I want to learn bookbinding because I want to make my own notebooks. I want to scour the world for a specific type of paper that fits me and use that to make my notebooks with. Imagining this search for the perfect paper excites the hell out of me.
Technology is exhausting me, and I just want to spend all my time holding paper, writing on paper, drawing on paper.
Drawing these circles in my notebook was one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done in a long time.
I want to buy more books but I’m running out of space in my apartment.
How much does LASIK eye surgery cost? I don’t want to wear glasses or contacts anymore.
I don’t have any tattoos but I kinda want some tattoos. No idea of what, though.
I want to buy a record player and build a vinyl collection of all my favorite albums. Then I want to sit and listen to these records and do nothing else. Just listening.
I used to spend so much time in libraries, and then I used to spend so much time in bookstores, and I’ve stopped doing that because I live in Montana and everything good is a long car ride away. I can’t walk to these places on a whim like I used to.
One of my fondest memories from college was listening to my friends talk about movies and argue why The Departed was an awful movie and why Infernal Affairs was better. I really miss those times, and I really miss having a more active social life.
All my friends are married now and have kids, and I don’t think I’ll ever be married or have kids, and I’m okay with that. I still wish I had a more active social life, though.
I think the thought of sitting at an outdoor cafe, drinking a good cup of coffee, and watching people walk by for hours is a day well spent, and that’s all I want to do when I’m older.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death. Don’t mistake me: I want to live for another 30, 40, 50 years, so not like that. More of this idea that so many of us are afraid of dying that we don’t ever truly live. That, in a way, we’re more afraid of living than dying. At least, I am. That we can’t ever truly live until we’re comfortable and fully accept our mortality, with dying. Memento mori: remember that you have to die.
Sartre wrote that he hoped “the last burst of my heart would be inscribed on the last page of my work, and that death would be taking only a dead man.” I’ve been thinking a lot about that over the past few weeks, and that’s how I want to live, how I want to go out. The problem is that I don’t think I have to courage to live like that, but the other problem is that I’m running out of days to live like that.
Montaigne wrote about “The Master Day”: the day that is judge of all the others. It’s the last day of your life, the day that completes your story.
With that said, I wonder if I will spend the rest of my life talking about living or actually living. I’m hoping for the latter, but who knows.
About four and a half years ago, in an effort to simply improve my artistic ability, I spent a week or two drawing portraits in an old notebook I had. The goal was to draw a face a day, and I really enjoyed the whole process. I do love drawing, but with anything that isn’t writing, I have a tough time knowing what to create.
This mini-project ended abruptly when I was called out to a fire, something that happened often during the summers. I didn’t get back into a normal routine that year until September, and because I had only spent a few weeks on this project, I hadn’t build up the routine in my system. So I never picked it up again.
Looking back at these sketches, I feel not only the pull to create again, but also the dreadful fact that time keeps marching forward, whether I like it or not. I remember doing these sketches like I did them yesterday, but these were done almost five years ago. What the hell!? Where did all that time go!?
But another thing I’ve learned by revisiting these sketches is how much of my life I’ve devoted and am still devoting toward creating stuff.
In college, after I intentionally hurt myself, I was required to see a therapist. I won’t go into too many details about this period in my life, but one of the things my therapist taught me was the skill of focusing my energies toward things that made me happy. At the time, I went to film school, so some of the things I did was to spend even more time writing and studying movies and volunteering in more of my friend’s film projects. I had a blast doing this, and once I graduated, I felt like I knew how to take care of myself for the first time in my life. My college paid for my therapy sessions, so once I graduated, my time with my therapist ended, too. It has been almost 13 years since I’ve seen her, and I owe so much to her that I feel like I literally would not be alive if it wasn’t for her.
In a way, she showed me who I was and who I could be. I focused on the person I wanted to be, so I worked until that version of me was the real me. I don’t know if it’s humanly possible to be the me in my head, but I feel like I’m infinitely closer to that version of me now than when I tried to hurt myself then.
And I think some of what has helped me is what I call my three pillars. They’re super simple:
As long as I follow these pillars, I feel not only happy but also like I’m giving myself the weapons to fight off my demons, to fight off those forces that told me it was okay to hurt myself and to hurt others. Each pillar feeds into the next and is fed by the others, so it’s this ouroboros of happiness, at least for me.
So what does all this mean?
It means that for me to stay happy, I have to create things, and that means I write, I take photos, and I draw. I have to learn new things, and I do that by reading books, by learning new languages, and by playing the guitar. Eventually, I would like to make my own music, but for now, I’m still learning, and this is a very fun and very frustrating phase to be in. I have to keep pushing. Finally, I have to take care of my health, and I do that by eating well—I’m vegan—and by working out regularly. For me, health is the foundation for everything I do, and without it, the other two pillars won’t be enough to keep me happy. I have to workout. I have to sweat and feel the endorphins rush throughout my body because if I don’t, then I’ll be sad. It’s really that simple for me.
These pillars have led me well for a while, and I hope I have the strength to keep them standing for the rest of my life because the alternative is scary.
Not the best picture but one that shows one of my favorite memories. A few years ago I was going through Framed Perspective I, learning all I could about perspective, and I got stuck on this one problem. It took me forever to crack the code, but when I did, I felt great!
A few February’s ago, I participated in the Figuary drawing challenge. Every day I practiced drawing the human figure in my sketchbook, and I had lots of fun. I love making stuff.
Notes
A sketch I did a few years ago. I want to start drawing again, but I keep finding excuses not to. I stopped because I had plateaued and I grew frustrated with each new sketch. Unlike with writing, I always asked myself what to draw, and I just didn’t know. Just draw, I guess.
