New Year. New Drive

A Walk About

It has been over a month since my last post, due to a number of reasons. Among them, getting sick, a flood of work, and traveling have been among the main draws. And Batman. Lots of Batman. This saddens me in a few ways. I did the very thing I had hoped to solve months ago. I lost momentum and couldn’t find it in myself to keep rolling. I broke my routine and because of that, have been drawing less and less since even December. That was a long time ago.

Chinese New Year has finally wound down and with that, so has a number of hectic whirlwinds. Before I was just kind of putzing, and not really getting into the roll of things. I’ll discuss it later, but I’m dreadfully behind and need to start making some real results fast. Perfect.

New Drive

One of the frustrations I had earlier last fall was getting my new gaming laptop shipped to me from the States. This was a nerve racking ordeal that took nearly a month to get figured through customs. Now that its in my hands, for the first time ever I can get a taste of PC gaming. That was the whole point. In December, I also was hitting a slump and needed a hero. You may recall my gushing about Batman for a while. Thanks to an earlier Humble Bundle purchase and steam sale, I now had all 3 Arkham games, and the means to play them. Fast forward to now, I’m finished with all 3 games, loved them and have logged at least 20 hours on each one. As you might be able to guess, I have conflicted feelings over this. The WHOLE POINT of getting my computer was to do exactly this. The problem was in execution. I binged. Hard. The hardest thing to do with routines is keep them going from day to day. I binged on games, and while I felt inspired watching my caped crusader beating justice into thugs, I wasn’t continuing my practices. Now, a month later, it’s going to be even HARDER to get going again. But. That’s what’s going to happen. That’s what has to happen.

Strong Adventure

Over Chinese New Years, my sister and I traveled to 6 provinces, and many more cities dotting north, and southwest China. There were more than a few times where we would drop in to one city from a night train, trek to the sights, consume as much local specialties as we could, and end the day on a night train bound for another city. We were moving. I got pretty terrible food poisoning along the way to complete the package, but still had a great time. It reminded me how much I love traveling around, being mobile and seeing the world. There will be more travel related musings coming up in the short term, as far as I’m concerned.

Get Your Hands Dirty

I was recently commissioned by a friend to do some sumi ink paintings. I can’t say they were the best ever, but it was another rediscovery of doing something. For the time being, I’m setting aside digital art and returning to physical drawing and properly getting strokes down. I am trying to get my hands on another drawing tablet, but for the mean time I’m going to return to pen/pencil/brush and paper. Sunday night will continue to be my anchor day for getting things up.

Don’t Get Cocky, Kid.

I’m trying to do a lot. I know this. I had previously played with doing just one Chinese sentence a day, and even that fell through since I still have no vocabulary to draw from to make those sentences. The first 6 months of this blogs redirection has been, for the most part, a success. I disappeared for the last month and lost momentum. In that case, I failed. On the other hand, this is exactly why this blog was created. To show case the struggles and pit falls of life design and learning and how best to overcome those hurdles and achieve the optimal routine (an article on flow will be written soon, I swear to God). I was able to mostly hit my art goals for the period that that was my focus. I did set up methods suggested here to learn several new juggling patterns as well as create a home gym and working environment.

This..Your…Trek Amongst The Stars

There are some very potentially interesting things happening in the next few months. I’m powering up, and getting ready jump around. I am going to be extremely busy if I am worth beans at all. A hint of what’s to come:

Speak 30 minutes in Mandarin
Learn Javascript basics
Learn Python basicsLearn Ruby basics (maybe)
Massive research project on positive psychology
Massive research project into gamification and game design/theory
Continue drawing
Continue reading a book every week
Pare down apartment and belongings
Design next travel adventure

Pork-chop Sandwiches!

This is all fun and great typing out a long list of things I want to do. It already is a little dangerous because listing can give the sense that you’ve already accomplished something and that a rest is in order. I honestly hope that isn’t what becomes of me, but only time will tell. I’m back again after a long, long hiatus but I’m excited to see where they all leads. From how things seemed to be headed, I can only promise one update (Sunday night) a week. If I feel that content is too thin, I’m going to start reposting articles that I find particularly relevant, or that are worth a fun read. I’d like to try and keep material on this site original, so we’ll see how much that gets incorporated.

All right. Enouffa that. Let’s get some work done.
Here’s to a new year, and new projects.

Let’s do something stupid interesting.