Minor Delays

So truth be told I do plan to start sharing art journal pages and the like, only I find I have a very difficult time actually sitting down and focusing on scanning the pages and actually typing entries. It's been a major stall for years with me and journaling: trying to make myself sit down and actually type out entries. Instead of doing that I get sidetracked by a million and one other things...one of the biggest being that damned Farmville on FB. I play it way too much and it takes up a large chunk of time. I'm trying to draw away from it due to that and sometimes I success, sometimes I don't. All I know is I'll go on it intending to only stay there a few minutes and next thing I know HOURS have gone by and I lost a crap load of time to that game. It's frustrating.

So I do intend to post stuff here as soon as I break myself of that stupid Farmville addiction thing-y.

In other news...

Searching for a community where I can share my works with fellow artists and we can chat back and forth, share ideas, thoughts etc on art in general. You know one of those communities where you can just talk in general about creating and the whole process, but it's got to be a site where we can all share our works, thoughts etc...just not sure if such a community exists. Perhaps I should create one such community but well time is not always on my side and I tend to get distracted by crazy things such as FB addiction. Not cool or good or anything.

Love is a Funny Thing

You know there's all kinds of love out there: love between friends, love between family, love between two people...there's true love and puppy love and even love at first sight. It's an interesting thing and something I sometimes think about. I have loved, love and been loved in return but I've never really been IN love. I've never found that "special someone". I was engaged once but it was more a friendship love than anything to me. I've wondered sometimes if I may have at one point met that "special someone" and due to circumstances or other factors never pursued it. I'll never really know if that's the case or not. All I know is I'm fine with not being "in love" with another.

Years ago I made that decision to stay single, never marry. When I was younger my dream was to get married and have two kids, you know the typical girl and boy both relatively close in age so hey could grow up together and always have each other, always be close, always be friends. I had envisioned some handsome prince would come along and sweep me off my feet. You know that fairy tale belief that each and everyone has a significant other, a soul mate out there longing to become as one. I'm not really sure what my thoughts are on the soul mate thing now. All I know is I'm happy being me, being single and doing my own thing. Weird though because sometimes I think of what will be left after I'm gone from this life. I love to write stories, journal, draw, make scrapbooks and tons of other things. I love to collect glass figurines of dragons and wolves. I love to travel around the world and collect key chains and postcard from every place I've been but in the end after I'm gone who will get all that stuff and really is it that much of a concern? There's really no one to pass stuff onto that will "carry on my legacy" so to speak and that does bother me at times, but again it's the choice I have made to not marry, not have children so really why does it matter?

Still I love to watch those old sappy romantic movies, get all excited when I see the stars meet one another and fall in love, cry eons of tears when the leading characters lose one another and find each other again. I guess I'm one of those old romantics at art. While in my mind I've decided, made the choice to remain single in my heart I love to see those romantic movies have a happy ending, so yeah guess I'm a romantic sap.

I just wonder though what draws one to another? What makes someone meet another and say "wow they're the one for me?"

Guess I'll never know the true answer to that question but it's fun to contemplate at times. Guess it comes down to just one true fact: love is mysterious and love is a truly funny thing...

Holidays and Romantic Comedies

Flowers at the Garfield Conservatory
Originally uploaded by Khonsus

Every year around this time I get the urge to watch all those old smoochy romantic comedies. I don't know why, but it always happens. I guess I just want to give myself a good cry for the holidays or something. :)

I usually start with "Sleepless in Seattle" and then progress to "You've Got Mail", "While You Were Sleeping" and so on. I, there's something about the holidays that put me in the mood for a good cry and a warm fuzzy feeling when things work out at the end.

