It's Been a Long Year

When I think of where I was and how I was this time last year, it's like night and day. I lost good things that made me happy. I still make some of the same mistakes that made me miserable. I've deepened friendships and ended others. I strive to be more honest with myself about who I am on a basal level and how much I can realistically pile on my plate.

What's that expression about the eyes being bigger than the stomach? My eyes are bigger than my schedule. It has been a consistent and lifelong fault. I remember having a conversation with my parents at the ripe old age of 14 about taking on too much. "Really? Laura, you think you can handle jazz band, church and school choir, the school musical, art class, models on top of your regular school work?" So I quit band and models, made honor roll, chased off a boy and barely kept from snapping like a twig.

My mantra was always "I'll find time." In my mind, that time was always the next free weekend, oblivious to the idea that the next free weekend could be months away and when I got there, I more likely would just collapse under the weight of my exhaustion. But then those valuable times of collapse/rest that often kept me away from a full systems meltdown went away when the unpredicted disasters started to flood in and take up every remaining second. I had to double and triple schedule just to make it to medical appointments. I would work sitting in waiting rooms. Or I'd sit there and marinate in self-pity or fear. It tenderizes the meat so I'd be emotionally soft when repeatedly stabbed with a metaphorical fork.

I'm working through a dramatic personal re-org. I'm learning how to say "no thanks, I'm full." I try to remind myself that taking on a new thing means compromising or removing an old thing. Baby steps.

All that goes to say that I'll be posting again, although I'm not going to promise to myself or anyone else that it will be regular or like clockwork as it was briefly. But I enjoy writing and making ponies and both feed into the other as a perpetual motion machine of productivity. And I wanna draw a little. I passed up an opportunity to sell my 2D art about a month ago. But the honest answer is it I don't do any of this to sell my work. I just like it. Sales are a byproduct.

Having said that, I'm hoping to produce some work for sale in the near future because I'm a poor college student and I can't buy groceries with personal growth or pay rent with emotional fulfillment. My landlord is a hard ass like that.