So...
Where to begin...
Well, the force driving this post comes from me deciding last weekend to try and archive emails from the original email I made in 2005 for this new venture of "ART" and "CONTENT" and err... "CELIX". It's an email that was long replaced with my celixdog gmail, but never deleted or archived - until tonight.
A lot of faffing around and downloading overly priced Microsoft and Adobe software trials ( Which I need to cancel before they actually charge me this highway robbery costs for them.); I am able to transition my Hotmail messages into PDF format. In which I then am also saving all attachment files as well. Granted I am not deleting this account, but safeguarding it. We all know how Microsoft can be and with Hotmail technically being obsolete as the Outlook platform was ushered in - I am not going to happily assume my stuff will forever be saved.
Doing this, for just a few select folders of saved emails of great importance (both overall and for nostalgia), comes at a mental cost of finding and glancing through endless texts and files of the past. Excuse me for being wordy in this...I'm trying to on the fly think through these thoughts.
I'm seeing files from 2005 til about 2015, 10 years of messages, laughter, sadness, anger, messages of what the other got from someone else... etc. You get the picture, right? I came across one of those emails of which my Best Friend had sent in 2005 an emailed message from another past mutual acquaintance. It's been over 16 years since I last read it and with the current hindsight range I possess - I have thoughts.
I should stress... in fact... I shall Ctrl+B this. I will not use names within this post. It's been too long and things have changed too much, at least for me. If you have followed me long enough, granted I honestly dunno if I have any long time followers lurking in the shadows, You've seen my worst and less worst. I - don't think I've yet to have a best in all honesty. Human's tend to lack perfection on a granular level.
I - No... I can't word wall this post.
Simply, I've changed, frankly and to the point, from what I was in 2000. A shy person with no friends and just finding that the internet held the key to socializing and finding people with like minded ideals. Into a Shy and also very naive; no... stupid; guy who saw people's art and figured it could just be used. It was the character that was made and that I put design input into. by a short few years I was thrust into the realities of life, online things, and the fact that you can't just... do whatever.
In the end... the experience both hurt me, angered me, and ultimately - thru rough patches - motivated me to actually TRY to draw myself. It took me over 15 years until I drew something that I can say was what I liked when the design was first made and that could at least stand with other artists I liked. The characters I made and ideas I created had no end use and to this day I feel I may never know what to do with them. I don't foresee myself with any form of coherent project that could possibly turn things around for me. Currently times are not great - but more on that in a minute.
I lost an ally at first and then regained them, oddly they too had been thrust into this nightmare of mistakes that we both can now agree where huge errors on each of our parts. We learned, we corrected, and we moved ahead in hopes to better ourselves and what we create. The other in this team currently has been powering thru her schooling and getting little degree achievements left and right with a clear sight line of what she wants to do after she has her Master's Degree.
I, on the other hand, stay fairly stagnant. I work a 7am to 5pm dead end receiving job at a company full of people I detest and see the daily horrors of narcissism at it's finest as people try hard to tear down my personal strengths and break the inner core I stand by and protect by keeping a lot of my life out of their eyes and ears. Which of course for the perverse minds the possess then lead a rather dark path of name calling and overall claims of what i "really need". Again, no names... it's very toxic and sadly, like the common analogy of a abused woman returning to her abuser, I have quit and returned to this job 3 times now as once out of the environment - I feel the fear and anxiety that needing a job brings and the inability to mesh well into other companies who have such vastly different cultures.
This doesn't leave me empty or blank though. My mind races with ideas, I spend a lot of time in my head... in that little world my characters have resided in for nearly 20 years. I started a small photography project after seeing my aunt doing well and making money on her paper-craft artwork. I figured I would give it a go and it's probably garnered about $40 total since I started it about 5 years ago. Of course - This project was started a year after my grandmother's first stroke and I quickly learned how difficult it is to both help and also be the one helped.
My grandmother, based on information I was only given the weeks prior to her death ( from my Aunt ), I've lived with her for at least since I was 2 years old. She was basically the mother I knew and my grandfather the Dad I knew. My real Dad skipped out of the picture as soon as my Grandma got custody of me... and proceeded to abandon my mother along his way out the door at a homeless Shelter in Colorado. This, by the way, is not me asking for sympathy or to be a downer - it's just simple facts.
