#i had a really nice day though! yay outside yay nature yay hiking trails that are so wretchedly uphill ^.^

[sodrippy]

god i love having a little show to watch. literally nothing can beat the feeling of having a little show to watch!!!

[dzpenumbra]

4/17/23

Today was one of those "didn't feel productive but actually was" days. I got 6 hours of sleep, which is getting a bit too normal. I'm so well acquainted with insomnia at this point that I can estimate how much sleep I've gotten based simply on how my body physically feels and the light color and level out my windows within about half an hour of accuracy. Not really sure I'm proud of that, but... it's a thing.

I played more Per Aspera after yoga. Trying to allow myself more dedicated recreation time since I've been hitting the animation shit really hard. But first... I set up the grow kits my brother got me for christmas. I have been waiting for almost 5 months to just get little fucking end tables to put plants on by my big windows. 5 fucking months, all because I was like... trying to make it a group thing, trying to make some room for family to actually be involved in my life. Ugh. Big fucking mistake. I had to throw out one of the kits, I didn't realize it was mushrooms and it 100% has been growing inside the box the whole time, I was supposed to open it immediately. It's okay, I'm not a huge mushroom fan anyway... The other two were cherry tomatoes and chilis, both I'm really excited about. And it turned out that the jars they come in fit okay on my windowsill, so I pulled the trigger and got them set up.

I got a shower in, and before going for a walk... I had to get dinner prepped. I had a whole plan today - I was going to prep some dough for from-scratch naan, then make from-scratch tzatziki sauce, and some package falafel and tomato to go with it. But the recipe I went with called for yeast in the dough, so I had to roll that and let it rise. So... I prepped and rolled that and let it do its thing while I went for a walk.

I got out there pretty late, it was already starting to get dark. I sorta speed-walked down the river trail outside my window out to where it ends, then looped back, and decided to go under the bridge and explore that way this time. It wasn't much, it was like a 15-20 minute walk, but it was really nice to get the blood pumping, got a sweat going even. Music makes it much easier. I don't mind hiking in the woods with just the sounds of nature, and I can just talk to myself or sing or whatever. In the city, it's just so fucking loud. But the earbuds help a lot, and it's really good for my head to be getting more music in my life.

The past like 5-10 years there's been a huge uptick in time consuming narrative stuff - YouTube, Twitch, miniseries', podcasts, etc. And with that came a big downtick in time consuming music. So... I guess I'm working on evening out that ratio. My newest listens have been... Dance Gavin Dance's "new" album, though I have only given it one listen so far... I'm getting back into Veil of Maya, I've always really liked their False Idol album but I never really gave it the time or attention it deserved, so I'm giving it some now. I hope to soon be able to go back to Matriarch, that was when I was getting really into them, I was all about their new (at the time) singer... but... it was a really dark time in my life. Right when I moved into the pond house that was supposed to be my house with my ex, and then was our house, and then was complicated and stupid and sketchy, and then wasn't. At the time, I was using google maps and whatever historical documentation I could drum up to make a real-scale replica of the entire complex of Chichen Itza in Minecraft. I.e. not just the Temple, but like... the entire place. I made a lot of progress on it. Just... one of many huge scale projects that just... never went anywhere... that I was working on endlessly alone that no one else seemed to really care about and that never got finished. Yay. XD But, honestly, the album just reminds me of that time of my life and the fights, and winter, and sitting on the floor in my bedroom playing games and waiting for my ex to get off of work. Or wondering if she was actually intending on moving in with me? I don't even remember the timeline anymore. Regardless, not good memories, tough emotions.

But honestly... in the next couple years, I really want to reclaim a lot of music like that. I mean that. I really feel like it would be good to have emotional support available for that, but it's been a goal for a while. I need to reclaim Matriarch, ERRA's Drift album, Periphery III. I guess that's good enough for now.

God, how did I get onto this? Earbuds. Yeah, listening to music while walking. Yeah, so that's been good.

So I got back and rolled the dough, made the falafel mix, made the tzatziki sauce, cooked the naan on the frying pan, then fried the falafel. It took forever but the food was great, very filling. Though... the dough was very yeasty tasting. I don't remember naan tasting like yeast, and this was like... really yeasty. But yeah, probably not the end of the world, nothing to be obsessively worried about, just something to take note of for the future.

I tried working on the animation stuff a bit more. It... really frustrated me and I had to close out of it after a bit. It was just... upsetting. The grease pencil keeps clipping when rendering and looking bad, the massive amount of paths all set to Divide blend mode end up causing an effect I wasn't really intending... which... I don't really know if I like? So... yeah. I'm still working out the kinks and just really didn't have the patience for it today.

I need to get this idea out of my head, it's been nagging literally all day long, and last night too. I keep getting moss. Over and over and over. Moss, moss, moss. By getting, I mean inspiration calling, whatever you want to call it. I don't know exactly what to do with this, because I have too many ideas. The first and most focused was to grow it indoors. In my head, I picture something like an open terrarium, like a terrarium with super low walls, and gravel and some very basic soil and a stream running through it, circulating by using the water pump from my cat's old fountain. And moss growing in there. That idea has been calling me for months. It would be such a cool idea. Like an indoor zen garden. Even if it doesn't have a water feature it would be cool. Oh... snap. Okay. So... if the water is what's throwing me off and stopping me from doing this... Hmm...

See, part of me wanted to do the water feature so that... the entire thing would be self-sufficient. It would water itself. I mean, I'd have to replenish the water periodically, but like... you know. But... I don't mind watering. I have my orchid and my succulents and they've been doing great. I have a watering chore I need to do now with the tomato and chili plants. So... this is doable. And moss should be like... ridiculously low maintenance. Like... moss will grow on fucking rocks, it needs so goddamn little to survive. And it's really pretty and cool. So... I'm tempted to do mini indoor zen gardens. I just need to find a good container to do that in... something that won't fall apart when it gets wet, because I will have to water this thing.

The other idea I had... and this one is actually really cool, check this out. So... I've been playing Per Aspera, which is all about terraforming Mars. And... it's been absolutely enthralling. This whole concept of spreading life, growing, creating an ecosystem. It's a concept that's been super resonant with me the past 2 years in winter/spring. Big surprise in Spring, right? XD

So the idea I have is... to find a section of the woods out by the nature trails. Slightly off trail but not too far. Removed enough, but noticeable if you're looking for it. And to clear the dead leaf layer on the ground and start seeding a moss garden. And let it grow on its own. Collecting moss from other areas and transplanting it in a very deliberate area, maybe in a shape.

The more recent update to this has been a pretty cool image flash. I was seeing a central circle with multiple points inside, like an 8-pointed star. That's just the number that came up. And then at the points, there are circles that radiate outward, incrementally smaller, in line with the points. And the circles are raised stone circles, with a bed of moss in each one. I'm not sure what happens with the middle. I like the idea of doing design earthwork with a living element, it's something I haven't really gotten to. All of my earthwork stuff so far has basically been stone and water. I haven't really added life to it yet. I like the idea.

So yeah, really glad to have inspiration striking. It just... can be very tempting to drop everything with the really frustrating project I'm working on now and just... go head-first into that one. And... I still have to finish the hoodie backpiece. So... one foot in front of the other, one thing at a time.

A little Zen garden inside would be really nice to like... go and play with to chill out my anxiety, though. Just sayin.