Hi there!
It’s been… 4 years since I last used this blog.((But you wouldn’t know that if this is the first time you visit this place, because I just made all my posts from 2008 to 2014 private. I’ve become pretty reserved this past year.))

I used to journal a lot. Since I was a kid, my mom always bought me big, bulky planners that I would use like diaries.
Later on, I used a big notebook with colored pages where I would write almost daily (I had a special pen for it too!) and would ask friends to write there as well from time to time((I burned this notebook in my early 20s, in a fit of emo-ness over my highschool boyfriend. My mom said I’d miss it later down the road, but… I don’t think I do, I have enough memories of it.)).
As I started spending more time in font of a computer, I started writing on a word document (lost to OS re-installs along the way) and later on I got my first blog on… Xanga, iirc? No, wait, I had an older one… Blogger possibly? Blogspot?
Eventually I got a Livejournal,  though I ended up just writing directly on deviantArt once I got people following me there.
Later on, I made this very thing here, 10 years ago, after I fled deviantART for some reason for some time, and used it to both journal and to post my art.
Social Media happened and I slowly left this place in favor of Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, which is where I spend most of my days at nowadays.((I only keep Facebook now to keep in touch with local friends and some family, and to use messenger to talk with my fiance daily. Tumblr and Twitter I mostly use to post art, and I have a private twitter account that I spam daily with thoughts and works in progress.))

I’ve been superficially interested in stoicism lately, and one of the important things is to journal daily, about what we have learned, what we are thinking about, about what we did right and wrong. I thought ‘what a hassle’, since I was thinking about a physical diary, and dismissed the idea, but my friend Lore has been blogging daily lately and… suddenly I’m back at my old blog, figuring out how WP worked again and writing this.

So… Let’s get to my day.
I woke up before my 8:30 alarm as it’s been customary since we switched to Winter Time, but, unlike yesterday, I got lazy all morning instead of following my new ‘work hard’ routine. I rationalized it as taking the day sort of off because I had originally planned to hang out with my SIL for Wedding stuff((I am getting married in 2 weeks. Finally!)), but she called if off this morning due her kiddo being sick.

I worked very slowly on a character portrait before lunch, as I kept being distracted, bought some bread, munched on some leftovers at lunch and just… didn’t do anything else for the rest of the afternoon, except working on a zine piece a bit.
Fiance went to kendo after work and then to a friend’s birthday. I stayed home for the spoiled dog, since we have another birthday tomorrow night and I’d rather not leave her alone barking two nights in a row. It’s 2:22 am as I’m writing this, and he’s not home yet ): Dog is asleep, I should be asleep too… but I’m hungry and I was too lazy to make dinner; I’ll have a good breakfast tomorrow morning.

Morale of the story: Don’t. Screw. The. Routine.
Seriously.
I’m glad I still got work done, though!

I had a moment of introspection about why am I so personally strict about the art style of things I like, to the point of trying to copy the style of things I like as close as I can… I never realized (and if I did, I never outright said it out loud) that my driving force is not to create new things, but to chase the feeling I get when I look at art from things (or artists) I like; to make the style so similar that I fool my brain about it being ‘like official stuff’, and get that sweet endorphin release.
It’s all an elaborate ploy to self indulge.
Now that I think about it, it may be the whole reason why I ever started drawing: to chase that feeling for myself and to make others experience it.
…and also probably why my impostor syndrome is so persistent: I never feel like my art looks ‘official’ or ‘professional’ enough to fool anybody.
Now… for some reason, this doesn’t happen to me when it comes to coloring, I’m oddly unrestricted when it comes to that; I have tons of fun when I’m just coloring things!

I should enjoy coloring things more often and care less about emulating others.