#can it tac

[tacthescribbler]

Uuuuuuuuugh.

Feeling creative but unsure how to channel the energy. Here's a list of hobbies I enjoy, want to start playing around with, already practice to some degree, or have more or less dropped for some reason. Ask me questions!

Writing

Drawing

Crochet

Embroidery

Whittling

Guitar

Gardening

Cooking

Jogging

[tacthescribbler]

Hit the like button at work, but wanted to reblog from home, where I could formulate a half-decent response. And I apologize, this will probably turn into a longer post. I promise my rambling will come full circle. I used to write damn near all the time in high school. Before I had a laptop, I carried notebooks. I even compartmentalized them in their own backpack. I wrote almost every day. I’d go home from school, do my homework, and then seemingly flip a switch into Writing Mode. Then, when I graduated, I left home for boot camp. I had assigned items that I was permitted to carry with me. One of those was a notebook, but I was only allowed to take training-related notes in it. For two and a half months, I did not write. I hardly had the brain capacity to think about my stories and characters.

(To be clear, I would not trade the experience for anything. But that’s a discussion for another time.) But the thing is: basic training is intended to change one’s brain. People go through psychological changes. The brain is physically changed, as well. New neural pathways are formed. Others are overwritten, so to speak. (I still don’t like wearing bracelets or earrings because of how ingrained certain uniform regulations are in my mind.)

I think that basic training changed my brain enough to change how I approach writing, and I haven’t yet been able to reconcile the person I was before boot camp with the person I was afterward. And I’ve changed even more since then, so... maybe it’s harder. I don’t know.

More than that, while I was still in the military, I started doing more and more professional, office-style writing. Emails and such. Not the creative prose that I wanted to be doing. In a way, I think this further separated me from writing what I wanted to write.

I tried to get back into my creative writing, and in an effort to push myself forward, I started reading information books. How-To’s on plot, character, dialogue, pacing, climax, denouement, and so on. My perfectionist brain fed on that material like a maggot growing fat on a corpse, and I suddenly started to fear my writing. I still do, in a way.

At this stage, I’ve not written reliably for more than 12 years. I want to write. I might even go so far as to say that I need to write.

When I first started talking to my current counselor, he had me write every day for the two weeks between our... second and third appointments, I think. Those writing sessions were their own little circles of hell. I felt like I was forcing the words, that everything I put to paper was contrived and clunky. But I wrote. Some days, it was a sentence. Other days, it was a few paragraphs. In the end, I had something I hated.

But despite how awful it felt to force the words out, I felt relieved and relaxed afterward. Like I’d done something healthy.

Steven Pressfield talks in his book “The War of Art” about the idea that every person has a calling (not necessarily in the religious sense). He says that every person has a thing that they feel internally called to do. For my sibling, it’s music. They’ve always been able to pick up a new instrument and learn it. They play everything by ear, and they don’t really do sheet music. Now, I’m paraphrasing here, but Pressfield talks about this calling being a self-fulfilling thing, and how a person’s calling is the thing they’ll do when they’re having a bad day. A runner doesn’t go home and sit on her ass. She hits the track. An artist will paint or draw. A cyclist will go get their bike. A person’s calling is what Jack London calls “self-remunerative” when he speaks of White Fang learning what it is to be a wolf.

For me, writing is that calling. And despite not writing for the last 12 years, I’ve had some realizations: We are allowed to write what we want. To write what makes us happy. The saying goes, “Write the story you want to read.”

Now, to loop back to the original series of posts: I’ve wanted to write the most boring shit for a while now. Maybe take a page from Jack London’s book (pun intended) and write about a creature or person as they move from one thing to the next. Jack London made it interesting, but I surely won’t. Still, if I can follow a creature from birth to death in the most boring way possible, maybe the dam will break and I’ll finally be able to write again.

Or... maybe I’ll never again be able to “flip the switch” on command, like I could in my childhood. One thing is for sure, I damn well want to try.

After all, I suspect many authors of the past intended no hidden meaning. We just attributed meaning in an effort to understand. But maybe there’s nothing to understand. Except the love of creation.

Every 21st century piece of writing advice: Make us CARE about the character from page 1! Make us empathize with them! Make them interesting and different but still relatable and likable!

