just checking in
It's been a little over a month since I've last posted on my bearblog. I started off the year pretty sick, much like everyone else apparently did. It took me some time to recover and then work was incredibly stressful for the entire month of January (and still is stressful) due to tight deadlines creeping up. So, it's been a pretty rough start, not to mention the winter blues are finally starting to settle in for me in the month of February.
Habits and another mini-challenge/new years goal has been keeping me sane throughout the work stress and sick-of-being-cold-all-the-time mentality. Back on December 31st, I decided to draw every single day for the month of January. Drawing has always been a joy of mine since for as long as I can remember, but of course as I've gotten older, I no longer made time for it and I've also gotten into this perfectionist and comparison mindset about art. What's the point of drawing if I'm not great at it or able to make money from it? I've been drawing for so long, so why isn't my art as great as this person's who is much younger? So, that led to me just no longer drawing ever. I wanted to get back into it and purely from a stance of a joyful hobby. I'm not drawing to be a professional nor have the greatest skills. To be completely honest, seeing Pewdiepie's video, Teaching myself to draw for no reason, is what originally sparked me to challenge myself to do the same thing.
So I made it a priority to draw something every day of the month of January. I drew digitally on my iPad and managed to draw every day, only missing 3 days out of the month. Since I did miss 3 days, it's so easy to tell myself that I failed but I count it as a great success. I haven't drawn this much in YEARS. My skills are definitely stunted and I was so out of practice but I feel like it didn't take long to get back into the swing of things. Now, still in the month of February, I'm still trying to draw every day. Instead of the iPad, I swapped to a traditional sketchbook to play around with pencil and paper again. There was definitely a difference and it felt hard to control my hand on the first day but now 9 days in, I think I prefer mostly traditional sketching.
It does feel good to know that I haven't lost my ability to draw, my art isn't great by any means but it feels exciting again. This makes me want to unearth another thing I use to love doing but have stopped during my full-time job life which is creative writing. This was another thing I put so much pressure on, thinking what's the point if I can't write a full novel and publish it and MAKE MONEY. That's not what I'm trying to do anymore, I just want to write for the sake of writing. I want to get back into creating worlds and entertaining myself through my imagination again.
I think I will do something similar in the month of March like I did in January, committing myself to writing every day in the month March and just see what happens. Like drawing, I feel incredibly out of practice from writing but I think as I keep doing it, it will come back to me or I just need to keep practicing, like with everything else in life.
What I'm trying to get through with my rambling is that I've learned it's very important to maintain hobbies with a 9-5 life, hobbies for purely the sake of joy and not with a hidden agenda to make extra money or treat everything as a side hustle. Creating for the sake of creating is what makes life worth living and makes things brighter and more exciting. It's easy to say you're too busy or too tired to do something creative but making time (especially in the dark winter) for creative activities and making them a priority has really made a positive impact of my mental health.