I'm not one for holidays. When I was a kid I LOVED Christmas. It was my favorite holiday of the year. My family would always have this routine we'd do every Christmas. My brother and I would get up WAY before my parents and rush downstairs oohing and ahhing at all the prettily wrapped packages under the Christmas tree. Usually we were visited by the cat or dog...they'd be quite content roaming around the gifts looking for hiding spots or racing to get that special little bone or toy my mom would get for them and place under the tree right beside our stockings. My brother and I would sit there and laugh and talk quietly digging through our stockings the whole time waiting anxiously for mom and dad to come downstairs and join us. Back then Christmas was special...through the years I guess with age it no longer seemed as fun to open all those Christmas gifts...that little warm fuzzy feeling you get when you open a gift trying to figure out what's inside kind of dulls with the years. I always blamed that on being older, more mature...growing up. Still Christmas was a fun time of the year but then it stopped being so fun. Why? Well I blame it totally on the commercialization of the holiday. The retailers and the higher ups made the holiday more about buying the most expensive gifts and less about spending time with family. What do I enjoy most about Christmas now? Spending time with my family...granted my parents no longer share the same home, but when I leave work on Christmas Eve I literally RACE to my mom's house to spend Christmas with her and her husband. It's a bonus if my brother is there...usually he leaves earlier though due to having his own little celebration, but I still love going over there and eating a meal, talking with my mom and Matt, exchanging gifts, hearing stories...and then on Christmas day I get to look forward to spending time with my dad. He makes a small meal, my brother will usually come up. We exchange a few gifts and talk a bit. I kinda, sort of get two Christmas' really and I get to spend it with those I love.

So while I no longer get overly excited about all the gifts I do get excited and am happy and glad I get to spend time with the people who mean the most to me. Sadly I don't spend as much time with them as I used to, but those times I do...I cherish every single one of them.

So bringing this chat back to the original topic at hand...why do I like to watch those old romantic comedies around the holidays? I think it's because they remind me of how lucky I am, of how there's still magic out there, that everything will work itself out. Most importantly those kinds of movies make me remember all the good times, all the sad times, all the wonderful memories and they remind me of just how lucky I am to have it all.

Okay so maybe I'm a romantic at heart, but in the end I think those movies make me remember and that is something I revel in. :)

Life is...meaningful

Buckingham Fountain Walkway
Originally uploaded by Khonsus

Seriously it is. I know it is. I know this, yet I still have moments in time where I wonder, where I think about what kind of life I actually lead. Sometimes I feel like my life is...mundane, not exciting...
Sometimes I wonder if there's more, so much more to life then spending hours on a computer reading through e-mails and blogs. I look at my life sometimes and see that it's extremely uneventful, but seriously? Truly that is a big lie, a huge lie and why is that? Because of my job, because of my life and my adventures (or misadventures?)

I sometimes will ask if my life should be more exciting, more lively, more... I don't know eventful. Most people who know me, know what I do for a living will tell me to hush because what I do on a daily basis is so very important that my life is anything but meaningless.

They'll tell me the job I do, the things I do are very important. What do I do exactly? I work with troubled teens. I work with kids who have been diagnosed with disorders such as ADHD and ODD. I work with kids who have emotional issues, kids who have problems with their parents, kids who run the streets. I work with those kids that the criminal justice system or children and youth decide need placed somewhere.

So really my life is far from meaningless...so why do I get into these moods where I feel like my life is boring? Why do I get in those moods where I ask myself just what the hell my life really is about? I don't know why it happens, but it does. It's just...

I don't know. All I do know is I just spent the better part of an hour trying to analyze and examine why it is I feel this way sometimes and it was so disruptive to my sleep/rest that I just had to log on and...ramble about it.

So now that I have I believe my headache has receded, but still I have those damned doubts that creep in. Those doubts I can't explain away, and I wonder why it is I have them. Why do I sometimes feel as if my life is...extremely boring? Why do I wonder if I'm living life or just...spending it all online or sitting around debating it all the time.

I guess it's a phase of life that creeps up every now and again. I wish I could explain why it happens, but all I really can do is try to talk through it or get through it until my morose mood passes.

Now for the picture...why did I choose this particular one? Because it can be looked at as sort of a path, a direction...I can stop where I did to take the photo and remain forever rooted to that spot, not continue on, not turn back...or I can get myself out of this aggravating mood and move onwards. What's beyond those sparkly bricks? In reality a museum, an aquarium, a planetarium and a beautiful view of Lake Michigan, so metaphorically do I remain where I shot that photograph and look around content to remain in that exact spot? Or do I pull myself out of that mood that seems to be stalling me?

