My Last LiveJournal Post

I've been meaning to do this for a while now. This is where I will be posting my psuedo-daily journal...Live Journal was too frustrating.

Crankypants

"I'm not sure what the deal was but I work up in a completely pissy mood. I slept until 7:45am, which is late for me, puttered around a bit, got some coffee, and almost immediately felt frustrated. Darrin noticed this right away and kept his distance , stating he was going to keep his distance. That didn't help much.

I had plannned to get some paint out, and paint on actual paper. So I sat down to sketch an idea for Illustration Friday. My two first ideas I just couldn't seem to draw to my satisfaction, so I went on to something else (the fish). I couldn't seem to stay focused, so I got up and made some breakfast. After that, was the dishes of course. Then back to the drawing board.

I think the thing that became evident to me almost immediately was that, though I wanted to draw/paint/create something, I was sabotaging myself at every possible opportunity. If someone distracted me in anyway...it was their fault, if I thought of something I wanted to look up on the internet, I dropped the drawing immediately and went to the comp, when Barnes and Noble was mentioned, I got up and got dressed as was ready to go in a flash...anything to get away from that drawing table.

Why do I do this? Darrin thinks it's because I am afraid of failing, and I won't give myself the chance to work back to where I once was. Maybe he's right, maybe I'm just afraid of how bad I have gotten over the years, while I didn't paint. Last night when I finally did try to sit down and paint the picture of the fish, I was restless, and timid with the paint. I couldn't get it to do what I wanted it to and it wasn't long before I scrapped the picture and went back to trying to color it on the computer. That went ok, but in the end looked plastic...to computerized for me. I scrapped that one, too. I will get through this project, but I really need to stop expecting a masterpiece the first time. And...I need a new pair of glasses.

At 12:30am I woke up and spent a good hour and a half tossing and turning and chatising myself, for not painting, for not staying focused, for having lost my touch, and finally wound up telling myself I would never be a successful artist...so get used to the job I have, because it's probably all I'll ever have. I tried to think about other things, but always came back to the same self-berating crap. I'm not always terribly kind to myself. I did finally fall back to sleep.
Amazingly I feel better this morning, but yesterday left a mark. I need to move on, move forward, stop trying to bash myself every chance I get. I'm not sure how to do that except to put my head down and charge forth. I won't stop painting & drawing, I just won't.

And on that note, I'm going to be moving my personal journal to a Blogger spot. As much as I have enjoyed posting here, the text formatting drives me crazy. I can't even seem to change the HTML coding to manipulate it...it just doesn't take, no matter what I do. I don't need the aggravation.

From now on you'll find this journal at My Journal ... Tuesday literary stuff and everything.

Thanks, Livejournal, it's been fun!"