I keep coming back here from all sorts of places then promptly shooing myself. It's not that blogging has become cumbersome, somehow I still believe that some sort of answer, revelation or relief waits for me at the end of this post, but that's about as much hope as I would millennially allow myself.
My life has taken on an odd sort of pace. I've been avoiding human contact for the most part of the last two months, spending time reading, working, watching stuff and occasionally learning a thing or two. It's a lot easier that way, eliminating the element of surprise is one of the luxuries of the bat cave, a luxury I intend on milking dry for the foreseeable future, until a more seemly option presents itself. A friend smoked me out of my foxhole for an event she was covering for the daily news; a comic book panel earlier this month, and it was bittersweet. I regret missing the workshop, that could have been an interesting experience, although I blame that on Goethe Institut's tendency to frown upon social media exposure. Idiosyncratic of my Rory-ness, we ended up in the wrong panel and missed the first 15 minutes. Silver-lining; I got a baby plant out of it when it turned out that we had been rubbing shoulders with environmentalists.
We looked like tinmen ditching the green event mid-intro and bolting for the right hall, but luckily by the time we made it to the bibliothek, we found out we hadn't missed much because the translation equipment was down and it had more or less turned into a grade-2 cultural soup. The debates were humane and choked with passion, and the artists twitched and convulsed like proper introverts in the eviscerating spotlight. As tempted as I am to record every little detail of the evening, that evening is too special to me to include you all in so I'll stash the particulars in my personal Pandora's box and stick to the bit I fuzzed up to most. The panelists were asked by a workshop participant to share the first job they ever took before they became nationally-acclaimed illustrators in their own right, and the jobs they took were these: A garbage collector, a dishwasher, a waitress, a kindergarten teacher and a museum watchman. I could try to tell you what that made me feel, but assigning adjectives to this memory would be like putting sticky notes on a Rembrandt sketch; no adjectives could do it justice or be worthy of its complete momentum. I was moved, the same way an unstoppable force would move an immovable object if it could. That memory will cozily snuggle up in the back of my head and magnetically gather dust bunnies until I turn gray, along with other cherished memories of that evening that include the senior polyglot, the ginger that tumbled out of the wardrobe with the lion and the witch, the Jane Eyre ghost that tried to start an underground publishing revolution, the skeletal chocolate-coffee gifter, a trip down a namesake street in a district I've renounced and the illustrator who owns a sketch of us that we'll never see.
What else is new and worth a cyber smudge? I'm now a Redditor. I've more or less given up on Facebook for a real-er alternative. People on Reddit still hold on to their genetically assigned predilection to saying what they actually mean, as opposed to Facebook's current livestock show. I also made an account on Medium in case I have something to say to the world, that I don't reckon I'll be using anytime soon. Oh! And I made my first professional logo, which didn't completely suck. Logo design is one of the trickiest specialties in the field. In layman terms, corporate identity is mafia work; it takes a godfather to make a proper logo and god knows a decade can only squeeze out a handful of don Corleones at a time. Many a designer took on that intimidating challenge only to wake up with a severed horse head in their bed or have their knees crippled by the unforgiving sledgehammer of analytics, but I'm proud of my progress, especially that it entailed my taking on a new program on the Adobe creative suite. I'd upload it right now if it didn't compromise the integrity of my assignment, but I will as soon as I can. Milestone!
Oh, and I started regularly meditating. For a skeptic, it took more than a couple of researches on the effects of meditation on the Amygdala, a comparison chart between the Buddhist and Hinduist practices and a plethora of guided meditation recordings that subliminally sold hot dogs and promoted child labour to the unaware to find my beat. Mindfulness meditation took home the lottery money, with a pinch of imagination thrown into the mix. After all, who can say no to daydreaming? It's been helping with my anxiety attacks and overall stress. It's been a while since I found a practice that relaxed me so completely I couldn't make a fist for 15 minutes afterwards, especially since they installed a goddamn corn dog stand smack in the middle of my jogging route. THIS IS NOT FAIR GAME, PROVIDENCE! But fear not, dear readers, I will not turn into a hippie.
A friend is starting a Ballet club on campus and I got dragged in as an organizer. If I recall correctly, she needs me to write a proposal for the project and help her fluttery pink-shauled self fight off the iron-clad fists of the administration with my experience as an ex-activist and charm them with my unicorn glitter tits into approving our leasing out the gym twice a week to the tight-sporting public. Other than that, uni hasn't changed much, I've antagonized two professors already, the junior workload has proved to be a Thai-food generated diarrhea compared to the sophomore and freshman ferret-sized loads, but it's nothing I can't take on with my waking hours. Oh, and the students are still barking mad.
Fam-wise, what's with grandma calling at 10 in the morning one day to invite us over for a fatta and kaware3 lunch only to greet me by shoving a beer in my hand and an ashtray full of Hershey kisses because "You deserve a break dear", to throwing a dinner party in place of a wake in the honor of a deceased relative and demanding that I undo my dreads, they can never really stop surprising me. I love grandma, she shows me that aging has nothing to do with getting old. Oh, and there's a day in there I spent with dad book shopping, then combat boot shopping, then chain smoking over Turkish coffee in the back alleyways of a bookstore while talking about life till 3 in the morning that I can't leave at the mercy of my goldfish memory.
