Perpetual Randomness

A Creative Burst

I’ve been playing with Procreate on and off for a few years, and have found it’s really fun for drawing mandalas.

This week, I hit a burst of creativity, and played with a new set of patterns that came to me intuitively.

The timelapse videos that Procreate generates are always fun to watch because you can watch the piece evolve throughout the process. This took me a few hours and is boiled down to 30 seconds.

I’ve been going through a significant shift lately, the culmination of several years of meditation, marination, and difficult inner work. It’s not the kind of shift that is obvious on the outside. In fact, you’ll probably notice no difference at all.

But the change is happening.

And the time has come to retire some old bits that represent a part of me that no longer exists in the present.

This week, I quit social media on my phone, at least in the app form. I have done “digital cleanses” before where I leave the apps installed, and I put timers on them. Inevitably, I always bypassed those controls with the “Ignore for 15 min” snooze button that Apple provides.

This time is different though. Uninstalling the apps, without disavowing the sites completely, feels more appropriate to my goals. I haven’t disabled my Meta account (FB or IG), and I haven’t deleted my Reddit or Tiktok accounts so I can see that content on the web when I want. I left YouTube and Substack installed because I consume long-form content on those platforms. I left the Meta Business Suite app installed so I could easily post updates for the SV Loka page, which also allows me to respond to posts and messages without the tempation of endless scrolling.

I am not an artist.

Could I be called an artist? Probably. But that word feels too narrow, too loaded. It comes with questions I don’t want to answer: What’s your medium? Do you have a portfolio? Do you sell your work?

Dear Mom,

It’s been seven years since you left us. It’s hard to fathom but the pain reminds me it’s still real. I haven’t “gotten over” the loss or moved on. I’ve simply adjusted to the pain that comes with knowing there are no more hugs, no more laughs, and no more calls.

Write for an Audience

This is common wisdom in the writing world, particularly when blogging. Who’s your audience? What do they want to hear? What will interest them?

On Grounding

I’ve spent a lot of time in my life, especially the recent years, focusing on grounding myself. I have a long history of picking up other people’s energy and taking it on as my own.

In my twenties, I learned some grounding techniques in order to shut myself off from absorbing people’s energy, especially from toxic people (surprise, I’m naturally attracted to that). And it was a great start to improving my mental and emotional health. Visualizing myself as a huge, old tree with roots extending deep into the earth was a primary tool.

Introduction

Hey there and welcome to my little corner of the internet. I’ve owned this corner since the early 2000s and it has gone through many phases of rewrite and redesign. And it usually ends up in some state of half-done because I lose motivation, and never come back to it.