My Grandfather died in 1999 shortly after I graduated high school. Grandma and myself moved into a smaller house and then we moved to Wisconsin where she was with her kids. She felt ill and thought at the time she would pass away. After some med tweaks, she lived another 13 years or so. February 2018 is when she had 8 mini strokes during the night. I awoke and found her half on the bed and half off in an attempt to answer a phone cal that was ringing. From that moment - my life was set around her and only her. I put the photo project on hiatus and would visit her daily after work and weekends in the care center I regret ever allowing her to be in. I brought her the newspaper she was no longer cognitive to read properly... I fought for her to get solid foo instead of blender-ed mush, and I fought for her to get visits home to at least have a sense of normalcy. She went from hospice to an improved state, but between what I still believe was abuse from the care center and my inability to afford the needed services at home; she was never taken off hospice and started to weaken from lack of exercise outside of our few visits.
Her last visit home, to this rented house I try to maintain, was at her weakest and she could barely go up or down the stair she was able days earlier to go with little help. We sat in the car after the visit ( which she would always grumble about going back to the center) as she asked me how she would be able to come home if can't walk. I held my tears back as I swore I'd build a damn ramp if I had too. Saddly she was never strong enough to return and by the last day of November 2018 - she passed away at 1am. I was angry with my aunt who was the power of attorney for not calling me when she was about to go.
The last 3 years have not healed any of the wounds. I struggle to do my job and come home feeling too defeated to enjoy it. The house we rent is now my responsibility which, in all honesty, I am failing at. Yet I have to find the drive to de-clutter and downsize memories and material possessions so i can try to move ahead. My finances are... bad. But my ever present sadness and lack of motivation are my biggest enemy's.
The archiving of these emails makes it all feel so petty and feel so old and almost like a glimpse into a better time. Even with the anger and hate and misguided mindset I had then. I want to draw, but I find myself turning simply to YouTube videos, I want to clean the house or pack things... I find myself driving around the countryside in a daze. I'll never be over the last 3 years and yet I know I need to break this cycle before it breaks me.
So... I apologize again for the TLDR, but I want to get this off my chest... I guess I want to put it out there... in public... let people know my mindset. If people still lurk my accounts or keep tabs on me or whatever.. that they have the truth in hand to bare. I was stupid then... I pushed people away who I at one time called friends. In the end though - it wasn't want was for me to want, it was for what the universe, God if you wish, to determine and test me at every step. To push me into my own creating and my own ideas and worlds. In a way - I owe the past people, whom may not even follow me anymore after once following me like a detective of shame, both my repeated humbled apology for anything I did to set any part of their life a-stray, yet also a Thank You for for actions that would in time show me to this place of self creating and using my own mind.
I wanted to try Inktober, yet at the moment the same above strains are present. I still feel drained, empty. and easily distracted by the moving pictures of YouTube. Maybe my heart just isn't into it yet, it still plans and creates through thinking of ideas and tinkering with character social medias.
I also know that once I start drawing again, the images will bare a different name. I've spend the better part of the last 6 months going thru the legal channels to changing my last name from that of someone who I never knew - to my mother's maiden name. A name with history spanning to the civil war. I'm now at the step of having credit cards changed over, a process in itself and a small part of me wished I could simply slip away from those debts and start anew under the new name, but I am not willing to be that dishonest. So don't be surprised by my images having the McCoy on them instead. :0,
Sorry for this long text and if it's a bummer. I just - had this urge to express this outside of my mind. Sometime I hope I can make a new domain website. I have a Udemy HTML5 course I still need to actually get past lesson 3 of. It's foolish for me to think moving into a new apt, a smaller one which I can try to fully decor in my own way, will change the world and my life will improve. I know this, but I also know that until a few weeks ago - everything I thought of seemed as if was dreams and never happens. Finding a video of Jim Carey's speech at a school (unknown if from a movie or actually in person) in which he states to not fear asking for things. Putting ideas and thoughts and desires into the world simply by asking for them... an the universe will find a way for them to happen as long as you work hard. I am holding onto that hope and that I can wise up on things of finances and being a better adult while keeping my childish ways with me as well.
