okay hello car.rd isn't finished but that's okay, all muses listed on it are still open for business. i also have a new theme and things are feeling! clearer! less overwhelming here now! so uh. hello. shoving my muses at you. comes harass them if you'd like

Time For the Life Update (10/19)

Hey Ya'll! First i should say that i'm sorry for being nearly inactive for the past monthish (idk who i'm apologizing to i have next to no followers). I went inactive cuz i moved focus to my twitter -go follow if you aren't i'm @/MxBlah- due to it beginning to gain a bunch of traction. However in the midst of the collapse that twitter is experiencing i'd love to be on here more often! I love to vent/rant on here sooooooo lets catch up.

I started high school this year and i'm pretty neutral on it so far. A lot of my favorite people ended up at different schools than i did and the ones who do go to my school don't have any classes with me :( However, the workload isn't as bad as people made it out to be (so far at least).

As for my personal life i'm finally getting my name legally changed tomorrow (as long as the judge approves it which has me nervous). The idea of me getting to live my life as my true non-binary self has got me thinking and i realized a bit of a curse following me... if you know me personally for long enough you will come out to me eventually. THAT is the gay agenda at work right there!

To make things negative real quick i had a falling out with one of my best friends this summer. He was that one intense friendship that every queer person has at one point or another where you are most definitely VERY attracted to them but just can't admit it. He knew I liked him for a bit but he assumed I was over him long before I actually was. He was "straight" but as time went on the joking flirting that i often do turned into something else. That's not why our friendship is strained right now though. (TW for discussions of sexual harassment if that's not something you want to read about skip on to the next paragraph) Basically he started repeatedly asking certain people for nudes and to have sex with him even after they said no multiple times. He only ever asked me for either of those once even though he knew I had been dating someone and we had been committed for a while. It got to a point where he has got his contact with everyone taken away. Even though what he did was fucked up and he hurt people I still don't want to throw away our friendship like that y'know?

Anyways some fun things i've done recently are;

Seeing the eras tour movie with some friends followed by us all sleeping over together

Going to homecoming with my amazing partner <3333333,

And celebrated a longtime friends birthday the same day I celebrated my partners!

Well sorry for how long that was. I hope I can make some friends here! I hope y'all have a wonderful rest of your day/night -Aster

Man. This is the least I have drawn in like, at least 10 years. I don't know why I've been lacking in ideas. Though, admittedly, on the 1 or 2 ideas I have been able to come up with, due to not drawing for so long, now I've lost my rhythm with drawing and nothing even comes close to looking right. Augh. I really hope I'm able to get back into drawing eventually. Because I really do love drawing.

Extended ramble below the cut 😭. It wasn't supposed to be so long but it just kept getting longer. Basically, tl;dr: There are SO many fucking factors that have seemingly contributed to this. More than I realised before making this post, even.

I think probably part of this also is my chronic pain, because I think I first got into this art block back in December 2021. Of which being when my chronic pain started getting really bad. Though, back then it wasn't as bad as it has become. Up until around August 2022 I was still for the most part making a drawing a month. But since then, I've only drawn 2 drawings. One in December, and then one in February. And I didn't even post the February one.

Another potential factor is that, well, my art blog url is "officialkarkat". At the time, it did feel like a proper expression of me, as I tied a lot of my sense of identity to this character, but. Around the same time my chronic pain started getting worse weirdly enough, was around the time when I began to realise that while initially doing this did help me figure out a lot about myself, at this point, it felt more like something I was hiding behind. Not being my true self. (Not that I'm not a kinnie anymore, I am, but yeah.) But then I've been stuck on what to do, because I've HAD that url for 2 or 3 years, and I also still can't even think of anything better lmfao.

There's also the fact that I did get a job in October 2022. While I have very little hours, it still does get in the way because I always have work on Fridays. Almost always exclusively. So the rest of the weekdays I get stuck in ADHD "waiting" mode, waiting for work at the end of the week. And the weekends feel like a recovery period.

I also am now using a completely different art program as of December 2022. Because I've been trying to switch computers, but wanted Linux on my newer one, but I couldn't get CSP to work on it despite my numerous attempts at different methods. So while I have completed 2 drawings using my new art program of choice (Krita), and have become more familiar with it by messing around in it every now and again, it still doesn't quite feel like home. Does that make sense.

And last potential factor. My newer computer is a desktop computer instead of something like my Surface Pro was, which, in hindsight, was a kick in the foot. I thought it'd be better because I could get better specs for cheaper with a desktop. And I thought that getting a graphics tablet would be all that I needed to get right back into it. But I didn't realise just how essential being able to pick up a pen at any time and just start drawing was, to my drawing process. Back then this was true, but even more so now with my chronic pain, of which gets worse with inactivity, thus making big drawing sessions impossible. Though when I got this desktop (June 2021), that was yet to be a big factor. I mostly only even got a new computer because well... my surface pro, at the time, was 8 years old. Now it's 10 years old. I got it second-hand 5 and a half years ago from eBay. It could now probably fall apart at any moment. I'm surprised it hasn't already. Though there are a lot of problems with it tbf. However all this being said, having my desktop computer has helped with chronic pain in a different way. Y'know, having more proper posture. But it still comes at a cost with how accessible drawing is.

But honestly, out of all of these. The two biggest factors getting in the way right now I feel like are the fact that I'm very out-of-practice, making it harder to get back into it, and the chronic pain. But. Augh. All of these different things happening all at once 😭