Every piece of classic literature: Hi. It's me. The bland everyman whose only purpose is to tell you this story. I have no actual personality. Here's the story of the time I encountered the worst people I ever met in my life. But first, ten pages of description about the place in which I met them.

[keferon]

The tac net crash chapter is one of my favorites so far~

Ah and. Guess what. I just discovered that including this post, I made 50 pieces of fanart for Mistakes on mistakes until.. I’m so sane and normal about this story can you tell👍

[tac-bat]

"PITIFUL TRAVELER, WALKING THROUGH TIME... GOING AGAINST THE VERY NATURE OF THIS WORLD. THIS RIDICULOUS, NEVER ENDING PLAY... IT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING I STAND FOR."

( face closeups undercut :3)

[fischlich]

this took. way longer than it shouldve anyways i was tired of not knowing how much leg to draw each unit with in relation to each other so i made this. i eyeballed heights and took a couple liberties with the designs but its fine

also eule elster and ara are in low pixel hell bc i just scaled them up from a previous drawing and did not want to reline them LMAO i made this as a ref largely for myself anyways

[shentheauthor]

I love them so much you have no idea oh my god look at Nuwa

[tacthescribbler]

Wanted to give my two cents on this. I’m prone to bouts of hopelessness when I hear disheartening news, and it’s really hard to pull myself out of that mire sometimes. To make it worse, I am a writer who doesn’t write, and an artist who doesn’t draw. Not because of AI or anything like that. Just because I struggle to find the motivation most days. I work my 8 hours, I come home, and I try to decompress despite home circumstances that don’t really allow it (that’s a pity party for another time). By the time I feel ready to create, it’s bed time. But I also need let my little ray of hopeless optimism shine here. I’m working on my financial situation so I can get my own place and move out of this apartment, away from my roommate, who also happens to be my adult-aged sibling. I prefer living alone and I know it will help me decompress more effectively in the evenings, which will give me a better chance at writing and drawing. Furthermore, my roommate tossed the last straw on the camel’s back this past week with behaviors that have honestly pissed me off. There are things we’ve talked about that change for a few weeks, or maybe a couple of months, and then go right back to “normal.” But when they hit me with that last straw, I had several minutes of “so pissed off and frustrated I was on the verge of tears,” but then I had a realization. Despite the fact that the past four years of unreliable contribution to rent, and despite the erratic laundry schedule, and despite the not taking care of my cookware or cleaning up after themself, and despite the constant presence of another person in my space because they won’t fucking leave the apartment except for their tiny amount of work they do at their job... I am still here. I am enough. I’ve paid the rent every month. I’ve kept my sanity (barely, but still). I’ve cleaned up when needed. I’ve walked the dog and showered and gotten myself dressed and fed myself. I’m still here. But the point is this: I know shit’s fucked. But the stories living in my head can’t be told my anyone else, and they won’t leave me alone until I at least try. And if I want to do that, I need to keep trudging. And I will. Sorry if this doesn’t all make sense, but what I’m trying to say is that the joy of something can be motivation enough. I’ve wanted to relearn how to draw for years and my perfectionism has been a major obstacle, right next to feeling like I don’t have the time or energy to practice. But you know, I bookmarked a tweet that @xannador posted on their Twitter. It was a set of 3 silhouettes, presumably of characters from a comic that they’d made previously. I had read that comic and I knew I needed to start drawing again. But all it took was those 3 silhouettes to make me realize that the only things stopping me is me. I determined I would kick my gods-be-damned perfectionism in the teeth. And I would practice. And I will do so. I will relearn to draw. I will get back into writing. There are a lot of people who will undoubtedly take the easy way out (like my roommate) by doing the barest of the bare minimum, maybe even less than that. Those are the people who will take the cheap, easy, AI solution. And we can’t control those people. But we can control ourselves. I could go on and on, but we all have something inside us that makes us tick. For my bestie, it’s drawing. She’s an amazing artist, and if everything else in the world turned to dust, she’d still be drawing. I’d still be thinking up stories. If there’s something you’re meant to do, do it. The rest of the world will either catch on or miss out. But you can’t stop being you for that. You are enough, even when it doesn’t feel like it. You are enough, even when the world tells you that you’re not. You. Are. Enough.

