Motivation is a fickle mistress. You may think you have her figured out, that finally you have seduced her to complacently obey you, only to find yourself cuckolded yet again. Her one redeeming quality is that is always willing to return if you are willing to court her properly again.
If my metaphor is confusing you, I'm saying staying motivated is a bitch. I was doing a decent job of updating this blog, but the moment I made a post I wasn't happy with, I abandoned it. You have to admit, the New Years post was pretty bad. I was reaching for funny, and came back with randomness. And moles. I still don't understand the moles. I knew it was subpar, I wrote the whole thing in less than half an hour. But the pictures. Oh, the pictures! I had discovered the wonder of working with Adobe Illustrator. Vector graphics, how I have missed thee! I used to do a lot of cheesy flash cartoons way back in the day. This was my only experience with vector graphics, but I found them a dream to work with. No pixels? Sign me up! When I started this blog, I shamelessly ripped off the MS Paint artwork idea from the brilliant Allie at Hyperbole and a Half. I soon realized that it was not my forté. I couldn't decide if I wanted to go simple and messy, or super detailed. When I tried to go sloppy and messy, my images didn't emote the way her's could. When I went to detailed, it just looked like I didn't know how to draw smooth lines properly. I played around with Fireworks once, another old program I have a history with. Did not like. And then Adobe Illustrator came into my life. At first I was reticent. I had to learn it from scratch. It wasn't quite the same as flash. Some things that should be simple, such as filling lines, seemed to elude me. But I stuck with it, and once I began to learn to achieve what I wanted, I fell in love. I had finally found a program that allowed me to portray my images in a way that suited me. Unfortunately, I was so set on one or two images I had set in my mind for the New Years post, I took a full month making them. Then I published it, despite being very unhappy with the actual content. After receiving little interest in the post from the few people who were kind enough to read it, I got down on myself. I cringed away from any idea, convinced it would be crap. And maybe they all will be, but I'm done just letting this project collect dust like so many others.
Granted, I am still struggling to find an artistic style that can define this blog. My writing is hit or miss (or maybe just miss). I may not always be able to post at least once a month. But dammit, I'm going to keep making stuff. One day, maybe, I'll stumble upon a great idea. Maybe the blog can come together and find its identity. Maybe it'll stay hidden as a testament to my shame. Regardless, I'm not going to let myself get discouraged. So stay tuned, more posts to come.
