Good morning, good evening, and goodnight. We finally finished our first university semester.

Wow.

I’M TIRED :’).

That was pretty nice, but also very exhausting near the end. The last couple of assignments that I mentioned were relatively easy, except for the last architecture assignment, which for some inexplicable reason was harder than every other task from each module COMBINED.

It was rough, but I was in touch with cool people, which helped, and I managed to finish it the day of. Definitely not doing that again, better to finish the tasks the week of both for learning and also because the pile up was STRESSFUL, but its done now, so no real need to worry.

All that’s left really is the upcoming math exam, and that’s it. I’m not going back to Riyadh for the month either so aside from some exam studying, I’m totally free.

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It’s odd.

I’ve been hammering about so many different things that I wanted to do, right? Now I have a month to do them, ANY of them. It’s almost a bit jarring, though I understand that part of that feeling stems from the fact that I did JUST finish the semester, and so I haven’t really gotten back off my feet yet in terms of just living day to day. Going from maximal attention on work to full free time is quite jarring X).

So, what now?

You ever feel like you’ve mentioned a topic so many times, without doing what you sought out to do with it, that you start to feel some further amount of guilt weigh on you each subsequent time you mention it? That’s how I’ve felt with a lot of things in regards to writing about them here.

Mainly, this is in regards to drawing and the piano.

I mean, really, I got the piano months ago, and I still haven’t gotten the chance to start playing it properly, or going to the music school that I keep mentioning that id like to go to. Each time I mention it its always about how I’m GOING to do it, I’ll FINALLY get there (usually about the music school classes), but it seemingly never comes.

There’s a similar thing going on with drawing, though I just haven’t drawn since my first sketchbook got filled.

Kinda crazy that it happened at all though, right?

I suppose I find it hard, hard to let go of the shame surrounding these two things, and other stuff that I’d like to do in general. Does it come from the expectation? I would, after all, like to be better at these things than I am now.

If so though, why cant I just do them?

Do I just hate failing that much? Is the act of doing any of these things that unfun?

I mean, I doubt that that’s it, it just seems a bit implausible, you know? That none of them would stick. It more-so feels like neither are sticking for a similar reason.

There’s always been a sort of miasma around these topic for me, a level of uncomfortability for as long as I can remember, ever since I wanted to be good at these things. Before all the promises, even before this website.

Though, you could argue that the need to be “good” at these things is part of the problem.

I think it’s shame. And I think I’ve mentioned it in previous posts, too.

It’s always been quite hard to do these things for fun. It was always embarrassing to draw at school, knowing somebody could see me drawing and notice how awful I drew. So, I drew at home, but then id just have my family to deal with. At first, it used to be nice, id get praised for it quite a lot when I was younger, but later on id just be chastised for wasting my time.

I had a similar thing with the piano too, albeit more direct. I recall my mom barging in to me learning some of omori’s final duet, and pushing me to play it again so she could post it on her snapchat.

My dad upon hearing about this, and who at that point had also chastised me for wasting my time trying to learn the piano, suddenly changed his mind on the matter. He told me that I’d impressed him, and that maybe I SHOULD play after all.That never sat right with me.

I also had to play it several times in front of her till I felt it was passable for my mom to record, and even then I wasn’t quite comfortable with playing for her or my father at the time, and I wasn’t since the moment she barged in the way she did.

Nothing against my mom of course, she’s great, and I get that she didn’t perceive a majority of this, but I swear I’d just continue to feel my skin crawl for the rest of the day over that honestly inconsequential moment. The lingering feeling that they saw it, saw something that they shouldn’t have, took a long time to leave me.

That feeling of shame doesn’t really go away indefinitely though. It lives inside each failure. In each janked up drawing, each poorly played piece, there always follows a lingering sense of something slightly revolting. That I shouldn’t be doing this, that its wrong, that there are better things to do. Things I’m more suited for. I’m just bad at this. It’ll take far too long to get good enough to be happy with.

And that’s wrong, right? Not that I’m not bad at this, or that there are better things to do, OR ANY OF THAT >:/.

More-so the nature of thought. The foundation, the reason we can even say any of this to begin with.

Did any of this ever matter?

I mean really, sit with me on this, why does it matter? Assume I’m a professional at any of these things, to the degree that would make it acceptable for me to pursue these interests in my eyes, what would it matter for then? Would I look at every janked up piece that I made in my past in disgust? Is that what I want, what anyone wants for themselves?

