06.28.25
so far its been a really beautiful summer. it's been pretty mild out here up until this week where there's been a huge heatwave happening. tbh it's not too bad if you're just out and about or sitting out on the porch for a bit, but working out in the heat and humidity has been kicking my ass a little. i normally wear tank tops to work in and while i'm very strict with SPF, i've forgotten to take account for where my shirts ride up in the back and now i have a weird tan line on my lower back. it looks really stupid =P while i love every part of the year and all the different things that each season has to offer, may-june is one of the most energizing times of year for me despite all the heat and bugs, so i've really been enjoying these last few weeks.
the pollinator garden ive been working on for a while has been doing its thing =]
it's not often that i let myself be influenced to buy something, but late last year i fell for the hobonichi videos that i'd been seeing everywhere. i've never been a planner person, but i've also found that reminders on my phone or digital calenders don't work for me either because it's not physically in front of me. when i started school a few years ago i picked up a monthly planner, but i really struggled to use it effectively. but i really liked the layout of the hobonichi weeks and decided to give it a go, despite the price being really outrageous for a planner lmao
but honestly its been SO helpful. a weekly spread is way more efficient for me than a monthly spread, but it's not as nit-picky as a daily planner. I've been consistently using it since december 2024 and it's definitely made a difference for me when it comes to keeping track of things. and there's enough space in the back for me to journal semi-regularly without having to commit to a daily journal style planner so its a real win win for me =]
here's mine, i'll take a picture of my layout some other time. slater drew the little seal on the back a long time ago before we ever met, but it gave it to me a while back and i thought it was so cute i just had to stick it in the cover hee hee... if you've been wanting to try it out, i wont tell you if you should or shouldnt, but i Will Say that it's worked really great for me. even just for tracking day to day habits, and it's also a nice little hobby to prep every week's layout and enter in everything that i have to do for the week on sunday evenings. it's also made meal planning a lot easier too.
i won't lie, it's been kind of a weird week. the vibe's just been kind of off lately, and i've never felt more drained in my life. i try not to vent and complain that much online anymore because a) it makes me feel dumb when i look back on it and b) i want this site to be more about my art and hobbies and other fun things rather than me whining on my blog, which used to be very common on my site. but yeah, it's just been weird!!! that's all i can really describe it as. slater and i have been talking a lot about what will happen once i graduate, my school is the only thing that's really tethering us to this area and it's just so expensive for us here.
before the hurricane, things were pretty bad and unaffordable but post-helene things have just gotten so much harder for everyone. so many people we know have had to relocate themselves (some for the time being, some permanently) because they lost their jobs because of the storm and there's no work to take its place. the work that Is available doesn't pay nearly enough for rent prices here. it also doesn't help that cost of living (including food costs) are higher than the national average here, and wages are below the national average. it's created a really terrible imbalance that's put a lot of strain on people.
but at the same time there's a lot of good here, and i love the south with all my heart and can't imagine ever picking up and leaving it. there's just not a lot of options for us here, unless if we were to move states and even then our options would be bigger cities, which i just cant do at this point. nothing against big cities, but when it comes to living somewhere i need to be somewhere more rural and quiet. well, i've just kind of rambled this whole entry haha i promise next entry i'll have more to show for. it's art fight next week i hope everyones ready!!! i'm team fossil this year B] looking fwd to it. i'll see you guys later!
06.13.25
well, i let almost a whole month slip by without updating the blog here. there really hasn't been anything noteworthy i feel like i could share and write about here. when i don't have anything new to share with you guys i just sort of end up talking/rambling a whole bunch, which i think might end up happening today. i had all of this week off from work, so it's been nice just kind of taking it easy, even though i didn't get a lot of stuff done that i was wanting to do.
however, i did go for a really nice hike to a waterfall this week with my boyfriend. it was really nice weather and all the rain we've gotten recently had the river nice and high. the only downside was there were multiple high school/middle school summer camps out there =P annoying but at least they're outside having fun. they all showed up right as we were on our way back to where we had parked anyway, so for the most part it was nice and quiet. there was a guy who was trying to jump off from a ledge after his friends urged him on, and slater and i really thought we were about to see him crack his head open on the side of the rocks... it was a little unnerving. he ended up jumping in and being fine though. waterfalls are one of those things i don't like to mess around with, there's been so many people who've died falling off of them and drowning is my biggest fear so i like to watch them from afar.
im thinking about getting back into painting, i haven't painted anything since the semester ended last month and i don't want to let myself stagnate when it comes to traditional art. i did pick up a new sketchbook, and i've been trying to draw something every day. most of the time i just end up doing things like line or texture exercises, just things to keep my hand-eye coordination good and to keep things fresh in my mind. over time i've found out that if i go for too long without drawing i forget a lot of the small technical things first. then things like anatomy follow after... it sucks, i miss having the time to draw all day!
