Status update: holding course.
Still not the greatest I've ever been, but I'm coping, and am feeling way better than I was.
We got some blackout shades to put up in the bedroom windows, so I've been adjusting to having less light, and now I'm sleeping much more solidly. I still feel like I'll never have a normal sleep schedule again. We both have problems sleeping fairly often, and are both sort of at the mercy of the other person's sleeping schedule because of it, so progress is slow to make and quick to disappear. (I've tried melatonin and so forth, and it has never done a damned thing, so thanks, but no advice please.) I go to bed around eight in the morning and get up around four. It's messed.
It rained today, which kept me from going outside to work on engraving another skull. I started a wolf skull last week, and it's going well. I'm nervous about fucking it up, but I'm being very careful. I have no idea who I'll sell it to; it's going to be even more expensive than the dog and coyote skulls, and nobody's biting at those. They're high price-tag items, but there's no way around that math. I'd do nothing but inked skulls because those move, but I love doing the engraving. It really is incredible.
My dream, my ultimate goal, is to do a lion skull someday. To my anguish, there's one up on eBay right now for a crazy-low current bid. I'm a long way from being that proficient, though, and I certainly cannot afford it right now. I want to get at least a dozen skulls under my belt before I try to work on something that irreplaceable and powerful.
I might be able to swing mountain lion at some point, which would also be badass.
In other news, I am teaching myself Italian using some first-rate free audio lessons and a solid beginner's textbook I snagged for cheap. I'm sick of not learning anything new besides new art techniques, which is technically challenging but not so much intellectually. I am enjoying it immensely. I spoke pretty good Spanish at one time, and took third in state my senior year of high school. Gratifyingly, the similarity between the languages has given me a foundation to build on, so I'm finding it all very familiar so far. The particular way I think connects words' and sounds' similarities so quickly that learning a language pretty close to the one I already speak and very, very close to one I sort-of spoke at one time is often no different from acquiring new words in my own language. I have a knack, and probably could have been bilingual or multilingual if I'd been able to continue classes.
Proving that I can talk myself out of anything and make myself feel bad about anything, it is really bothering me that I am not learning Spanish because 1) Spanish is a language I might have a practical use for in my day to day life, given the high number of Spanish-speaking people here, and 2) learning something else feels like "wasting" all that grounding in Spanish. I am steadfastly ignoring this, and learning Italian for very silly reasons, and I kind of think that's a better reason -- wanting to just because it's fun and new and is making me happy.
We will see how long it takes me to get bored. My attentions can be dreadfully fickle, and with nobody to practice with/on, I'm pretty sure I'll get discouraged, but I'd like to pick up at least enough to be able to travel comfortably and swear fluently. I really really wanna see Italy someday, and I don't want to tour a country where I don't speak the language well enough to find a toilet, clean water, or medical care. Aside from practical considerations, it just seems rude.
Sadly, swearing isn't something that most sources teach, and while I can find some resources online (and pick up a lot of fun stuff from Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood) what I will eventually need is a native speaker willing to teach me how to really go off.
Ugh. It's getting light outside, which should be against the fucking law. I'm going to go to bed. And when I wake up, grinding bones, language practice, and then MMF porn! Okay. So my life doesn't totally suck. The trick is remembering that.
We got some blackout shades to put up in the bedroom windows, so I've been adjusting to having less light, and now I'm sleeping much more solidly. I still feel like I'll never have a normal sleep schedule again. We both have problems sleeping fairly often, and are both sort of at the mercy of the other person's sleeping schedule because of it, so progress is slow to make and quick to disappear. (I've tried melatonin and so forth, and it has never done a damned thing, so thanks, but no advice please.) I go to bed around eight in the morning and get up around four. It's messed.
It rained today, which kept me from going outside to work on engraving another skull. I started a wolf skull last week, and it's going well. I'm nervous about fucking it up, but I'm being very careful. I have no idea who I'll sell it to; it's going to be even more expensive than the dog and coyote skulls, and nobody's biting at those. They're high price-tag items, but there's no way around that math. I'd do nothing but inked skulls because those move, but I love doing the engraving. It really is incredible.
My dream, my ultimate goal, is to do a lion skull someday. To my anguish, there's one up on eBay right now for a crazy-low current bid. I'm a long way from being that proficient, though, and I certainly cannot afford it right now. I want to get at least a dozen skulls under my belt before I try to work on something that irreplaceable and powerful.
I might be able to swing mountain lion at some point, which would also be badass.
In other news, I am teaching myself Italian using some first-rate free audio lessons and a solid beginner's textbook I snagged for cheap. I'm sick of not learning anything new besides new art techniques, which is technically challenging but not so much intellectually. I am enjoying it immensely. I spoke pretty good Spanish at one time, and took third in state my senior year of high school. Gratifyingly, the similarity between the languages has given me a foundation to build on, so I'm finding it all very familiar so far. The particular way I think connects words' and sounds' similarities so quickly that learning a language pretty close to the one I already speak and very, very close to one I sort-of spoke at one time is often no different from acquiring new words in my own language. I have a knack, and probably could have been bilingual or multilingual if I'd been able to continue classes.
Proving that I can talk myself out of anything and make myself feel bad about anything, it is really bothering me that I am not learning Spanish because 1) Spanish is a language I might have a practical use for in my day to day life, given the high number of Spanish-speaking people here, and 2) learning something else feels like "wasting" all that grounding in Spanish. I am steadfastly ignoring this, and learning Italian for very silly reasons, and I kind of think that's a better reason -- wanting to just because it's fun and new and is making me happy.
We will see how long it takes me to get bored. My attentions can be dreadfully fickle, and with nobody to practice with/on, I'm pretty sure I'll get discouraged, but I'd like to pick up at least enough to be able to travel comfortably and swear fluently. I really really wanna see Italy someday, and I don't want to tour a country where I don't speak the language well enough to find a toilet, clean water, or medical care. Aside from practical considerations, it just seems rude.
Sadly, swearing isn't something that most sources teach, and while I can find some resources online (and pick up a lot of fun stuff from Assassin's Creed II and Brotherhood) what I will eventually need is a native speaker willing to teach me how to really go off.
Ugh. It's getting light outside, which should be against the fucking law. I'm going to go to bed. And when I wake up, grinding bones, language practice, and then MMF porn! Okay. So my life doesn't totally suck. The trick is remembering that.