On this path of healing, I've finally accepted want whatever work I can do to speak louder than weak minded rambles I've done to distract myself.  Often I don't feel like venting or rambling really, but as soon as my fingers hit the keys and I have 5 minutes to spare - the vent starts flowing.

 I bought an Wacom Movink 13inch display tablet, and this below was the absolute first thing I drew on it. Its an awesome display (I could never use any brand other than Wacom!) 

So, here's some odd stuff done on this new display the last few days while juggling a screaming baby. 

Firstly, here's an illustration drawn to SCBWI's theme of 'Mismatched', a word that made me think of mismatched socks, but I've been looking for an excuse to draw something about odd socks anyways. 

A Flandre Scarlet being edgy.

A devil lady.

And a sad battered Guts which yes is sexy, and I'm allowed to share sexy/morbid weird things too.

Lastly, here's a weird picture drawn to TOOL's 10,000 Days album on loop precisely two times. That's a long time to draw for me these days. Yes, I had headphones on and baby was sleeping. I am pretty happy with this, although its rough, because I cannot mentally take illustrations to the 'rendered' level I used to before my accident.

It's just how it is. 

I don't care what the haters think.

This is MY GOOD ENOUGH!

When both my arms full of baby most the time in the day, I don't have the time nor the energy anymore to waste writing tirades or just trying to make something meaningful, because 'venting' in itself isn't meaningful for me, personally sorry. I've realised I need to spend the quiet moments drawing anything to get some 'mum time' in. Becoming a mum puts so much in perspective.

As far as big projects go for once, I'm developing a picture book which I started at the UniSA summer course back in January. I wrote and illustrated a full book, but obviously it was rough around the edges as I did it in like a week, lol. Not sharing it in full, because its worth something and since people will probably steal it if they could. 

Anyways, back to drawing my illustrations on my awesome new Wacom Movink while overseeing a snoozy baby. See, I didn't vent for once. Zzzzz.

why webdev is cheaper than therapy

If you've followed me for a bit, you may have picked up on the fact I'm addicted to working on my website. I started it in Dreamweaver whilst in the psych ward and believe it for not, it was actually so cathartic to push this 'retro' aesthetic site to the world wide web. I've developed a strong enough grasp of HTML and CSS to just edit in VisualStudio Code from here on out. Most of the time it is barely refining what I've done or adding new content, but is usually me just goofing around seeing what I can get away with in HTML, JavaScript and CSS, such as making hovered links glow with a kaleidoscope of colors!

Two days ago however, I finally realised how much I needed to make two 'shrines' for my ultimate two favorite fandoms. I made one for Berserk and a second one for Touhou Project.

My term for 'shrine' is just my dorky term for a webpage galley for my fanart. Hmm, and now that I think about it, I may add some hairbrained headcanons potentially, but don't worry! I haven't written them, yet!

I included very ancient 2015-era work on the Berserk page specifically because I had been asked by a follower where my old Berserk comics had 'gotten to'. These followers is keenly eyed, as I had deleted my longtime Tumblr when manic - I know, tragic right? But I'm not being completely sarcastic here. I had deleted my many 2012-onwards fanart doodles by doing so, as this was before the time I started backing up my art to the Google cloud! I had been saving all my work on clunky physical hard drives before then, which even they have a lifespan. Not to mention, my trusty Calarts MacBook I had used to make all those digital fanarts died around 2017...

But quite auspiciously, my Berserk fixation started immediately after I had started uploading all my artworks to the Google cloud around late 2015, according to my techy dad's advice. So my Berserk doodles were preserved in my personal collection, and thus they have sat there for many years. 

I'm glad though, to air them out in the light of day. My website isn't as immortal as Blogger, but I want to have a place I can craft myself. I love learning JavaScript, CSS and HTML, it means way more than being beholden to posting my work to Instagram. I can craft the page to display them how I want, curating them essentially, and it brings me great pride to be able to refine my site along with my work.

This page will inevitably expire if I let my domain with GoDaddy expire, but for the rest of my living days, its most likely I'll keep chipping away on the Berserk (and Touhou too) shrines, as they both mean so much to me, in very different ways. I mean, the Berserk one has fanart from 2015, it's been a decade! 

Thanks to Touhou and Berserk, I've managed to stay damn prolific even over these recent years in which I've felt very unconfident with my art. Many of these works, I had initially dismissed as a bit too rough around the edges and therefore 'bad'. Although I have habit of sharing my art often on socials, many of these I simply grumpily scoffed at, and sadly dragged-n-dropped into a folder, never to look at again. 

I actually had a self-compassion breakthrough. The moment I revisited my abundance of 2023 Berserk fanarts, that I realised, they are decent actually! Good, even! With the flow of time, I saw suddenly with fresh eyes, and saw that my work, my efforts, are worthy of being displayed. 

That my friends, is why webdev is better (and cheaper) than therapy, and it's why I love it. End of story.

The answer is NEVER to just 'get more hobbies'.

I knew that once I had a baby, there would start to be little time for doing superfluous leisurely things. I knew I would have to kiss goodbye to certain 'freedoms*'. I knew that life would get busy.

But believe it or not, that is precisely what I craved. 

Because I knew for the last few years, most the zany, time-consuming hobbies I kept forcing myself to do out of habit, started feeling insidiously dull. 

Whatever do I mean? 

Before I decided to pursue becoming a solo mum, I would force myself to work on creative projects daily, because that's all I knew, really.

From janky video game jams, to acrylic paintings left unfinished and discarded in cobwebbed corners of the craft room. From ambitious TV show scripts to sculptures, to short stories and edgy visual novels and even sewing stuffed toys and a Koishi Komeiji cosplay....oh, and don't even mention the hideous amount of blogging I did. I also kept typing up Google Documents with ambitious business ideas but still, committed to nothing. But more telling was the fact that I knew nothing scratched the unnameable itch that was tickling deep in my heart.

