This has taken me a little longer to get up than I wanted, but that’s perfectly fine. I am dealing with some minor Carpal Tunnel symptoms in my dominant hand, I have been for a little while now, so I’ve been taking it slow with my typing to see if that would help it. Anyways, on to the post!
So I had something pretty cool happen this week! My passion for art, which all of which, for lack of a better word, had died over the past decade, pretty much came flooding back to me this past week. I don’t really know what it is. I mean, I do, but I don’t. This recovery thing is simply pretty great. My family has always been very into art, I was classically trained in piano and music theory at a very young age, and my mom did painting classes throughout college. She has continued painting throughout her life, and we have gone so far as to covert an entire room of our house into an art studio for her to continue following her passion. I haven’t always been the best at painting, I think it is absolutely beautiful, but I do like to think that I have a knack for graphite ~ carbon ~ charcoal medias. There is just something about sketching, that speaks to me. Something about graphite, something about the metallic sheen and reflectivity of an element like carbon on a grey or white paper matrix, that captivates me. It really draws me in. When I was younger, I used to take weekly sketching classes in the garage of this artist-friend that my mom would also take painting classes from. I did this for several years, until she and her family moved to Florida (or California? I believe it was Florida, however). I learned good technical skill for my sketching here, and during the summers, would attend special camps she would host there, such as metal sculpting. I remember one year, she let us convert the entire wall of her garage into this crazy mixed-media mosaic of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’, using everything from paints, to paper mache, to scrap copper, down to what I used ~ AOL installation disks from Target. I did the field of stars, and I would shatter these disks into little jagged fragments, burn waves into their rainbow backs with a soldering gun, and paste them across the wall in proper mosaic fashion. With probably seven teens working on this thing for a good five hours a day, and for what was probably a week or two, by the end, we had an absolutely stunning result. I do wish that I had a picture of it. Also during this time, at school (and at home as well), I was gaining interest in digital design. I’ve always been a bit of a computer geek, and I was starting to get into macro photography (specifically natural flowers at this drainage ditch in my neighborhood), so in turn, I was starting to learn how to use Photoshop in the Adobe Master Suite. From here, I also started making my own designs, with much encouragement from my teacher; and to some of the kids in school that had their own bands, it meant they conveniently had just discovered a way to get themselves some free album art. In short, my upbringing has been nothing sort of cultured in a very artistic sense. So anyways, this past week, I’ve started drawing again. It isn’t anything special, or really anything all too progressive (it is different in style compared to what I used to draw, which generally was portraits of people. This has just been purely abstract design, and I’m kind of digging it), but I’m happy with how it is coming along, and it makes me happy to know that I am actually doing something productive. That makes me feel like I am doing well on my recovery. In the past, I have tried dropping substances, and have found success, but ultimately have always failed, and I feel that if I have something like a hobby to fill my time, that I would feel like my time actually has some value to it. Like there is some actual meaning behind these things that I am doing. I don’t know. At least that’s what people tell me. And at this point, it’s about surrendering yourself to the process, you know? I know that I said that I don’t really paint, and this is true, but despite this, a couple of days ago, I went out to the store, and bought a “R-O-Y-G-B-I-V” assortment of fluorescent neon paints. They are super bright, and really pop under a black light. I think I will replace the lights in the studio one night with black lights, and do a painting session on a blacked-out canvas with them. I know that would be super duper fun, regardless of how the painting turns out. I don’t know, it’s just nice to actually be thinking ahead, and actually be making plans, or thinking about things for a change. In one of the recovery groups that I went to, they said to “think two days ahead at a time” ~ and to not take your life one day at a time like several of the recovery centers that I have been to have preached. I actually really like this philosophy. If you only think “one day at a time”, then how can you ever look ahead into the future? You’re just always going to be walking around with your head in the ground. And while that’s fine, it’s a good, sheltered, protected way to walk through a life in recovery, I think that this way, “two days at a time”, is a very good next step. But yep yep, I’m really happy to be back in art. I’ll probably be posting some pictures of my work, as it is coming along.