#recent school semester was really hard and I didn't get to practice much drawing so now I feel like teaching myself from the start

[sheerakk]

Started playing botw

[cosmiccowboystuddies]

hey guys

hey guys (my sum total of like 7 followers), sorry for the long, unexpected absence, but I’m back. I was dealing with long-term health issues that made it hard to do pretty much anything. At the risk of getting way too personal, I have recently had some thoughts that I’d like to get off my chest, and I hope that maybe someday someone will read this and feel even the slightest bit validated. I don’t really know where to start, so I’m just going to start with a needlessly long ramble about things that much smarter people have already explained in much better detail.

For a while, I’ve been struggling with long-term iron-deficiency anemia and the unknown side effects I've had for years now. I had the worst birthday of my life ( one day I will tell that story) and one of the most revealing semesters of school ever. Long story short, being severely anemic meaning you have little to no energy at all, and spent most of the semester underneath a pile of pillows. I didn’t have the energy to do much. I was too tired to read the way I used to, to create the way I used t or be crafty, or even to cook. I lived solely on frozen dinners and Rice-A-Roni, which definitely wasn’t helping how horrible I felt. i would spend hours scrolling on Pinterest, planning planning increasingly complex projects (my account was recently permanently suspended for no reason) and its absence has also been a reason for my feelings.

Long story short, being anemic gives you literally no energy. After class every day, I would take a nap because I was so fatigued. Since I was napping for 4–5 hours a day, I started having a hard time falling asleep at night, even though I was exhausted, I had such severe insomnia that I would stay up all night. (Insomnia is actually a symptom of severe anemia.) I’d lie awake, too tired to do anything except mindlessly scroll on my phone or watch my ceiling fan spin in circles until morning. Then the whole cycle would repeat over and over again, day after day the same thing.

Long story short I got an iron infusion because I downright refused to get a blood transfusion, and things began to shift into a devastating clarity. Before my infusion things were shockingly blurry. I lost the energy to do anything that wasn't sleep or school or staring at the ceiling, I shirked all my other wants and needs and responsibilities because I felt so utterly incapable of anything besides the bare minimum of my existence, and I felt awful. Somehow, getting healthy made me feel mentally worse. At the risk of sounding too existential, I've been thinking about things that I feel like I didn't have the mental capacity to so before. As I tried to get back into my usual activities, I struggled to do so, mostly because of something I have been struggling with for a bit, I just chose to never think about it . I could finally place words on my feelings and emotions, and to summarize, all my crafts and hobbies, and things I did were not because I wanted to do them. I made and did things not out of enjoyment but to say that I did them to appear 'cool', as childish as that sounds. I learned to draw so people could tell me that my artwork was cool, therefore making me cool. I rode horses, so people could say, 'Wow, you are so good at riding horses'. I made clothes so people would look at what I made and be amazed by what I could create, because of this I gave myself impossible deadlines, and I used to meet these deadlines. In high school I met these deadlines, reading 4 books a week or making 6 very poor quality, practically unwearable clothes in the search of praise for how good or cool I was, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was tired of being that way. I learned to do press-on nails because I thought of all the things people would say if I showed everyone my supercool nails. i learned guitar so people would think I was cool when I played a song, not because I wanted to learn how to play music. I watched YouTubers like Bernedette Banner and found myself jealous of her, how she took joy in the little tiny things, the act of handsewing and taking her time to make the prettiest and complex garments brought her joy, the act of creating something, and I wanted to do that. i wanted to be happy with creating things like I used to. For some reason, for a while I couldn't. For this reason, I found myself in the constant 'I'll do it tomorrow' spiral, I would sew tomorrow, draw tomorrow, paint my nails tomorrow, and this made me upset. I thought about all the things I could do to get other people to react, so I tried to do more, I crocheted more, made things I didn't want to or need to, because I thought it would be cool, but I was still tired and took some time to slow down.

I forced myself to not do things unless I wanted to or needed to, until I remembered the reason why I wanted to do them in the first place. i started pressing greatness for myself and remembering my dreams. i treated writing like I job because I want it to be, I stopped feeling horribly sorry for myself because I thought I could never write full-time, or never make this cool dress, or do this cosplay because I wasn't very good. For some reason, I thought people were born great, I didn't think great writers, or artists, or designers, or singers because they were born that way, not because they spent years to organically learn how to do thing,s but that they were born doing this. I saw someone draw something almost perfectly, and I noticed how it took me only 15 minutes what would have taken me 3 hours for something even less great than what they created, but they told me that it didn't take them 15 minutes, it took them 35 years, and that stuck with me. I never gave myself the chance to learn, I never let myself be bad at things, and by doing this, I struggled to do things I thought I would enjoy. At the same time, I packed up my college dorm and came home. it is no secret that me and my mom don't get along, away at school was fun, and returning home to my childhood bedroom was soul crushing as it is every year, for somereason I though this year would be different but I was starkly reminded when my first day home was met with nothing but meanness and rudeness. I was stupid for expecting anything different. At college, I was used to a certain amount of autonomy that I simply do not have at home, and as my mother constantly reminds me, I do almost everything incorrectly. At school, I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted to and didn't have to explain, At home, I am reminded how horribly wrong I am at everything, and reminded constantly. I do not wash clothes correctly, feed the dog correctly, dress correctly, or wash dishes correctly. I am to do what she wants and when because...

Because of this my life was thrown wildly out of routine, my mom was angry with me and I forgot the feeling, because of this lack of routine I felt wildly out of control, I would stay up until odd hours at night, well until the next morning, sleep in until noon and by the time I woke up I would feel like my whole day was gone and I would not do anything because it would feel pointless. I stopped doing my skincare and didn't even see the point in changing out of my pajamas, but I am tired of feeling bad for myself, so in an effort to get back into the swing of things, I am starting up this blog again, something I enjoyed for the fun of it. insert long-winded quote about being an artist requires creativity, and being an artisan requires perfectionism, or something like that

That was a long-winded and poorly explained way of saying that I'm back, and starting new projects, taking the time to allow myself to be bad and taking joy and pride in making things as perfect as possible..