Heyo folks!
So it's been two weeks. Making a plan what to do and actually keeping up with it are definitely two different things. And boy, does it take time to make a weekly schedule (at least for the first time and for me :) ). I found some useful posts here on dA and made a schedule for the first week, but didn't take the time and sit down to actually make one for the second week. But I mostly kept running with the first one.
30-40 minutes warm-up with gesture drawing. 2 hours working on Proko's anatomy course and then... well. There's so much you can reasearch and practice or take a first shot at. Feet, hands, rendering / color and light... that's where a plan actually comes in handy, 'cause when you've written down what to do, you thought about it beforehand and just have to execute it. So you don't have to quickly pick a subject you want to study out of nowhere. So spending some time to think about what to do beforehand is a good thing ^^ Just don't procrastinate on it.
Other than that I had an appointment at the job center two weeks ago and the person who's in charge of getting me a "regular" job again, takes their job quite seriously... Sadly it was a different person than three years ago. Back then I think I presented myself in a better way, motivated to actually find a job. I think they didn't take me seriously, when I told them I want to be a full time artist, but since it's my problem whether I have enough money or not, we agreed on looking for part time jobs. For starters she gave me 3 printouts, where I'm legally OBLIGATED to apply. And since then I got another one. I like to think, that it doesn't matter where I work, since it's only 4-5 hours a day, but I still don't like three out of the four places. It's funny though, since I applied for two of those jobs and didn't get ANY reply. Just want to mention here, that companies / stores of a certain size (I don't know) are obligated to offer x jobs a year. But there's this "loophole", where they pretend to offer a job and then they just tell you: "Oh, we're sorry, that vacancy has already been filled." No one cares, to actually check out, whether it's a real job offer or not, but then again, how would the govs / jobcenters even go about that? That's not my place to think about... but it still makes me mad.
Anyway, I like to say, "there's nothing to fear but fear itself". But deep down, I'm really scared! Humans are creatures of habit. If there's a change incoming, there's a lot of us, who freek out. I absolutely LOVE to tell people, "it's going to work out" and "you can do it" and sometimes try and offer some proper advice as well (to the best of my abilities). But keeping my own chin up and having a positive outlook is WAAAY harder. I have a handful of people, who really believe in me and give me love and motivation and I'm very thankful for that. And I really do my best, but it's hard to lock out the fear. On one side it's kind of an adventure and exciting to break out of regularity and dive into new things. It's the opposite of boring! One of my more useful traits is, that I always try to take away something positive from negative experiences and not letting those things getting me down. But of course that's not the case DURING those experiences but afterwards. Still useful, as you can only learn through failure / negative experiences. But when I try to imagine a positive future or outcome of sorts, it's obscured by a "fog of war" or rather fog of fear. It's kinda funny. Being a creative person, but not being able to "project" any kind of view or outcome... But then again, who knows what the future holds? You can only forge it in the present (ooooh, big words).
Lastly, to jump back to the schedule thing. Since I didn't have to work in April, I switched my sleep schedule to owl mode. Going to bed between 6 and 10 am and getting up between 2 and 5 pm. So when I made my schedule, I left out the actual starting times, cause I never knew, when I'd get up. So with a positive outlook, I expected having the appointment with the job center at 10:30 am will kick me in my nuts and switch up my sleep schedule instantly. But it didn't. I was so used to staying up all night, that it didn't matter if I slept only 3 hours that night. So a couple of days ago I was like: "There's no way around it, you got to make an effort and switch it up throughout a whole week". Turns out I didn't have to. On Sunday I got up after like 4-5 hours of sleep and went to the Czech Republic (40 minutes of driving) with a good friend and his whole family. It was super nice AND I managed to not take a nap and go to bed earlier (that's about 3-3:30 am xD). So according to my efforts, I set my alarm to getting up an hour earlier than the day before, which was 1 pm. Then I woke up at 9:30 am and was like "FUCK YEAH!". So I set my alarm for 9:30 today and managed to not sleep in or be grumpy about it. Doing my best to keep it up!
I'm really glad, that it just got switched up like that. Also it's finally REALLY nice whether in this shithole of a town which makes it way easier to just pop out the door and take a walk. Since sitting in front of a screen all day is just not great, I set my daily goal to a bare minimum of 6800 steps a day. You may laugh, but even that sometimes doesn't come easy. I'm not much of an outside person, but it's absolutely necessary to move your ass about. My back and muscles are fucked up enough as it is, so yeah, keep that in mind! Get up and stretch every hour and don't forget to stretch them wrists. It'll avoid tendovaginitis or in the worst case carpal tunnel syndrome.
Phew... What a wall of text. But if there's nobody around to listen to this BS, I find getting it out this way already helps a lot, no matter if someone actually reads it :D
So have an awesome day!
