#the quality of the artwork got ruined so bad omg

[md3artjournal]

venting angst productivity failure time sleep practice progression

12:10 AM 3/25/2019

My daily figure photo series "Waiting for Ryuji" plus the daily/monthly drawing challenges I keep doing, are both destroying my days.  x____x;  It's been more than a week, and I haven't even finished the 23 paopu halves plushies I was supposed to do within 1-2 days!  I have so many projects to do for artist alley in early July!  ;O;  So many new products I want to make, but I have no energy!  It's becoming clearer that I only have energy for 1 (maybe 2) projects per day!  ;O;  That's just the 2 daily art projects/challenges to keep my art muscle in shape!  ;~;  Aughhhhh!  ;o;!  

Thank goodness I take notes for how long it takes me to draw different stages of a drawing, or else I would never have noticed I've been taking 3 hours per sketch.  O~o?!!!!  How is that?!  I'm not trying to be polished with those!  That was supposed to save time!  I mean, I'm not doing all-nighters anymore, like I did for Inktober 2017, so that's an improvement.  But 3 hours?!?????????  It takes me 10 minutes to do the primary sketch.  I know I can have problems designing a costume or conceptualizing a monster design, but 2 hours and 50 minutes?!?!?!??????  Omg...  I'm so hopeless.  Is this worth keeping my illustration muscles/skills in shape?  I've already accepted that I'm not an illustrator.  I suck too much.  I usually call myself a crafter, a jewelery, or a clay sculptor...Even though I've been drawing more frequently than ANY of those in a LONG time.  x~x;;;;  Is all this time really worth just TRYING to become better at drawing?  ;~;  I wanted to be able to nurture this skill so I could express myself with drawings, whenever I needed to express something.  But today was "Kiss Ryuji Day" and I was still too intimidated to draw anything for it, because I'm too afraid of how bad my attempts always turn out.  I couldn't even draw a good hug between Ryuji and Akira during OTPtember2018!  (It was such a bad drawing...That I tried SO hard on! ;_; )  I mean, I have to admit that I could turn some of my Magical March and MerMay challenge drawings into merch for artist alley, but objectively, none of it is good.  It's good *for me*, but compared to the competition in artist alley...What am I even doing there?!?  Looking at my sales data, the answer is I'm selling polymer clay sculptures, so again the question becomes, why am I using so much time to learn to draw, just so I can express myself, when it eats all my time away from making more clay sculptures that actually sell?  Is being able to express myself such a hang-up for me?  ...Yeah.  ~.~;  

So what about the figure photography?  I'll admit that those answers are simple.  It's a good way to practice an "eye" for composition, lighting, posing, etc.  I suck at it, and I don't put much effort into my lighting to mean anything against such greats as Kixkillradio, Love Pink Cheeks, Nendo Stories, etc.  When I look at their stuff, I can recognize how little I'm trying, and I have to ask myself "why am I even trying?".  Considering my self-expression fixation, figure photography is a good fill-in medium until I can better develop my drawing skills.  And I did originally start collecting figures to use as drawing models, which unavoidably funnels me into figure photography, so it's not like it's something I'll fully stop doing even if I stop setting up photoshoots and dioramas.  But I also really like making miniatures, figure accessories, diorama props, etc.  My sister said something like that if something makes me happy I shouldn't feel guilty about it and I should pursue it.  Whether I vent about how terrible I am for spending so much money on Nendoroids or when I refrain from buying supplies that could make my life less irritating out of frugality.  Maybe just feeling happy from doing figure photography is enough to justify it.  So maybe I shouldn't stop.  ...But I need to stop spending hours on Photoshop elements for figure comics.  That needs to seriously cut down, especially for a daily photo project.  