Just in general, why should it even matter that you can do things a particular way to begin with? Whether I can properly shade a circle, play a piece, or weave together a story, what merit does it serve past the entertainment of others, if that at all?

I don’t even pursue these things because I want an impression from others, so that’s irrelevant. You may at first think “it doesn’t serve a purpose in society, so that’s why its not worth doing” similar to what my father may say, but that bumps up against the same wall, its not for anyone else anyways.

Also that critique of art is really dumb in its own right, just because all the media you cherish often is art, you dingus. A million other reasons too but I’m sure your smart for that.

If its just me then, and nobody else that this is for, I’m then under no obligation to let anyone else influence my reasoning around these things.

Good. But then what are we left with? What possess me to care about the level of mastery of these things, if not approval? I understand that to an extent, I’ve been conditioned to think this way, but factoring that in, it feels as though there must be more, so what then?

I could say that I connect more deeply with, and am more proud of, things that are made in line with how I imagine them, but that itself has several holes. Mainly, is that that barrier is quite a high one to hold yourself to for enjoying something, right? To bar your enjoyment of something behind how good you are at it, as vague and nebulous as that is already, and both the fact that we know intuitively that this can just be avoided, given many people do thing for the love of the game, and the obvious implication that it has about the longevity of this, makes it really stupid.

You’d never be able to get off the ground like that.

Past that, the objective qualities of art have no inherent value, past the value that we connect to it. Maybe how pleasant it is to look at, pleasant it is to listen to, but those themselves are all subjective. There’s beauty in many things, and that beauty exists in much more than just the best pieces of art that the world has to offer. I don’t judge the art in the world this way anyways, so if not externally, why do it internally?

Naturally from all this, I can only seem to come back to one conclusion. There’s no real reason to do these things other than your enjoyment of them, there is no other valid reason for or against it. And if there’s beauty in each part of that journey, then why every stop yourself from enjoying it? There isn’t one.

I’d say there’s a natural fear of failing despite that, but there IS nothing to fail at. This whole thing, ALL OF IT, is so I can like it, not just the art but the moment, and I can and HAVE liked it at every stage. I enjoyed all the silly drawings I made despite how technically poor they could be at times, I’ve loved playing lost library on my left hand since I learned it,

I like writing these blogs.

Funny that THIS would be one of the things that sticks, right? The blog.

After all, I never had any sort of expectations coming into this. I knew I wanted it to be an online diary, yea, but I never mandated that my writing be of a certain quality. And now? I’m “better” by virtue of having made it this far.

(Just look some old posts, you’ll see x))

Still, for as much happiness as it gives me to have made it this far, and this high, I never hated making the level of posts that I did before, nor do I think I’ll magically regret how bad this post will have been a year from now in comparison, when I look back after how much better ill have inevitably gotten a year from now, with an extra year of writing. It’ll be more of the same, it’ll just be cool to be here.

Yea. Its just nice as is. But more importantly, its not linear. The quality fluctuates, and I never cared for it in the first place.

So that’s it. I need to stop seeing these things, these interests, with whole planets of things to do on each plate, as things to be WON. To be GOOD at. You need to unlearn the shame, and be there for it’s own sake. That may be it’s own journey, could take a while, but playing with this knowledge in mind can’t hurt, right?

All to say, I think I’ve unpacked it thoroughly enough. It’s clearer what Id like to do for the vacation now.

I’ll do these things again. Ill draw, ill play, ill read, code, whatever the hell really, with no explicit expectation of even adequacy. I want to approach things with a fresh perspective. I look forward to seeing how it goes, without any need to validate my “success” with an amount of progress. What I do is just what I do, because I feel like doing it (l_-_l).

That being said, I ought to call it quits for now, its getting late. I think I’ll just start by continuing the read on some of the books I’ve got lying around, or maybe getting some from online and reading them on the tablet, and seeing where things go from there. You’ll be the first to know how this goes, of course, I’ll be back next week to share all the details on how it went.

Just, don’t expect a certain quality to any of this x).

Thank you for listening to me vent for 2,000 words, I appreciate it. As a fun post-post exchange, how about another song recommendation?

You’ll have read my rant on femtanyl last post, and im still listening to body the pistol almost daily, but I’ve been listening to victim by lexycat just as much. I really like the crunch of the music (and of a bunch of music in general but a lot of hers specifically), and the vibe is cool. Lexycat is awesome, give her stuff a listen.

Anyways, ill be off now. Have a great rest of your week reader, bye n_n/