100% - 0% (Blog #3) (Patreon)

Notes: This was written on October 29th, but somehow didn't get published until now, when I headed to write a new entry, sorry for the time in between blog posts!

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Because of certain aspects of my childhood and my time at school, I have a good time putting in effort when I do well in classes, but if I don't seem to grab the logic of a certain class to soon I usually end up blocked, not being able to put any thought to it, discarding it instead to explore other classes where I excelled. I don't know when my own study philosophy changed, but I know that when I repeated a year in 2012 I was putting 100% of my will and mental energy into some classes while completely zoning out (or giving 0%) in others. 2012 was also the year were my depression started manifesting itself in it's strongest way, this might have played a role into that mentality as well.

Until the last month, my energy was 100% put on my art, I wasn't allowing myself to explore different stuff, or even other art mediums, as they felt as a waste of time (specially since I didn't begin drawing consistently until my 20s), I even went as far as ignoring lots of uni classes to concentrate on art or commissions, but recently I noticed how happy and realized I felt while writing A Shared Cup of Tea, or even going to classes and doing well when I actually took attention of what was going on, and I noticed how hard I was pushing myself by trying to be an art only machine.

Now I'm trying to give myself more places to explore writing, playing more the piano, listening to music, cooking, explore watercolors and colored pecils, reading before sleeping (which I have been super sad about dropping once I went into my 2rd year of uni), and I'm enjoying myself lots! Some stuff from the book I'm currently re-reading, Atomic Habits, also gave me a look into why all of this is working, it's because I've been modifying my living space to fit those things I've wanted to take back into my life.

My desk currently holds 3x art materials than it did before, and while still keeping a pretty low foot print, it gives me quick access to all my sketchbooks and materials so there's little resistance into doing these actions. My piano now rests connected and ready in my room at the proper height for my seat, so I can just push and rotate and be ready to play piano, or the fact that now that I have a second monitor having online classes that both ran on and needed me to use my laptop was possible, instead of ALT-Tabing back and forth participating in class was now enjoyable!

If I learnt anything about this is that context is key, I've gotta put the least ammount of resistance between me and the habits I want to see myself do daily and I'll be doing it them consistently!

This month I'll be following a pretty extensive habit tracker, I'll probably share what I learn from it in a future blog!