I think there's a whole hell of a lot more that needs to be accomplished, a whole hell of a lot more beyond those pretty sparkling bricks, and I think it's time for me to haul my ass out of that damned spot and move onward already! :)

I do like this picture, took it randomly. It was unplanned, and I like it...
Funny how at the time I took it I merely wanted to capture the pretty sparkle to the bricks laid out before me. Never did I expect it to be a metaphor that would help pull my mind out of a morose mood and get back on track already!

In the words of a man I've come to admire: Life's that way.

How Deep into the Murky Water Can You Go?

Have you ever had one of those days where you just feel like you're in a rut, and you can't seem to climb back out of it? It doesn't happen to me often, but it does happen and it's irritating. I just feel really...low, and I don't know why. Well I have a fair idea why but still...

I tried writing. I tried reading. I've even tried to take a nap or two but still it doesn't seem to be lightening my mood any. I hate when that happens. I feel like I'm in this vat of murky water kicking and treading trying to keep my head above the surface when something is consistently pulling me downwards. Why does that happen?

I know in a few days the mood will lift, but I so hate it when it does appear. Hopefully chatting about it will make it go away...or at least distract my mind from it enough that I will be able to move beyond...one only hopes that'll work.

Yeah maybe...we shall see.

Little Facets of Life

Colorful Ascent
Originally uploaded by Khonsus

Everybody has little facets of life. Slivers of their lives that they like to share, slivers of their lives they want to share and slivers they'd rather bury beneath a heaping mound of freshly dug dirt. Some slivers will be buried momentarily and others will remain forever hidden. My issue, my problem...

My balance maybe?

Is in what of those multitude of facets of my own life I'd like to share or reveal, and what slivers do I want kept buried. It's a fine interesting line to walk, a debate sure to go on for years to come: what to share, what not to share and what will the end result be as each tiny sliver is unveiled.

Really this is one of my sole purposes, sole reasons for wanting to start a blog in the first place and also seems to create quite the barrier at times. It's a realm I want to explore further and one that will require years of patience to pursue.

Which facets should I start with and which ones I dare to choose equal out hopefully to something worth writing about. Journaling is hard for me. Writing? Now that that's easier...when I write stories I only include snippets of things about me. It's not as intimidating as writing about myself...

Weird how that works out, strange indeed and if I can stop dwelling on how much better everyone else's blogs and artworks are then perhaps I can draw some more deeper enjoyment of my own, so without further ado I shall attempt to unveil and turn over a new leaf again.

Who knows it may lead somewhere, it may lead no where but isn't that part of the journey anyway?

Yeah I think so. :)

I'm here...

even though I'm strangely absent. It's awkward you know having two online journals and having posted to neither in well over a month. I swore I would turn a new leaf and start posting more consistently. I decided on the spur of the moment to create this journal here where I'm alone, as no one seems to be following me even now. Ah well I wanted a journal where I could post my artwork, explore my newly developing artsy side and even share my travel stories and pics. What's holding me back? Well, there's no audience to scoff at me or say "that's just plain stupid" and there's no one out there to stumble onto my journal and tell me that my journal is just plain boring and uninteresting either so it's not that. Some day there will be people but now in this particular moment in time I'm by my wee little self here trying to stick to a vow that yes I'll post more often only to realize that again things are being...forgotten? Neglected? I don't know but somehow life gets me every time and here I am rambling. I shall try to improve that shortly. Yes my artsy side has exploded recently. I'm experimenting more and liking the end results. I've even fiddled more so than ever before with my photographing...should see some of those pics I took on my trip from Chicago indeed!

I just returned yesterday from the Windy City and decided why not start posting here again. I have my next topic already sitting on the backburner. What's next? Resizing the pic I want to share and formulating a plan of a sorts. Yes so now that I've rambled and got that all off my chest I shall journey back to my other journal and continue reading through my lengthy flist...they are aposting more so than me over there. Ah well...that is in the works to be fixed indeed! *wink*