In the past, I turned to creative outlets to sate what I always presumed was a normal sort of boredom that hits when you don't have anything else pressing to do. It's probably fine in many case. When you're young, in early twenties and/or driven by a creative inner fire.

I was possessed by that flame. The solitary path of the painter was the way my life was going for the longest time but....

...and its a big but....

From 2020 until 2022, I experienced massive griefs and traumas.

I was coping with a world where my dearest mum wasn't around anymore. I was plagued with reoccurring mental health relapses year after year, until mid 2022.

I then was stuck in a vicious loop of trauma, bitterly trying to rationalise how my mindscape felt so changed by these experiences. In retrospect, the issues regarding my 'art brain' have just taken its sweet time to heal. It takes years to heal your body and mind from psychosis.

That wasn't the only thing that needed to heal, however. 

For some reason, I never faced the natural immense sadness and emptiness from losing one of the absolute most cherished people in my life, my mum. 

It is natural to feel lost and scared and empty from such grief. Grief is so powerful that is shakes up your life and puts a lot of silly things into perspective. I may have been an idiot and didn't realise how much I loved my mum, until it was too late...

In the years I spent trying to heal all over, many of the creative hobbies I kept getting distracted by felt not just indulgent, but scarily meaningless. They started feeling like guilty distractions which I did to silence some little voice of longing. None of the random projects I did really stuck anyways. If they had, I would've been prouder. I would've been braver in promoting these products as things I want to see get published. They mostly kinda sucked big time.

The truth is, I confess I have purposely wasted heaps of time with many non-drawing related pursuits, which I profess I am terrible at and absolutely do not have the knack for - like programming video games! Because I was so anxious about my art abilities being impaired following the mental health incident I mentioned in my earlier post, that I tried anything else besides sketching!

So, there have been different factors as to why I felt like I was hiding away from facing drawing. It most definately has not just been ageing, or letting biology and instinct have their way.

Its been many overlapping factors. 

I think I mainly owe it to the sobering nature of grief (and add in a sprinkle of mental derangement!) leading me hand-in-hand to the truth. 

The 'Truth' is a word and concept that has mystified me many times when manic. Here is an illustration to the theme of Truth. Its one of my favorites. I painted it in the ward.

Truth by Vela Noble (Photoshop, 2020)

One of my Capital-T Truths, which grief (and even mania) guided me hand-in-hand to, was that I didn't want to miss out on being a mum. Right here and now.

The only thing that's still felt truly meaningful in proper doses, has been healing over my avoidance of drawing. As I said, it has been a long story, but I've started to face drawing again. I now approach drawing with more self compassion than ever before. I constantly have to remind myself to do what I mentally call 'low pressure' art, doodles on my folding phone, or in a tiny sketchbook. I remind myself, that my kid wont judge my art harshly, so why should I?

'Low pressure' art...mine on the right.

It has also felt somewhat meaningful to honing my writing. I live for good stories. Certain comics have inspired and soothed me immensely in recent years (Berserk, duh), so I even started trying my hand at comics since last year. 

Ah, but yes I will now have less (purely uninterrupted) stretches of time to crank out art. This leads me to my point. If you are keenly eyed and noticed at the start of this post, I put the word 'freedoms' in sarcastic quotes with a * next to it.

This is because, I think that people that proclaim having kids robs you of 'freedoms' have starkly different values to me. 

Whatever 'freedoms' do you mean? Nightclubbing, parties or boozing it up? Going on elaborate vacations in faraway countries? which personally I have zero interest in ever even setting foot in half those places not gonna lie . Don't people get a bit sick of that sort of life?

Alright, to each is his own, I guess.

Just quit making weird excuses that disparage people that enjoy the simple pleasures, like sunny seaside walks on a Sunday (Someday she will be old enough to play a round of DDR at the Beachouse arcade! I can't wait!)

I know I personally seem 'boring' to many, but I don't have must wanderlust for anything much outside of South Australian borders. I have seen enough. I am weirdly patriotic and live in the most beautiful corner of the world, sorry. Visiting heaps of dangerous countries isn't on my to-do list, nor do I believe countless stamps in a passport make for a more vibrant life compared to someone who maybe just appreciates their state, but I digress...

So...

Another truth for me, is my most cherished pastimes already are things that I seem to share in common with kids. It already has just amplified my joy to share my favorite musical playlists, stuffed toys, pictures books, Netflix kids, even video games (yes in moderation) and strolls by the seaside. To me, I have barely changed my lifestyle. 

So what maybe I never grew up myself? 

So dear weird acquaintances who have said snide things to me, to you I say, go ahead, keep your various freedoms. But if it threatens you that some youngish women choose Solo motherhood over partnering up for now, then you are the one with some hidden insecurities.

This is my path. 

I want to make more lovingly made kid-friendly stories and art. So, you could say I kind of have a more meaningful and pressing goal to channel my writing and art into, every time I have a free second, or more like, when I have free hand that's not cradling bub, of course.

My honest truth is that I probably wouldn't have unearthed such a new meaningful goal, if I was never shaken up such an impossibly difficult 2020s. Having conquered such a difficult period of my life, puts so much of life into a newfound context. 

So of course, art is something I want to share with my kid. I obviously can't wait till my lil' bub is old enough to start. She may not be capable of holding a crayon right now but all this good artistic taste is definitely soaking into her impressionable noggin'. ;)

Well, I have written enough for now. It is kind of a lot, but feels nice to get a fresh ramble off my chest while she's been sleeping. Now its back to solo mumming~ Over and out.