I spent a few hours looking at my social accounts, and decided to prune and slim both types of social directions, until I ended up with what I have called Camp Rock Bottom over on my mastodon server (I love that thing; it is completely unhinged social software, you need to update it fairly often, your server gets assaulted by hundreds of automated requests per day, there are some really skeezy server names showing up in your logs; it is like the old web in itself, full stop):
The facts about Camp Rock Bottom are easily listed, like this:
- I am 42 years old; this either means something to you or it doesn’t, but be aware that you know of what those in disagreement with you would say
- nobody outside of mutuals knows I exist, and of those mutuals
- barely anyone has seen any work by me, outside of works done for my graphic design study
- I am recovering from a what I would assume is/was a really bad case of sleep apnea
And I feel like this is exactly the right spot to build–whatever it is I want to build, whatever it is I need to build.
My study interests are illustration, and graphics (both 2d and 3d), so I put it into my head that I need to read and study all material I can get my hands on, while working at applying this knowledge daily.
I have finally arrived at a point in my life where I appreciate being healthy as something worth of my attention. Not as a resource to spend on something, but as the thing itself about life.
This is from where I start. This is from where I start again.
It is like that time I quit smoking for good: I quit many times before, but I think the seventh time stuck, because kept at starting.
I have spent the last few months making all kinds of things work for me in a way that might possibly, ideally be of value to someone else, but in general I made them work for me: my own website, where I post, what I post, how I back it all up, and by that, I took a huge load off of my mind, one I wasn’t aware of in the slightest.
If you ask me about procrastination now, I would possibly try to say the following:
In my case, I was procrastinating without knowing it, because what looked like procrastinating on the important things, was instead ignorance of what I valued and thought was important to focus on.
Find your own way and don’t get disctracted by everyone else running around differently from you, I guess.
So, will this work? Can I do it like this? I don’t know, but I am willing to start again and again, until it sticks.
Sometimes things don’t work out. I took an image of a book I pulled from the shelf, and while I was doing some routine file management, I noticed that I have taken the exact same image of it months ago.
Same shot, same crop, same comp. And I realized that my heart is not in it: I don’t feel like taking photos of what I own or have. I am not doing that anymore, because I think it’s tacky, especially tacky if not prompted (like answering questions nobody has asked, and this blog post is really close to that, too). I want to do what I want. And above all: I want to be free to do what I want.
So hi again to everyone who can read this! This, too, is part of my work. To build from rock bottom.
And I would love to have someone close to this same rock bottom in terms of graphic design and art, who is also not interested in cultivating any persona. I will be around, in case you show up.
Looking forward to meeting you on the web.
Source: My after‑hours blog on Tumblr Code & Canvas
