serpentine malign

hope you are doing good and having a good holiday season <3

this year... i don't have enough art to put into a monthly year in review. a nice shareable image for social media. really, I've been doing a lot of different things. many don't fit under visual art. previously, i just... nudged some art into different months if they were close enough to the next/previous month. but this year i literally don't think i have enough art to do that. we REALLY made stuff in bursts this year!

I had contemplated just making my own template that would fit multiple different mediums. but I think being realistic about what I was able to do this year could be a bit more helpful, in terms of not expecting a wild amount every single year.

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i read how to keep house while drowning this week, while procrastinating on the dishes again. it was very good. a lot of it was about the sheer constancy and pressure of most self-help and self-care advice. it felt quite like lifting a weight off my chest. i feel like there is a subcategory of self-help that is actually good because it is built on the principles of liberation psychology and anticapitalism. i always recommend laziness does not exist by devon price as a good example of this. maybe i am due a reread. i have been doing fuck all but the bare minimum but i am existing and my hope is that that's enough.

fun stuff:

i am playing a LOT of slay the spire, which is really replaying because i already got pretty far into ascension on the switch. but now im playing on my phone which feels infinitely easier and lower friction. it feels like something i can just chip away at. hundreds of hours into this game, many cards are finally clicking for me that i just never selected at the start because they felt too low impact. right now i am really appreciating the need for card draw, far higher than energy and raw damage or defence. probably later into ascension i will have a different revelation. i have purposely locked myself away from strategy guides for this game (other than checking technicalities of certain cards) because i want the pleasure of figuring it out myself, even though i would say that games requiring any kind of strategy are... often ones i struggle with the most, because i'm naturally impatient and impulsive. i also finally got the true ending, without ascension, with an extremely cheesy body slam/barricade deck.

i'm also playing a lot of riichi mahjong, which i think i mentioned in a previous journal. i'm getting a lot better! it's super fun. i will probably get my ass kicked more as i go up the ranks. i feel like these two games complement each other quite well as my forever-games for now. there is just enough strategy, opportunism, and randomness to keep me infinitely interested in them.

we're watching the latest simpsons season right now. simpsons is good again? it's pretty wild. a lot of these episodes have the vibe of sort of like... season 9, just transferred to our cursed modern age. it's not 'classic simpsons', but it does have a much clearer sense that the writers are nerds and do care about the characters they're writing about for more than just brand recognition and keeping the shambling corpse alive. having grown up with the show (it was one of my first hyperfixations like. ever.), it feels VERY weird that i am now closer to homer and marge's ages than lisa and bart's, though. and that homer and marge are now millennials.

unfun stuff:

( suicidal ideation/self harm under the cut )

( skip it by clicking this one instead. like we're still talking mental health but it's less intense. )

something about this past week man. i feel like the days are bleeding into each other right now, and all i want to do is sleep. so this journal is i guess an effort to pull myself out of the sludge.

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it's 6am, and I am eating breakfast before I go to sleep

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sorry i haven't been commenting much. i have been reading your posts, though! my rss reader extension is very good for keeping caught up. i send my love and hope you are all doing alright today. <3

for me, these past few weeks have been in something of a creative and fandomy drought. i am getting occasional ideas and write them down when they occur, but very little big labours. this may shape up to be a problem, given Big Opportunity im applying for later in the year which requires me to... finish some projects. but i guess i'll give myself until september, when creativeclash starts anyway and i will simply have to draw things.

despite my drought, i managed to get into my first zine with an original comic! that was super exciting. <3 i want to submit to more, i think. but i will need more actual comics to do that with.

but yeah... this month i've mostly been playing rhythm games.

( more nerdy rambling below the cut )

so after being ill earlier this month, and going down burnout-inducing rabbit hole of Big Creative Opportunity, and doing the surgical procedure this week... i am so Fucking Tired. i had to take today off work because i woke up with a headache so bad i could barely open my eyes.

i struggle with that, having literally more desires to Do Things than my body can handle. and literally i am so aware of the fact that pushing myself is dangerous but i keep wanting to do it anyway. i think, like, getting in touch with my desires and existence is also noting that i DO just naturally want to spin a lot of plates and it is very frustrating when i just Can't and i can see things start to fall apart. i am very grateful for my partner right now. they have had a rough week even besides taking care of me.

