Only Tumblr’s creator would end an announcement to every user about Tumblr being bought and what that means with the words ‘Fuck yeah’.
This time last year I was feeling extremely stressed, not just because of exams but also because I was living with a ‘best friend’ who made me feel incompetent and appeared to be ‘shopping’ for new, cooler friends. I’d spent the whole year pretending I was fine and the idea of letting someone in and telling them exactly how not fine I was seemed unthinkable. Now I’ve recovered from my ED, I’m well on my way to being ok, I have one friend that I’ve told everything to and who knows exactly how bad I’ve been and how much progress I’ve made, another friend who also knows a lot (though she lives on the other side of the planet so it’s a bit different) and three friends that I’ve started talking to more (one of whom actually knows I’ve been going to the counselling service). It’s slightly odd to think how much I’ve changed in the last year.
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I ended up feeling really bad earlier and having a long discussion with my friend about my mother. She only seemed half surprised when I said that my parents didn’t know I was going to the counselling service. I also explained that I’m terrified of trying to ask my mum to change anything about the way she treats me and the control she needs to have over our family because any hint of a suggestion that she’s not being a perfect parent results in screaming and crying and ‘Everyone hates me, I’m only trying to help but I might as well fuck off and not do anything at all ever again’, which is both upsetting and frightening. My friend pointed out that she has a simultaneous need to be needed and not to be needed (so that she can say ‘look, I have a perfect, successful, independent daughter’) and my best hope for having a decent relationship with her was to get through the next year and a half and then move out asap.
I hadn’t noticed until now just how fogged your mind becomes when you’re starving and you can think of nothing but the numbers. My mind now is whirling with possibilities and interests, more than I thought possible before. I noticed how big the difference is today because I started watching Girl, Interrupted. I’ve watched it several times before but not for a year or two and I thought I knew it fairly well. Watching it now is bizarre. It’s like I’m watching a remastered version because I’ve noticed so many things that I hadn’t before.
“When I say be creative, I do not mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem.” — Osho (via in-the-middle-of-a-daydream)
(Source: larmoyante, via kdkorz10211)
Christian Rohlfs, Autumn Evening on the Ilm, 1888
Lyonel Feininger, Barfuesserkirche I, 1924
Christian Rohlfs, Birch Forest, 1907
Lyonel Feininger, Landungssteg, 1920
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Mixed media on paper.
(via kelixir)
Paul Klee
The Current Six
(Source: canvasobsession, via kelixir)
My room at home is littered with notebooks and sketchbooks that are all just started. Most of them have drawings or writing in the first few pages until it petered out and months (or sometimes years) later I’d bought a new one with great plans to fill it with exquisite drawings and exhilarating stories only to fail, again.
My current sketchbook I bought last summer and filled the first few pages furiously. This time however, I did not abandon it and I had no grand plans for its contents. I now have just 10 pages left and I will soon be able to fill in the finishing date in the gap I left on the front cover. Some of the pages contain truly awful sketches, other pages I adore and consider them to be some of the best work I’ve ever done and others contain bits of ideas for bigger things. I even love the terrible pages to an extent because I’ve stopped trying to make my sketchbooks look ‘cool and interesting’ and ‘perfect’. Sketchbooks are places to make mistakes and experiment and sketch out ideas so that they can change and grow.
It’s taken me a very long time to accept that making mistakes is crucial, particularly when you’re trying to do art, but also just in general life. I will never be perfect and I no longer long to be perfect. Opening a sketchbook and doing whatever comes to mind and not caring if it’s a mess is easy for some but to me it feels kind of revolutionary and I’ve decided that I really quite like some of my ‘mistakes’. I plan on writing the starting and finishing date on the cover of all the sketchbooks I use in the future so that one day I can look back and see my technique improving, but also see all the mistakes and how vital they were.