A kick in the pants

Today's pointless photo is for anyone who wondered what the subjects of yesterday's pointless photo became when they opened fully.

Or, you know... you can just look at it as pointless. It pretty much is.

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Lately I've been noticing that I'm not doing a lot of the things that I like to do. The artsy things, I mean. I'm choosing to blame work for this.

To be fair, there are other goings-on that have something to do with it as well, but for now work is going to act as the scapegoat.

The problem, you see, is that I'm not used to working full-time in October. This time of year I'm usually only doing the occasional program or maybe just dropping in to check my e-mail. The rest of my time is supposed to be for myself.

And what do I do with that time?

Generally nothing.

Attached to that nothing, though, are my hobbies. Generally nothing can include sitting down with the sketchbook to doodle for an evening, or twisting some poor unsuspecting words into a perfectly awful poem.

None of that's been happening lately because of stupid work.

I get home from work and I just don't feel like doing anything, really. I sit. I watch television (or at least the television's on. Most of the time it's on just to make noise while I sit. Ask me what I'm watching and I honestly couldn't tell you. I suppose it's my own peculiar form of meditation). I go to bed early, because I know I'll be waking up at five no matter what. The next day, I go to work.

Sucks to be an adult sometimes.

I can't honestly say that I don't have time to mess around with my hobbies these days; it's just that I don't seem to have the inclination. Why bother?

Well, because the pointless artsy stuff is something I enjoy, and lately I've been missing it.

So what does a hopelessly lazy (and, lately, far too sleepless) person do to jump-start the interests again?





You're about to find out. If you want to, that is.

I've mentioned before that I've been clearing the posts from the old blog. I didn't want to just delete the entire blog because I wanted to keep the domain name, but with four years of blogging to get rid of post-by-post it took a while. It was also quite the exercise in nostalgia. Lots of things happen in four years, even if you have as nondescript a life as I have.

And don't think I'm putting myself down by saying that. I could have had a more exciting life. It's entirely my choice that I'm comfortably boring instead.

I finally finished deleting the old posts last weekend.

This weekend I intend to start refilling the thing. Slowly. The blog you're reading now will still be the place for daily pointless blather, but the old blog is about to become the home of the pointless artsy archives.

Let me explain that a little better.

When I'm writing or doodling or whatever I rarely throw anything out. I'm not the type to do that (surprise! Or not-surprise. After all, I'm the one who still has every greeting card I've been given since high school. Do you think I'd throw out something I actually put effort into?). As a result, I have notebooks full of poems. Not quite as many doodles, true, but there's enough of them.

What I want to do (for now) with the old blog is to post a few of the collected mutterings. Mutterings, yes. Blather for this blog; mutterings for that one.

It'll help me keep them straight.

I'm only planning to post a handful of things each weekend, and if I find myself in the mood I may actually tell you what was going on in my brain at the time I wrote/drew whatever you're seeing. Yes, I keep notes.

OLF, remember?

Anyway, if any of my two fans actually miss the nonsense I used to post on the forum, some of it might end up on Shrubbery in the next while. A word of warning, though: the poems aren't necessarily good, and the doodles are a bit dodgy. Add that to the fact that I don't have a scanner so any of the visuals will be coming off of my camera instead, and you can imagine that this could very well end up to be a complete mess rather than a self-encouragement to get out and start creating again.

We'll see.

Check out the blog list on the sidebar for the link to the old blog if you're interested. I'll likely post a couple of things later today unless I get distracted by real life or something.