08 august 2021
It's been a bit--I know, I know. I've been caught up in a lot of things. I'm nearly at the end of the summer semester art class I've been taking. The pieces I ended up making are intense. Upsetting, intentionally so. The class has been both interesting and useful, and I've certainly learned a lot. At the same time I've been exhausted juggling in-person classes with my day job, and I've found myself working significantly longer hours on days that I'm not in class, just to keep up. I can't say I like working 10 hour days under any circumstances.
I'm not planning to take any classes for the fall semester. I was planning on doing some traveling, and I may still, but the delta variant has me second guessing the wisdom of it. At the very least I'll have a break, some extra free time, which I'll probably use to do art anyway. I'm not going for a degree, after all, just for personal pleasure. And to improve my skills. I have already improved to an enormous degree. It's nice to have other people to push me in different directions than I'd go on my own. I need other people to expand my world. That said, after the intensity of these pieces, I might like to just paint dogs and cats for a while. Draw porn of my D&D characters. That sort of thing.
A college friend came out to visit for a few days recently, and it was both pleasing and overwhelming. My batteries are so low. But it was good to see an old friend. A novel stimulus, even if I'm still cautious of traveling myself. I need to reopen myself to new things. The pandemic messed me up, and I don't want to live the rest of my life this way.