Back from the dead!! :D

Let's try this again!

This year was the first ever that I was able to complete the inktober challenge!! :D
I'm so happy hahaha > <

Anyways I got a bunch of drawings laying around on my notebook, so why not post them? some are good, some are weird, but oh well, here we go!

Also I started a tumblr and I intend on posting there more often and with less text, so if you want the long version stay here, if you want the TL;DR check here.

I decided to extend the inktober and make it a daily drawing, so I'm already working on the ones for november, while posting these from october. Wish me luck :P

Paper Towns

I just read Paper Towns by John Green and it was a pleasant experience and I highly recommend the book, especially if you are feeling lost or like you are paper thin.

It was a fresh perspective to a dilema I've had for a long time now, that I keep addressing but was never able to quite solve it, I mean I got better at dealing with it, but I think reading this book was a huge step towards mental healthiness.

I always had this expectation of what I wanted to be or how I was supposed to be in order to be liked and accepted, I kept trying to be a concept, to be a paper person, to cover my flaws and bury them where nobody would see and that creates a lot of insecurities.

I guess that is why it was always so hard for me to let people get near, because up close it is really hard to hide your imperfections, I was always afraid people would see them and leave me.

The book helped me see that I don't have to be anything really, not a miracle, not a saint, nor perfect, because I already am all of that and more, I can't fit in any of these one concepts because they are too shallow to cover a real person. I can't be a concept, a paper person, because being real gives you too much depth for it to be possible and it is really painful to cut of parts of yourself to fit. I guess true beauty lays not in being able to completely fit and hide behind the concept, but to overflow from behind it and be able to discover that side of others and yourself. People are not paper thin, people are black holes of infinity things to discover, that's what make us all so interesting.

Another thing that occurred me is that the same way that I accept other people's flaws, if they are true friends they will accept mine in the same way, so there is no need to fear people leaving, they will stay if they value you as much as you value them, if not you are better off without them.

I picked a few parts of the book that were especially meaningful to me, but I don't want to spoil the book for my friends so I won't put them here, but I'm thinking of doing something about it, it is still a plan in development though.

Here are some drawings I made this week, thinking about it now they fit quite well with the theme of this post, even though I was thinking about something else completely when I made them, oh well it is a bonus :)

Progress!

Dealing with bad days

I think the last post needs a follow up, more than just an edit, so here we go again.

In the last post I tackled one of my failures in order to overcome and better understand it and also to be able to avoid and/or deal with it, should it happen again. I think the main reason behind of it all were my bad days. Everybody have bad days, but I've been having them too often and intense, making them unhealthy and crippling.

I watched a video that helped me a lot, it is about learned helplessness:

On my bad days that's exactly how I feel, helpless, like nothing that I do matters and that nothing is gonna change, so why bother even trying. And this feeling lingers even on my better days, I feel incapable of achieving things on my own and so I look for the help of other people. I start projects with friends, because I feel that on my own it won't work, it won't go far, but people have their own schedules and priorities and things don't go as planned and I go back to not getting anything done and feeling helpless.

In high school it wasn't like that, I was in control, I new what I needed to do and that I could do it, so I'd just go on and do it. In college it was a great shock, I learnt that I was nowhere near good enough to make through it all, I must say I only graduated because of my friends, without them I'd still be there struggling or maybe I'd given up mid way. Well Architecture was never what I wanted to do, my first pick was Video Game Design, but I knew my parents would never accept that so I thought about Design and it would have been a great choice, but on the college that I wanted to go to that course was available only during the night, and so I ended up on Architecture, because it was the next best thing. So of course it was gonna be a hard course, there were almost no classes that I was minimally interested in, I was just doing them to get through. Funny how things work out though, I went through all that to just get back to where I started, I still want to work with games and am looking into getting into that, well at least now I'm sure.

I went a bit off the path on this post so getting back to the point, I need to teach myself that even though college was hard and that I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, that doesn't mean I can't do anything alone. I need to get back that confidence that I can get things done, I can achieve whatever it is that I want, maybe not everything, but surely more than I think I'm capable of right now. 

I need to find my worth and I need to do it myself, because it won't really get through to me unless I'm able to say it myself, if others say I'm not worthless and that I can do things, I'll be flattered, but I won't really believe it. I need to stop getting shocked and find ways to stop it.

When I was younger whenever I saw myself lost like this I'd look for something new, something to boost my confidence, sometimes just a change on my look would do the trick, if that wasn't the case, I'd find a new hobby. When you start a new activity it is easy to progress and you can see it clearly, so it is a big: oh look! you can do this! you are totally doing it and getting better hahaha. So that is what I'm looking for in my life right now, I'm gonna start a solo project and try to find other things I can do on my own, gonna work on my looks as well, cause I've been feeling down in that matter as well (girls will be girls lol) and hopefully bit by bit I can rebuild my confidence and stop having so many bad days. Also I'm gonna try to post even on my bad days, even if it is just to whine so beware of incoming sad posts, you've been warned!

Progress: