Living with Chaos

A nice thing about my current incessant need to note everything down is that I get an accurate sense of when and what stuff happens to my life when I get too busy to process my experiences. For example, I have a clear record of when I was recently diagnosed with ADHD. By recently, I mean last month.

While I’ve been writing my thoughts on it down on my personal Facebook timeline, I’ve not had the chance to write about it for my blog, which serves as my more public, non-stream-of-consciousness repository for what’s going on in my brain.

(You can follow me on Threads for the more stream-of-consciousness stuff, my blog posts are a bit more filtered and edited for clarity.)

Anyway, back to ADHD. I’ve long suspected that I might have it thanks to its growing popularity on social media and my own experience living with Dante, who was diagnosed with ADHD about a year or so ago (this was my pre-noting-down-everything era.)

It took a while before I got properly diagnosed. I was suffering from depression and anxiety prior to my assessment. My psych explained that ADHD is hard to diagnose when in the midst of dealing with the other stuff. After she determined that I was already in a clearer frame of mind, I was finally able to get tested. Unsurprisingly, I did have ADHD: specifically, the inattentive variant.

I honestly did not know what to do with that information at first, and looking back at my original FB post, I pretty much said the same thing a month ago. It took me some time to decide to read a book about it, Scattered Minds by Dr. Gabor Maté, which was recommended to me by one of my FB contacts.

Reading through the book brought me to tears because, for the first time in my life, it felt like I finally had an instruction manual on how my brain works. It took me some time to read it in its entirety because my July has been insanely busy.

I’m only properly processing what I’ve learned now that most of my events and commitments are done. So, I’m going to try to list down what I’ve gathered so far about how I operate based on what I’ve read (not just from the book) and what I’ve experienced:

ADHD is a chemical imbalance in the brain (more on this here). It is widely believed to be hereditary, which means there’s a good chance that either one or both my parents had it. I have no idea which: my mom exhibits similar behaviors to me, but it might also just be advancing age. My dad died when I was four so I have no way to tell if he might have had it, but he was the more creative of my parents (at least, that’s what my mom keeps telling me), and creativity is one of the hallmarks of ADHD brains given their propensity for curiosity and connecting ideas.
ADHD can be exacerbated by a lack of attachment with parents: something that is key to developing emotional self-regulation and proper individuation. This aligns with my experiences as my mom was mostly busy with work as I was growing up. With her being the lone caregiver and provider, I had no other sources of good attachments, which could explain why I gravitated towards friendships over family in my teen years, through to adulthood. Perhaps I was looking for ‘parents’ in my friendships (which also explains why I prefer more mature men as partners: people who can take care of me while also giving me enough space to be my own person.)
ADHD is a developmental delay, which means it’s not a lifelong condition, or at least it’s a much more manageable condition given the right tools and environment. One essential component of a ‘proper environment’ (that links back to healthy attachments) is the need for people that can provide unconditional love, care, and understanding. Another component is having plenty of time and space for the ADHD brain to play and process and individuate. As for tools, routines of preferable behaviors help a lot. In my own experience, having and protecting my morning routine helps me with self-regulation. My practice of journaling every morning and building more good habits on top of it has been helping me immensely.
The ‘inattentive’ part of my ADHD means I can be both hyperfocused and extremely distracted, which lines up with my inability to multitask when my brain is focusing on something it deems important, and with my scatterbrained-ness when I’m faced with too much stimuli. Managing the latter is more about managing the available stimuli, which means when I need to focus, it really helps to shut everything else down (my phone notifications are now mostly limited to delivery services). Setting boundaries and priorities is something I’m still working on, as well as learning how to say no and being okay with potentially disappointing someone when I do.

There’s probably a lot more I haven’t mentioned, but as is the nature of my brain, I’m starting to get distracted from writing this post, which probably means I need to wrap it up.

I’m still learning more and more about ADHD and how I can ‘live my best life’ with it. I know that all that I’ve been doing so far has been helping me out a lot: journaling, notetaking, routines, healthy relationships, and perhaps oddly, working on GeekFight. But more on that later.

Before I bid you adieu, I would be remiss to not mention that everything I wrote about ADHD is based on my interpretation and memory of what I’ve read from Maté’s book and other sources, and my own lived experience. In no way should this blog post be used as a tool for self diagnosis. If you’ve read this far and suspect that you might also have ADHD, please see a proper medical professional. I’m just an artist trying to make sense of the chaos of my own mind.

And with that, I shall go on my merry way. I have shit to do and art to make.

xoxo
Caroline

For My Inner Child

I used to make comics all the time as a kid. As an adult, I tried making comics as an alternative source of income and somewhere along the way I ended up burning myself out: I set arbitrary rules and deadlines for myself, adding unnecessary pressure on an activity that was supposed to be fun. I ended up very anxious and cautious about the whole process that I never even got to the publishing part, worried that the quality of my work was getting worse.

I want to see how I’ll do if I don’t set myself any rules: no post schedules, no fixed formats, no fixed style, even. Just draw whatever comes to mind. No need to make the new strip better than the last one I made. Make comics as if I were a kid again. Just have fun.

This comic is for that kid who just wanted to draw and write and play. You’re doing good, kid.

Money, Money, Money

I spent a good chunk of my week devouring PDFs from philosopher Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. in an attempt to untangle my thoughts around art and money. I originally only meant to read his How an Artist Can Hack a Living: A Report, but he graciously gifted me two other texts: The Good Life and the Sustaining Life, and Money Rules for Simple Living. I felt it was both important and imperative that I write down my own thoughts on it, if only to quell the compulsion to make content for this blog.

I think a lot about what exactly a good life means to me, and how as an artist I’d be able to reliably sustain it in today’s age where AI can make ‘art’ much faster—and in many cases, much better. The looming threat that AI will replace many creative and technical jobs is very real.

I’ve tested Midjourney and Adobe Firefly: while they’re not perfect products and can’t be directed to produce my exact vision, for many who aren’t in creative fields, they can produce ‘good enough’ work for ‘end product use.’ By ‘end product use,’ I mean something that can be monetized: sold in an Etsy shop as ‘art’ by morally bereft individuals who fancy themselves as curators of good art.

But I’m not here to argue about the pros and cons of AI technology or even talk about what my concept of a good life is because, in many ways, I already feel like I’m living it. I’m here to talk about money: a topic which many people either shy away from or talk too much about.

I was born into a middle-class Chinese-Filipino family. My immediate family had a candle factory that eventually had to shut down, being unable to pivot after power supplies became more stable around the country. In it’s heyday, I was surrounded by business, though my involvement as a child was mostly limited to manning the shop, sometimes as a cashier. I was literally surrounded by money.

You could say that I grew up in relative privilege, and yes, I did. I thought money would always be a given, and I had no clue that my mom worried about it all the time. I had little appreciation for the things I had, the resources I had access to, what a privilege it was to have books and good education and STUFF. But I wanted more: I wanted freedom.

I grew up with Western ideologies: independence was meant to be sought after. I wanted to be able to do whatever I wanted, but I couldn’t do that for as long as I was still living with my family and benefiting from their money rather than my own. So, making money became an obsession for me.

Back then, the goal was clear: I needed to make money so I could live on my own, be my own person. I didn’t want to rely on my family, and I wanted to prove to them and myself that I could survive on my own and be an ‘artist.’

Spoiler alert: independence is a bitch.

My life revolved around making money to pay for rent, food, utilities, et cetera, instead of actually making art. Sure, I was able to ‘make a living’ with my skills by working in the game industry, but it was more like a long-term commission where you bring to life other people’s ideas, other people’s visions. Since I seldom had the chance to work on my own vision, I lost it—and I’m still in the arduous process of figuring shit out.

But back to money: somehow, through a bit of hard work and a lot of luck, I managed to save up enough that I don’t have to worry about money as much anymore.

BUT I STILL DO. A lot. From worrying about not having enough money, I started worrying about losing money, and as I’ve recently realized: I’m incredibly bad at money. I don’t actually know how to efficiently make it, let alone use it and I’m terribly sure that I am extremely unqualified to talk about it or give anyone (especially artists) useful financial advice.

Which brings me to the texts that Andrew Taggart gifted me, specifically Money Rules for Simple Living, which opened up questions about my own relationship with money. What is ‘just enough,’ and how can I best use it when I do have more than enough?

While I believe I’m in the ‘moderate abundance’ stage based on Taggart’s text, I need to think more on the ‘just enough’ stage as I seem to spend way too much on things I don’t even use. While I don’t want to deprive myself of good things (good food, for one, but we could argue what that means as well), I’ve given myself the challenge to stop spending on random shit—and hoarding art materials—and refocus instead on using said random shit to produce art, whatever that means to me.

Anyway, if you came here thinking you could gain some useful financial insight, I advise you to read Taggart’s texts instead. It is by far the most insightful text I’ve read about money. It doesn’t tell you how to make it, but it can teach you appreciation and gratitude for the things you already have.

P.S. Taggart operates on a gift economy: something I’ve been exploring for my own ventures. While I was gifted the texts for a small donation to read How an Artist Can Hack a Living: A Report in full, you may have a different experience, by which I mean the texts may not come free for you as they were emailed to me personally. If you’d like direct access to the Money Rules for Simple Living text, I believe it is available at this link for a small donation.

Light and Dark Poster (Process)

One of the things I do for GeekFight is create the posters that serve as banner images for our games. Each game presents me with unique challenges as the theme changes every time, which makes the poster creation process quite fun.

I thought I’d share my thoughts and process in making the poster for our June 2023 game, mostly so I can record my own work but hopefully to also demystify the art creation process. While I had shared the process video previously (which was basically a slightly edited capture from Clip Studio Paint’s recording function), I’ve always found process videos without commentary a bit lacking. While I still find it difficult to make videos with on-the-fly commentary, and I’m still learning how to take better process videos, I figured a blog post would do for now.

Anyway, the theme we decided to go with for the month of June 2023 was Studio Ghibli x Diablo, in celebration of Studio Ghibli’s founding (June 1985) and the Diablo 4 launch. We decided to call it Light and Dark (Ghibli being the ‘light’ and Diablo the ‘dark.’)

The idea for the poster came to me almost instantly: my favorite Studio Ghibli film has always been My Neighbor Totoro, partially because it was the first film from the studio that I ever saw, and partially because it presents a life I could aspire for (moving to a quiet countryside, surrounded by nature.)

I’m sure the Catbus also has something to do with it.

The official poster also had the right amount of light and dark areas in it that would convey the theme of the game well, so I decided to base our game’s poster on that.

Given that the ‘end product’ for the poster was for it to be a Facebook event banner, I started with a sketch and layout for where the text might go. That was so I would be sure to have room for adding in the relevant event details (logos, title, time, date, and place).

While I’m still unsure of the positioning of the title text as it makes the image very heavy on the left, splitting the text between the light and dark areas seemed a lot less aesthetic.

After the team approved the sketch, I started the main image by refining my sketch a little bit before proceeding to the background. Since I knew I had limited time and energy to work on the poster, I first painted the bigger details that I knew I would reuse: the trees.

This is one of the benefits of doing work digitally: being able to reuse and make slight adjustments to elements without having to draw or paint everything from scratch. I use this technique liberally in my digital work, especially when I’m short on time.

I routinely checked my sketch and reference to make sure I had the spacing of trees close to the original poster’s while also deciding whether it would work for the overall image. Once I was happy with the trees, I worked on the rest of the background, using almost the same brush throughout except for the tree leaves. The background wasn’t too important, so I kept it pretty low-detail.

After I was happy with the background and overall lighting, it was time to refine and ink the main focus of the image: the girl and the monster behind her. I fashioned the monster with horns, hooves, and a tail based on the original Diablo art. While I’m not sure if I referenced THE Diablo character itself, the end result was close enough to ‘demonic’ so I didn’t think too much on it. I kept the overall shape of Totoro as I thought it’d be cute and make it more recognizable.

After inks, I added colors, keeping it mostly flat to be similar to the original poster. I put the shadows and lighting mostly on separate layers so I could easily edit them as necessary. At one point, I realized that the spacing was a bit off, so I shifted the characters (who were also in separate layers) to better positions in the scene.

The rest of the work just involved refining the lighting and colors, using mostly adjustment layers and painting in more light or shadow where I felt it was needed. After the image was done, I signed it and exported it as a PNG, then brought it over to Photoshop to add in the text and other stuff. I was happy I finally got what artboards are for: laying out several different-sized posters in the same file for easy asset reuse.

Since I originally made the poster in HD landscape format (1920 by 1080 pixels), I had to make adjustments for the other posters. I was able to utilize Photoshop’s generative fill feature for the gaps in canvas versus the original image, though it didn’t always come out nicely. I had to make adjustments along the way, but the generative fill still saved me a lot of time from having to repaint stuff for each poster variant.

In the end, I was happy, the team was happy, and we had posters for all our relevant social media sites on hand.

If you’d like a copy of the original poster without text, feel free to download it over at my Gumroad account. It is available for free/pay-what-you-want, with all proceeds going to GeekFight PH’s non-profit fund.

I hope you find this process post useful! While I can’t guarantee that I’ll have process posts for all of our future posters, I hope this sheds some light (and dark) on how I tackle art projects.

“GeekFight: Light and Dark” happens this June 21, 2023 8:00PM at Moonrabbit Cafe + Restuarant. I hope to see you there!

Oh, for the love of…

“There is more to life than a room, a car, board games, roleplaying games and cats.” A statement from a friend’s ex, uttered in an attempt to convince her that they should get back together: presumably, under the assumption that somehow we—her friends—were robbing her of a good life.

Her ex fancied himself a ‘philosophical entertainer,’ and would constantly invite her to ‘examine’ her wants and desires but only during times when he felt that she was being ‘idle,’ referring to her at one point as ‘a child.’ Never mind that she is older, more well-travelled, more experienced in dealing with the world, and perfectly capable of making sound decisions, including the choice to be idle.

While I dare not call myself a philosopher, philosophy as a subject is something I’ve always been interested in, so I felt compelled somehow to examine his statement and question: what more is there to life, then?

When my friend initially relayed this story to our household, our collective initial response to said statement was: ‘sounds like a good life.’ But let’s pretend that, there is, indeed, more to life than a room, a car, board games, roleplaying games, and cats. On a sidenote, I’d like to clarify that our friend also has access to the rest of our house, as well as any available resources we have on hand.

So, what could be more to life, and why pursue them? A few ideas come to mind:

Pursuit of higher learning. A socially acceptable goal, admirable for anyone at any age, right? Except my friend has already ‘ticked the box’ on this as she’ll be taking a master’s degree in creative producing later this year—at a very prestigious university, no less. As he already knows of this plan, this is likely not what he meant by ‘more to life.’
Pursuit of wealth and material possession. Not an entirely foreign concept in the capitalist society most of us have to live with. To this, my question is: what would the wealth be ultimately for? Prestige or utility? Is the goal to be a billionaire and perpetuate the broken systems that keep millions of people in poverty? Or to empower the disenfranchised? Will it be invested in providing better education and resources for those willing to learn? If wealth as access to things that can provide us joy and pleasure is not valid, then what is?
Pursuit of power. Somewhat related to the previous pursuit, this is another one of those vague pursuits that requires further questioning: power over what or whom? Personal power? Physical power? Power so you may crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women? The “best in life,” according to Conan the Barbarian.
Pursuit of enlightenment. I’d wager this ex, with all of his drug-addled adventures in philosophy, sees himself as some sort of enlightened being (at one point referring to himself as ‘The Great Self’), and it may be imperative to him that everyone else pursue this path.

ANYWAY.

A room (shelter), a car (transportation), board games and roleplaying games (entertainment/joy), and cats (companionship/care for animals), are perhaps not enough. One also needs food, water, safety, and good health: all things we already have or are working towards. I mean, we could always use more vegetables in our diets.

Having our basic needs for survival met, what IS there that’s more to life that we are meant to pursue? Seriously though, I would like to know so I could stop thinking about it, and maybe I can finally get some sleep.

P.S. This post was written and published with the permission of my friend, whom I love dearly. And I would prefer it if, in the future, she could avoid dating self-proclaimed philosophers who can’t put their philosophies to practical use.

Space

I felt a very deep sense of loneliness in the first year or so after leaving game development. I realized I had not built any deep friendships outside of the job, and while I valued the friendships I had developed at work, I didn’t know how to explain why I decided to quit. It felt all too personal, and I had convinced myself that my team would think much less of me for breaking down, for wanting to leave.

I don’t have a clear memory of what I ended up saying to the newly hired HR manager, but it would have likely have been along the lines of: ‘wanting to focus on my mental health’ or ‘wanting to explore other opportunities.’ In truth, I didn’t have much to look forward to when I left. I didn’t even go to therapy until almost a year later.

I loved my job. I loved it probably too much, so much so that I built my entire identity around it. I would often put it above everything else: friends, family, personal plans. I loved being able to say I worked in game development. I was a game developer. That was my life.

And then I quit.

“So who am I supposed to be now?” I didn’t know, and it took me a long, long time and a lot of ‘digging deep’ to figure it out.

I remember one of my mother’s favorite stories was of me saying how when I was a kid that I wanted to be a princess. Of course, when I was younger, and my world mostly revolving around watching Disney films on repeat, that seemed like a very valid ‘dream.’ Obviously, growing up in a country that isn’t even ruled by a monarchy pretty much rendered that dream moot. So what would I want to be, if I can’t be a princess? I had no idea.

I don’t think I ever even had a real dream when I was younger. I knew somehow I wanted to be an artist, but more in the sense that I wanted to just learn new things and make things. I had thought that maybe following a career in comics would be my path, but I realized that back then, the comics I loved were usually filled with backgrounds and perspective work that I still struggle with creating to this day. It was clear early on that I didn’t have the chops to follow that dream.

Somehow, later, I found myself in game development, and I realized I loved it. I was hired as an artist but over time I realized I wanted to do more and more: I wanted to learn more about game design. I wanted to learn how to code. I wanted to study whatever technology could help us make bigger and better games.

I would often be met with difficulty the more I expressed this. I was told to just stick to one thing, what I was good at. An art director told me once to just focus on the art and not care about what the other departments were doing. It was only much later that I felt any sort of validation for what I wanted to do, when I was given the title of Lead Technical Artist—until I realized I was essentially leading a team of one: me. It didn’t mean much, I realized later on, except that out of all the artists in the company that I was the most proficient in the use of the game engine we worked with. I got buried in more and more work, mostly self-assigned, to do documentation, research, teaching—all while still managing and looking after a team.

I got increasingly anxious about my job while trying to navigate my feelings about all the craziness I got into with blockchain and the cryptoart world. While my little dive into blockchain technology helped me with my anxiety over the pandemic and my finances, it also made me question who I even was as an artist. Even as I refocused all my efforts into work, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I made myself somehow both indispensable yet also obsolete. Seeing my team learn to self-manage and do well without me was a personal victory, but I struggled to manage myself. I gave myself more and more responsibilities: to look after the other teams, to learn faster, to teach better, to write better documentation.

One day, I made the error of airing out whatever I was frustrated with at work to my manager, whom I considered my best friend at the time. As much as I’d like to write about what happened next, it would do neither of us any good to dig that particular incident up from the grave. What I can say is that I ended up even more lost that day. The anxiety I built up over time became a full-blown panic attack, ending in me questioning my entire reality: everything I believed in and worked for.

I no longer felt safe at work. I was too anxious and too hurt, drowning in growing despair of not knowing who I was anymore. The company graciously offered that I take a sabbatical, but the time wasn’t enough for me to find the answers to what I was looking for. I felt a bit rushed, pressured to recover my mental health as quickly as possible so I could go back to work.

I did try, and I imagined what life would be like for me when I got back. But I had no idea how I was supposed to act. I felt abandoned by the people who were supposed to look after me. I felt alone and ashamed about how weak I felt. The uncertainty of being lost and alone felt more comfortable than going back: I was still going to be alone, but at least the new path might lead somewhere I can feel safe again.

In the months that followed after I turned in my official resignation, I continued to struggle with figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do. The loneliness continued as days, weeks, months passed without hearing from any friends from work. I found myself waiting and waiting for my former manager to reach out, catch up, see how I was doing. I was adamant about not being the one to reach out first, as I’d done repeatedly in the past whenever we’d get into a tiff.

Months and months passed in silence. It was getting increasingly obvious that I no longer mattered in her life and I was the only one holding out hope that she would realize how important she was to me and how she hurt me so badly, that I could no longer see myself working or even being in the same field as her. Even as I tried to enjoy my life and focus on my own growth, the memory of that day continued to haunt me.

One day, in my grief and in an effort to really move on, I decided to ‘end things’ by unfriending and unfollowing her on social media so I wouldn’t be constantly reminded of her silence, of being abandoned.

I thought that that would work as I felt I was finally doing better afterwards, until another friend brought her up casually in conversation, merely expressing his curiosity about whether or not we were still friends. What followed was yet another depressive cycle that got so bad that it finally prompted me to take therapy seriously.

I was prescribed medication that numbed any feeling at all, and for a while it worked. I no longer felt sad, but I was unable to feel any sort of joy at the same time. I felt lethargic and sleepy all the time: I wasn’t doing anything, unable to find any real motivation. All the while, I struggled to explain to my mother why I didn’t want to join any family activities. How could I explain that my own brain was working against me, feeding me thoughts of how I was never enough? How I was a terrible friend, a terrible artist, a terrible leader, a terrible daughter? Any sort of confidence I had was, once again, obliterated by demons of my own making.

It took many months of therapy, working through my cognitive distortions, journaling, and finding faith before I could find the words and the courage to really write about what I struggled with.

I write this to honor the part of me that still feels unheard after all this time, because I want to make space for the sadness: the sadness that reminds me that I cared, and that I have the capacity to care and love wholeheartedly even if it is never returned. In some way, I hope that writing this would give me the courage to take up more space for myself, as my previous way of dealing with negative emotions just involved hiding and making myself small.

I find myself missing game development still. Although I find myself on a very different path now, I still miss my former team. I wish I got to know them more while we were all still working together, but having different responsibilities does make staying in touch quite difficult. I am grateful with however little bonding time I get with them, though, when we get to share experiences over the games we play—even if it’s just through Facebook posts.

I suppose I am also honoring here the feeling of loneliness, for it helped me realize how much I still had to work on with myself so I can open my heart to other possibilities and avenues of friendship. I find myself longing more and more for interaction and deeper conversations with people, no longer really satisfied with just heart reacts and likes. Of course, I also realize that everyone is also struggling with their own things, so I make it a point to never demand other people’s time or energy, and just be happy with what they’re willing to give.

I’ve luckily found friends, old and new, that understand and accept me wholeheartedly with all my quirks. I’ve no expectations that any of it will last forever, but I have learned to enjoy what time I have together with them. I don’t feel so lonely anymore.

Magical Girl Era

It was a little before my mother’s 70th birthday, several months since I started seeing a therapist regularly, that I had a little breakthrough moment in my journey to better mental health.

I was feeling anxious again. Seeing my family used to be very difficult for me, mostly because I had always felt like the black sheep: not having a traditional job, views, interests, or even a relationship that aligned with traditional Chinese values. I pre-judged myself in fear of possible judge-y comments, flooding my brain with whatever possible negative comments I might get in the hope that I could steel myself against whatever emotions they could stir up.

I consider it almost a miracle, that an idea—a crazy one, I thought—popped into my head. What if I could just be as happy as I could be? Not in a ‘fake happy’ way, but in a ‘this is me, I am weird, deal with it’ sort of way. I figured that if I could just show my mom that I was happy with my life choices, then maybe she would believe I’m actually doing okay.

I spent that birthday weekend having the best time with my family, and I’ve been getting closer and closer with my family since.

This little shift in mindset began to creep into all other areas of my life. I found myself accepting more and more aspects of myself that I used to feel guilty about. How I liked reading tarot, my interest in occult subjects, my love for all styles of art and crafts, my expansive thirst for learning and knowing every damn thing I can learn. I realized that I had dropped the negative labelling of being indecisive, unfocused, and fickle, and instead focused on more positive ones: flexible, curious, and determined.

I developed a habit over the next couple of months to do daily tarot reading along with my Morning Pages, reading alongside it Tarot for Change by Jessica Dore. It felt like I found faith: not in God in the Christian sense, but belief that there are forces greater than me that are guiding me through the cards, providing wisdom to help me overcome whatever challenges I might face. Every reading became a sort of prayer, meditation, and reflection on my day-to-day life and whatever emotions I felt needed more processing.

I’ve been spending my days being the happiest I’ve ever been. Sure, there are still moments of sadness, exhaustion, frustration and all the other various negative emotions, but I’ve since learned to allow myself to feel my feelings without judgement: accept them, and let them go.

There’s still much more I’m learning to grow into and out of, but I’ve also come to the conclusion that healing takes time: a lot of it. It’s not a process to be rushed, not a switch you can turn on and off. I’ve learned what self-care really means for me: it’s loving myself completely, flaws and all.

I’m glad to have found my way ‘back into the light.’ I spend most of my days now working on projects I love, for friends, family and communities that I care about and give me hope for a better future. Most importantly, I have found my love for art back, and I’ve been creating again—all sorts of things.

I restarted this blog again as a means to share what I’ve been making in this new era of my life.

I’m dubbing it my Magical Girl Era.