In line with these updates, I may be getting my long-coveted graphic tablet before the year is done. Fingers crossed, that one's been in the works long enough. I'm looking forward to Halloween, although I might have to start costume shopping a little early since a denim jumpsuit and a velvet top hat might take me a little farther than the good old shop around the corner. I'm working on a design project for a pub owner and it's driving me crazy. Although the bright side is that if freelancing for a pub can't turn you into an alcoholic, nothing will. I'm also planning a 500 miles music video with the local whovians around mid-year break, although locations might be a hassle since it might be a difficult to pack 249 whovians into one hatchback, but we'll figure it out, we always do, it might prove bigger on the inside!
My life has taken on an odd sort of pace. I've been avoiding human contact for the most part of the last two months, spending time reading, working, watching stuff and occasionally learning a thing or two. It's a lot easier that way, eliminating the element of surprise is one of the luxuries of the bat cave, a luxury I intend on milking dry for the foreseeable future, until a more seemly option presents itself. A friend smoked me out of my foxhole for an event she was covering for the daily news; a comic book panel earlier this month, and it was bittersweet. I regret missing the workshop, that could have been an interesting experience, although I blame that on Goethe Institut's tendency to frown upon social media exposure. Idiosyncratic of my Rory-ness, we ended up in the wrong panel and missed the first 15 minutes. Silver-lining; I got a baby plant out of it when it turned out that we had been rubbing shoulders with environmentalists.
We looked like tinmen ditching the green event mid-intro and bolting for the right hall, but luckily by the time we made it to the bibliothek, we found out we hadn't missed much because the translation equipment was down and it had more or less turned into a grade-2 cultural soup. The debates were humane and choked with passion, and the artists twitched and convulsed like proper introverts in the eviscerating spotlight. As tempted as I am to record every little detail of the evening, that evening is too special to me to include you all in so I'll stash the particulars in my personal Pandora's box and stick to the bit I fuzzed up to most. The panelists were asked by a workshop participant to share the first job they ever took before they became nationally-acclaimed illustrators in their own right, and the jobs they took were these: A garbage collector, a dishwasher, a waitress, a kindergarten teacher and a museum watchman. I could try to tell you what that made me feel, but assigning adjectives to this memory would be like putting sticky notes on a Rembrandt sketch; no adjectives could do it justice or be worthy of its complete momentum. I was moved, the same way an unstoppable force would move an immovable object if it could. That memory will cozily snuggle up in the back of my head and magnetically gather dust bunnies until I turn gray, along with other cherished memories of that evening that include the senior polyglot, the ginger that tumbled out of the wardrobe with the lion and the witch, the Jane Eyre ghost that tried to start an underground publishing revolution, the skeletal chocolate-coffee gifter, a trip down a namesake street in a district I've renounced and the illustrator who owns a sketch of us that we'll never see.
What else is new and worth a cyber smudge? I'm now a Redditor. I've more or less given up on Facebook for a real-er alternative. People on Reddit still hold on to their genetically assigned predilection to saying what they actually mean, as opposed to Facebook's current livestock show. I also made an account on Medium in case I have something to say to the world, that I don't reckon I'll be using anytime soon. Oh! And I made my first professional logo, which didn't completely suck. Logo design is one of the trickiest specialties in the field. In layman terms, corporate identity is mafia work; it takes a godfather to make a proper logo and god knows a decade can only squeeze out a handful of don Corleones at a time. Many a designer took on that intimidating challenge only to wake up with a severed horse head in their bed or have their knees crippled by the unforgiving sledgehammer of analytics, but I'm proud of my progress, especially that it entailed my taking on a new program on the Adobe creative suite. I'd upload it right now if it didn't compromise the integrity of my assignment, but I will as soon as I can. Milestone!
Oh, and I started regularly meditating. For a skeptic, it took more than a couple of researches on the effects of meditation on the Amygdala, a comparison chart between the Buddhist and Hinduist practices and a plethora of guided meditation recordings that subliminally sold hot dogs and promoted child labour to the unaware to find my beat. Mindfulness meditation took home the lottery money, with a pinch of imagination thrown into the mix. After all, who can say no to daydreaming? It's been helping with my anxiety attacks and overall stress. It's been a while since I found a practice that relaxed me so completely I couldn't make a fist for 15 minutes afterwards, especially since they installed a goddamn corn dog stand smack in the middle of my jogging route. THIS IS NOT FAIR GAME, PROVIDENCE! But fear not, dear readers, I will not turn into a hippie.
Fam-wise, what's with grandma calling at 10 in the morning one day to invite us over for a fatta and kaware3 lunch only to greet me by shoving a beer in my hand and an ashtray full of Hershey kisses because "You deserve a break dear", to throwing a dinner party in place of a wake in the honor of a deceased relative and demanding that I undo my dreads, they can never really stop surprising me. I love grandma, she shows me that aging has nothing to do with getting old. Oh, and there's a day in there I spent with dad book shopping, then combat boot shopping, then chain smoking over Turkish coffee in the back alleyways of a bookstore while talking about life till 3 in the morning that I can't leave at the mercy of my goldfish memory.In line with these updates, I may be getting my long-coveted graphic tablet before the year is done. Fingers crossed, that one's been in the works long enough. I'm looking forward to Halloween, although I might have to start costume shopping a little early since a denim jumpsuit and a velvet top hat might take me a little farther than the good old shop around the corner. I'm working on a design project for a pub owner and it's driving me crazy. Although the bright side is that if freelancing for a pub can't turn you into an alcoholic, nothing will. I'm also planning a 500 miles music video with the local whovians around mid-year break, although locations might be a hassle since it might be a difficult to pack 249 whovians into one hatchback, but we'll figure it out, we always do, it might prove bigger on the inside!
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