I know it never works when I resolve to stick to a schedule, but I really need to cut down how much time I use for these daily art projects, when artist alley is in a few months.  I don't outsource my products.  I have to make each and every one by hand.  That's the curse of the crafter.  I need to use more time for these crafts.  Jewelry, sculpting, designing, problem solving fabrication, etc...It's all stuff I love to do and once I start I don't want to stop...  But at this rate, I'm never going to get to it.  And then it'll just be a repeat of my horrible history.  Sure, last year I was able to finally make enough polymer clay Wayfinders to not sell-out my entire stock, half-way through Anime Expo---for once!  But it was still a situation of crunch time focused only towards my essential products and past best sellers, vs the thing I really wanted to do, which is making new products as well.  I waste so much time watching productivity videos, trying gameified motivation apps, and so much time wasted trying bullet journal techniques, thinking that if I just use this tracker or try this analog gameification technique, I'll finally stick to a schedule and thus be able to do everything I need and want to do....  But it always fails.  I really can't do more than 1 thing reliably per day.  And I have to practice daily to keep my skills up---my skills are too low to keep it to a once-per-week practice session.  

And it's started to wear down on me how much all these attempts and failures at a schedule are ruining my sleep cycle.  Everyday, there's a midnight I don't manage to get into bed on time, or a midnight in which I don't manage to be truly productive before midnight, so I have to stay up to get something done so I can go to bed, feeling good about myself as a person.  It's not as bad as school, but it is still a daily sense of failure, like school.  I recall the months (years?) that I resolved to no longer try to have a normal person's sleep schedule and just simply work on my projects as long as I have the will for, and than collapse into bed whenever.  I worked hard to have no social life, to have no one in my life vying for my time, so I should have no need to live in the same Time as anyone else.  But I had a breakdown last year, where I had to accept that I wanted the revive the good relationship I used to have with my mom, and I had to resolve to put some effort towards that.  So now I guess I have to live in the same Time as other people.  So I can't just be noctural and asleep while everyone else in my life is awake.  Yesterday, I think they tried to wake me to go to my uncle's birthday party/luncheon/dinner, but I sleep during the day and wake at night now.  I don't have FOMO for parties, being an introvert, but the next time---or rather how many times has my mom wanted to spend time together and I'm just in a different Time than her?  They go to movies every Tuesday sometimes invite me, haven't mentioned it in a long while, and for the past 2 weeks, I haven't even been able to be awake enough to go to two movies I've wanted to watch during the Tuesday-discounts.  Even right now, I'm staying up late again because I got sleepy during the day, and had to nap (and quite frankly I get better quality and more productive recuperation during daytime naps) so now I'm all rested to be awake...and it's past midnight.  Last week I finally got to a place where my sleep cycle more resembled a normal person's pattern, after 2+ weeks of work towards that.  And then one or 2 projects that went into the night, and all that progress was gone.  Sleeping like a normal person wouldn't be such an issue for me if I would actually be rested enough to be awake for when I want to get to work.  But I can't sleep even when I'm trying to sleep.  I'm amazed how spectacularly my attempts to sleep fail whenever I get to bed early ("early" as in a normal person's sleep pattern).  Is this all a lost cause?  Just like the rest of my life?  

Ugh.  I need to eat and sleep.  

2:13 AM 3/25/2019 Earlier today, my mom seemed to imply we could watch a movie on cable together, but I was in the moddle of a project.  I was fixated on a project instead, since sleep/fatigue had taken all my time, so the rare moments of productive will I have, I don't like to let go of it whenever I happen to have it.  It may ruin me, but in the end, I'd rather pay the cost of an all-nighter to get a good piece done, and have something as proof that I can be proud of myself (as well as use for artist alley for years to come), vs getting sleep on a normal person's pattern and have done nothing that stretched me beyond the limitations I thought I had. I like that proof of worth. (I've been seeing posts lately about "your productivity/skill is not your self worth" but I can't completely buy into that for myself anyway.) With my lack of memory and sense of self disappearing along with it, having artwork left along the way, as proof of who I was, what I'm capable of, and as concrete encouragement, proving that I can do great things, I have that inside me, even if those "great" things are just stretching beyond my subjective limitations by only milimeters...those are memories and senses of myself that I want and value.  ...And having new pieces in stock, ready to be turned into new artist alley products at the last minute, while I'm feeling bad that I hadn't had time to make anything new, is also great.  

#please ignore my idiocy