Art Projects

Journal 122 17 June to 7 July 2024

Realized late last week that I missed posting.

I remember when I posted every single week for two years! And now, I have trouble making my every other week. Mostly due to not working on a current novel.

I went through all my thoughts on this topic in the last blog.

I haven’t set myself a date to start, and there are so many excuses to push it off.

Currently, my office space has no AC not even a fan. With the temps so hot, who wants to sit at a desk working? Then I remember the teenage me, sitting at a desk made out of boards on stacked encyclopedias. Writing from midnight to 4 am in a room with no AC, sweat pouring down, as I spent the summer break writing stories.

But that was a long time ago.

The Big Procrastination

I keep using working on gaming material as the big procrastination. Oh yeah, its still the same setting, same world. So, anything I create can be used in the novel and in games. The characters could become background in either as well. History always helps with the present in a story.

And so on.

I use the heat and my bad back as my main excuses, and I’ve made solutions to both. My writing saves to shared storage, so I can write on my desk or at my laptop. My laptop has a broken key, so I have a Bluetooth keyboard. It’s too hot? Just write at the laptop anywhere else.

I used the revision as an excuse, and I finished that over a month ago now.

It doesn’t help that for the last three weeks I have also been putting in extra days at work, and last month all of my days off were filled with errands and chores.

And now the new procrastination.

Art Projects

I’ve been inspired to work on maps again. I started watching a new YouTube channel called Red Quills. Watching that guy use paint, fine liners, and working most of his notes into the map itself has been really inspiring.

I have a ton of art supplies I stockpiled before and during covid and now I’m finally starting to use them.

I wrote a journal that has clues and keys into explaining a separate map. I used a glass dip pen to start the journal, but realized that my players would never be able to tell that by looking at it. Especially after I destressed the hell out of it. But I know I used it, and now the handful of you that read these know as well.

The journal took a couple days, the map took a couple as well, and I had to do two versions of the map. One is the gridded one that is my version that shows all the details. And then I free hand drew one that only showed the areas the map mapper had entered. The handout map is written and drawn to be an in-universe artifact.

Pride

I will admit that creating art again does fill me with some satisfaction and pride.

As I drew the new maps, I pulled out all the old ones I made when I was procrastinating over the last few years, and the stack of papers is nearly an inch thick.

So, yeah, drawing seems to be my biggest time killer, but the one that makes me feel almost as accomplished as my writing. I can write anything, but I can’t draw everything, ergo writing is actually the biggest thrill/payoff. But it is also the thing I avoid the most.

So weird. I know. But this is the struggle all the time for me. And to be honest the struggle is good. It forces me to produce other things. Maps, stories, world building, characters, etc.

As I fight with myself and how I’m going to use my limited free time, I produce a ton of materials.

I also discovered a new procrastination that might truly kill my free time.

Solo TTRPGs.

Between solo Call of Cthulhu being a thing, and now I’ve discovered several procedural dungeon crawlers that look fun… yeah, my time is going to be even thinner. Stretched to the max.

Look forward to talk about my time learning and trying Ker Nethalas in the next journal. Or possibly solo Cthulhu, since that book came in already.

Anyway…. What else should we talk about?

Media Consumption?

I really slacked on both movies and k-dramas during June. Watching almost nothing. I put a lot of my time into reading and other pursuits. And even that is not wholly true as I didn’t read any comics for over a month.

In the last week I did start watching a bunch of movies, seeing both new Godzilla movies, Monkey Man, and the Beekeeper. I’ve enjoyed them all at various levels, though will admit that I watched the Godzilla v Kong movie just to say I saw them all. I hate King Kong so the last two movies in that series have been skippable for me. Though I do enjoy that we see less and less of monarch and the human side of things as the story continues. I prefer a balanced approach to a Godzilla movie… or just a monster slugfest. But hate movies like the first Legendary Godzilla that is 90% human bullshit (no offense to Brian Cranston acting his ass off) and 10% Godzilla.

But anyway…

I guess I should look at my media consumption and get it sorted.

Outro…

I won’t bore you all talking about more movies and what comics I need to catch up on and all of that. Suffice I have a lot on my plate but still have plenty of time to get the novel started… but I keep putting it off. We’ll see when the shame gets deep enough to get me started again.

Thank you for reading this far.