but yeah. idk. i thought that my tendency to do absolutely everything was induced by external pressure. but my depression is very directly correlated with my ability to do stuff. i just slept most of today, and i think i needed it, but god it is frustrating. trying to find things that are JUST engaging and low-energy enough to be doable is... difficult. i've mostly just been playing video games lol

i was tagged by vsitante - thank you! :D

🎶 Last song I listened to:

'i prefer' by ministry

📺 Currently (reading/playing)watching:

reading: continuing with my plan to read my entire library from short to long, i am now halfway through 'outline of my lover' by douglas a martin. so far, it is extremely tight and poetic and tender. quite heartbreaking.

watching: we are working through futurama chronologically. mass hypnosis hour sounds fun. relatedly, we are also rewatching the derren brown specials. ah, formative crushes. <3

playing: working through cytus completion still. i million mastered (100%) every hard song that is available to me (553 songs), so now i have nothing but chaos songs (... and easy songs which i plan to perfect one-handed, to make them more interesting). my thumbs hurt but i am powering through. there are definitely fewer good songs in the easier half of the chaos difficulty. let me play blow my mind and conflict already, damn it.

🌶️ Sweet/Savory/Spicy?: sweet AND savoury is the goat.

but if i had to pick just one, i think i prefer savoury.

❤️ Relationship status:

taken! <3

🤩 Current obsession:

the fun obsession is probably the rhythm games. i played a bunch while i was sick (...and still am playing a bunch, as my quarantine period isn't over yet). as well as cytus, i watched a maimai quick guide as i am VERY EXCITED to be able to go to an arcade that has a maimai machine, in a month.

less fun is i'm applying for a pretty cool creative opportunity, and i'm getting a little obsessive in the planning and daydreaming over details that haven't even been finalised yet. down to imagining everything possible that could go wrong. my mental health has not been, uh, the best about this. having a direction to go in is... very difficult for me because i have had so many false starts and failed out of things before i had a chance to get "serious" about that particular aspiration. i just get overwhelmed by the pressure and start feeling like a pet in a carrier on its way to the vet. like, oh, i'm told this will be 'good' for me and i need to do this. but i have no conception of what a future good is, i'm a mess of impulses and i need need NEED to be anywhere but here. cue being told i am self sabotaging and going nowhere (nobody is here to tell me this anymore but i sure have internalised it enough to tell myself!), rinse, repeat.

fortunately, i know some good youtubers who never fail to give me some peace when i am in my head like this. i mainlined a bunch of cassie winter videos and am feeling a lot better now. i particularly like her concept of taking the smallest possible step towards a change or goal, but not necessarily being married to that specific goal or what that change will bring. that is, doing away with 'potential' and lofty aspirations and going instead for self-worth and radical acceptance, gently moving forward with art in consistent steps, small enough to be within your grasp even on your worst days. i'm not like, at a healthy place with creation yet - the way i have responded to this opportunity has definitely solidified that for me. but i vibe with the idea that making art will someday not feel like treading through a minefield of trauma triggers and failed expectations. this is sort of why the artist's way was soothing to a point because it was beginning to uncover why creation felt so painful. but it got too christian/monotheistic for my comfort, as well as having a very firm and prescriptive idea on absolutely every suggested exercise, and so i had to stop because even that was triggering for me. someday it would be nice to pen my more hedonistic and anti-prescriptivist answer to cameron, when i am older and wiser.

man that got deeper than i expected.

i tag anyone who wants to do this! here's a blank:

🎶 Last song I listened to:

📺 Currently (reading/playing)watching:

🌶️ Sweet/Savory/Spicy?:

❤️ Relationship status:

🤩 Current obsession:

it's super weird how things go. i was like super duper scared for the numerous 1-year trauma anniversaries this year.

but i'm like. fine?

i was gonna do a whole post about it but i think im just gonna go to bed. lol.

but i am alive!

Challenge #4

IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself. Post your answer to today’s challenge in your own space and leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

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this is primarily a post to celebrate the year of art. it has been an extremely hard year personally, but i made a lot of art and i am so proud of what i made this year. so. i want to talk about it to kind of... stop and take a step back and figure out where i want to go next and what i have actually learnt about process from taking art 'seriously'. i think that in the depths of practicing technique it can be easy to hit your head off a brick wall many times under the pretense of perfecting your swing, while you are actively doing stuff that is hurting you.

( the art summary in question )