-received mods and at least some progress made in learning about things like Blender.

Still, it was a bit disappointing to go through some of my files recently and realize that several of the pictures I feel most proud of here are a couple of years old, now.  I still haven't been nearly as active in drawing and writing as I wish I was, so I'm trying to apply myself to it a bit more.  I've been trying to get back into the old rhythm of daily sketches, to get better at being able to put ideas down on paper.  I've done a little more inking and coloring, so I can develop my skills in those areas.  But there still feels like there's a gap between what I can do right now, and what I want to do... and part of the problem is that I'm still not fully sure what I want to do.  A lot of my ideas seem to revolve around narrative ideas that are hard to put into pictures... but a visual depiction of things feels more concrete than a literary one.  Perhaps the best thing to do would be to experiment with combining both, as I've seen some people combine pictures with short narrative blurbs about what's going on.

At any rate, I'm hoping that moving forwards I'll be a bit more active this year than I was in the last, so that next year I'll have even more accomplishments I can look back on. :3

So, since some people missed my first attempt at a stream yesterday, I'll try giving World of Tanks another go in an hour or so!  (i.e. I think around 9:30 PM EST?)

EDIT:  After a bit of a delay, going to start in a few minutes... X3

EDIT 2: And it's over!