lately i've been itching to find new artists, it's so hard. in an age where social media is so huge and widespread it's somehow harder than ever to find artists that i enjoy or feel inspired by. when i talk about old art platforms, i try not to let myself get clouded with nostalgia but i also have to admit that it was so much easier to get inspired on places like deviantart. logging in and checking my notifications, seeing all the artists i liked posting their new works would always amp me up to draw.
now it's scrolling the timeline and wading through a whole bunch of BS on either bluesky or shitter... while there's a lot less dookie on bluesky, it's still not entirely there for me and i feel like i mostly find furry art over anything else on there, which isn't a bad thing, it's just not what's inspiring to me right now in my life. part of it is i just don't follow the right people yet, but then finding those people is such a pain in the ass. there is also the problem of i'm not really Sure of what it is that i want to see right now either. there's pinterest too, but it's so easy to get suspended by their shitty AI moderators on there and it's mostly kids reposting peoples work without credit and when you go to check the comments to see if anyone's got the source it's a bunch of people asking "what aesthetic is this?????? is this moecore? webcore? Someone help..."
one of the solutions i've found for this problem is physical art books. but that gets expensive and in our relatively small apartment it's difficult to find space for more books among the 10 trillion that we already have. i think we're going to go through some books and donate them soon, probably within the next week or two since my parents are coming to visit and we mostly have witchcraft books. doesn't really mix well with my christian conservative parents =P
work on quinn is still happening, i've got the first chapter outlined and i've started thumbnailing everything. working on a webcomic makes me feel so ...... stupid?? not in a negative way or anything. it's similar to when you finally get your drivers license after having only a permit for years, and you're driving by yourself for the first time. it's this feeling of "am i really doing this? im controlling this thing? i can go anywhere in this???" i put so much effort into planning and fleshing everything out that when it comes to actually making it, i'm sitting here thinking "wtf am i doing this right???" i guess 'stupid' isn't really the word i'm looking for, maybe 'bewildered' is a better fit. it makes me feel like a confused animal or something.
that's all i really have for you right now. i'm gonna go play some SSO before jumping back into working on all that mess that i mentioned above =] i hope you're all doing well and enjoying all the gifts that summer has to offer.
05.17.25
hi =] what's going on? sorry for the lack of entries as of late, i knew i wanted to start a new page for my blog but i didn't feel like going in and shifting everything around... lazy lazy i know. it's been a really beautiful spring here so far, i've been very busy with taking care of plants both at home and at work. my little porch garden is coming along nicely, i'm trying to grow some bush cucumbers this year so we'll see how that goes. tbh i can't wait to have actual ground to stick plants into eventually, there's only so much you can do with a porch garden. i did get a really nice shelf to put out there and it's freed up a ton of space, i don't know why we didn't think abotu doing that before.
and of course, getting pumped for one of my favorite parts of the summer... art fight! i think this weekend i'm going to focus on making references for some ocs that didn't make it on there last year. art fight is like my favorite thing ever, i can't believe i ever put off doing it for so long because i was worried i wouldn't be motivated enough for it. it turns out it's actually a really great way to Get motivated.
coming out of the semester i'm always trying to figure out how to switch off grindset mode. i still have to worry about work burnout, but i have a little more time to explore hobbies that i ignore because of school, yet when summer actually rolls around i'm always scratching my head like 'wtf is it that i wanted to learn how to do???' so i'm going to sit down and make a fun little list of things i want to teach myself this summer. maybe i'll finally FINALLY get around to opening up blender. i messed around with it a little bit a few years ago but didn't do a lot with it, so i want to try again. also don't want to stop traditional painting, i had so much fun with it this semester that i want to keep rolling with it. my only problem is that i have nowhere to put the completed works and my apartment is already small enough as it is.
i've once again been working on my webcomic, i know i keep saying this haha... it's sort of a cycle, i'll come back to it every few months and work on it in chunks before i get busy and have to drop it again. TBH, i'm a little reluctant to show WIPs because that's how i end up losing motivation to work on stuff, but here's One Little Taste for you to look at:
i had to go in and once again fix the code for the site. then i went in and looked at how i wanted to present the actual chapter, in the past i've just sort of haphazardly slapped things onto a black webpage with little regard to how things were working. now that it's been a few years since i've started working on this project, i've had some time to learn how to code a Little bit better so i wanted to go through and tighten things up a bit. so far what i have looks much better than how it used to, and i'm excited to show it to you guys when it's done. i've also been working on an outline for everything, when i previously tackled this project it was only half of an outline and i figured i would just cross that bridge when i came to it. as you can probably tell, it backfired. as of now, there are 9 chapters that are all roughly outlined (as in i have written down a vague account of what will happen in each chapter). the first chapter is halfway written, then i plan on going through and thoroughly outlining each chapter and then writing each chapter/script out as i go. here's a little vague look at the (tentative) chapter titles:
well anyhow, that's all i really got for you guys today. i hope everyone's enjoying their spring so far =] there's been a lot of wild/severe weather this past week so i hope you guys have been doing okay. see you next time!