Heya, recently AI art as a whole has gotten me very discouraged and down about being an artist, and I was wondering how you battle the encroaching dread this all causes? I hate how disrespected artist have been these past few years, with NFTs and now this, but it feels like an insurmountable ocean to wade through alone

I really wish I had some secret formula that could help and motivate you and make everything easier... But I don't.

I'm really just a spiteful asshole, who loves drawing and doesn't know when to quit. That's it.

And I keep going, because I refuse to even just imagine a world without the joy of creating. Ironically, I found out that it is exactly this spiteful approach, that seems to inspire a lot of people. <3 Wouldn't have guessed that THIS side of me would ever be useful. <3

[s0rinsleeps]

Trans Vi in tac gear?

THANK YU FOR UR SUGGESTION

[caycanteven]

I made the sweet Tourette's bois for @didderd, cause I love them so much (an aboslute simp for Tou and Tac tbh.)

These were just some night doodles that went a little too long LMFAO. Anyway imma go take a nap, teehee.

Tourette's Sanses belong to didderd (thank you for letting me draw them! <3)

[amityillustration]

I think Neil would look so cute in Animal Crossing c:

[jgvfhl]

Anyway, I think I'm hilarious. @cod-dump @totally-not-fandom @midnight193 This is based off of an incorrect quote I submitted to cod-dump, and the visual just wouldn't leave my mind until I drew it. Alt text has an image ID.

[tacthescribbler]

Like many of us, I've spent a lot of my life not really knowing what I want to be when I grow up. At 33 years old, there are parts of me that still don't know.

I've never been particularly interested in making a living off of my hobbies. I love to write, and I've been working to re-learn how to draw, but I don't see myself making those things my job. I do want to get published, as a personal goal, just because. But I don't see my hobbies ever being my sole source of income. Any earnings I get from being a published author (if any) would just be bonus savings.

Same with drawing, or crochet, or guitar, or whittling, or any of the other things I want to do for fun. When I get to a point where I'm satisfied with my skill level in those hobbies, I might sell individual creations on Etsy (because I certainly won't want them cluttering my living space), but I don't think I'll ever do those things with the express purpose of earning an income from them.

A byproduct of this mentality is that I heavily compartmentalize a lot of things in my life. Work and play must be separate. "Real" work and hobbies must not intermingle. As such, I always thought of my hobbies and my career as completely different things.

I realize that skills may cross between those two categories. Writing skills can translate to work, and prioritizing work tasks helps me manage creative endeavors. But by and large, I always defaulted to this idea that I have to live by this switch that I flip on and off each day. Work or play. I am engaged with only one of those at a time.

The issue with this is that, while I have a pretty good idea of the hobbies that make me happy, I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do professionally.

I was a linguist for the USAF for several years; this included me working at No Such Agency. (I won't go into detail here.) I have an Associate's in Network Administration & Security. My Associate's got me into a job that ended up being an inventory/shipping/receiving position with an IT company (which I liked). I've worked dispatch for the same IT company (which their project manager taught me). I also "managed" some very simple projects for that IT company under the tutelage of their existing PM. The same IT company also did data destruction; I got really good at wiping hard drives, shredding them, recycling the e-waste, and filling out the associated paperwork. (I was meticulous with this, because our clients' data security was important to me; I suppose my intel background contributed to that, also.)

My point is: I have a lot of useful skills, but I haven't cultivated a singular career with a particular specialization. When it comes to a job, I'm not sure what I want to do. I had a manager once ask me, "Will this job make you happy?" My response is that my happiness at work has almost nothing to do with my happiness at home. I can be happy at a job, but due to the way I compartmentalize, that doesn't mean my job is something that I'll go home and do as a hobby.

I guess what I'm getting at is this: I know what I want for myself personally and creatively. But I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

[didderd]

hehehe. y'all spoiling him. :3

[monotone-artist]

[id in alt]

was overcome with the urge to do a redraw. character is @tacoma-narrows's arroyo! previous drawings under read-more (warning for super old art aha)

[tac-bat]

"Mayday, mayday Can you hear me now? 'Cause I'm counting down And baby we can't stick around There's no more time for you and I This is goodbye" - Sohodolls, "Mayday"

[misstictart]

She's not sorry.