Life Update Blog🌳 (End of September) (Patreon)

🎨💼 Hello my darlings! 🌸Swooping in with the monthly blog where I give little updates on what's going on in life and on the Journey!  I hope September treated you well!

I'm not quite sure why but reflecting Septembers of years gone by, I have noticed that September always ends up being a bit hectic for me.  I always look forward to September because it is the month that transitions to Autumn and I have a few events that occur in September, and yet, at least for the past couple years, I have been left absolutely wrung out by the end of the month.  Maybe it just also happens to be the month where the world generally gets back to being busy after the summer lull.

Have any of you noticed how busy September can be?  Am I the only one?

I was already feeling a bit of the pressure early in the month, and hadn't been planning on doing anything special for my Anniversary even though it is a big one (10 years! i feel a little old typing that, although I did get married young by today's standards!  haha), but then as I was struggling with working on a job....

.....something in me snapped a bit because I felt so tied to work and unable to do anything else, and then I felt really sad because I had the thought that I "wasn't living my life!"

So I booked a last minute airbnb in the middle of the Swedish wilderness for 1 night and whisked my husband off to the woods for a day.

We took a train ride to a small town and then another bus ride to the forest.  From the bus stop, we had to walk a couple of miles to reach our cottage.

The Swedish countryside is GORGEOUS and was full of idealistic looking little red houses and barns, with beautiful fields, rimmed forests.  So ridiculously beautiful it should be illegal.

But there is a catch.  The blood sucking demons from hell.

Now, I grew up in the countryside near a lake on land that was considered 'wetlands' for the area.  It wasn't wetlands on the same level as it would be considered in the South Eastern United States, but we did have pretty gnarly mosquitoes in the summer evenings.  I thought I knew what bad mosquitoes were.  My friends..... I was wrong.

The mosquitoes in the area where we stayed were absolutely ungodly!

After dropping off our bags, we thought "oh a little nature walk through the reserve would be nice," and it would have been, if only we weren't walking as quick as possible to get back to the cabin and weren't constantly swiping at mosquitoes. 

 Back when I taught poledance we had this move called "body tracers" that basically is a way to get more in touch with your body and it looks sexy because you just run your hands over places like your legs, your torso, your neck, your head, etc.  Well, as we speed-walked, we were doing body-tracers the whole time, trying to keep the mosquitoes off!  And they were not sexy.

My poor husband had worn shorts, and afterwards we estimated that he got a little over 70 bites on his legs.  His legs looked diseased!  I was wearing long pants and long socks and still got bites on my legs.  The suckers were biting me through my pants and socks!

Anyway, other then that the surroundings were ideallic!

We stayed in an old style croft that she said was built in the late 1800s.

It felt like stepping back in time.  Inside, the whole cottage was so old that the floors and walls were all bowed at an angle.  In the center of the cottage was a fireplace, which was clearly the most stable structure, as all the walls and floors angled away from the center fireplace, as if they were slowly sinking away.  I really wonder at what point will be the last little centimeter of leaning away that causes the structure to topple!

We spent a quite night in the cottage chatting and reading, and spooking ourselves out.  When you live in a city with a constant hum of noise and light, it can be eerily quiet and dark when you go out into the countryside, especially in a 120+ year old house.  While I thought I heard a potential ghost shutting the toilet seat (I'm freaking serious! I heard the sound of a shutting toilet seat when NO ONE was near the bathroom), no actual ghost sightings occurred.  In the morning it was time to return home.

Oh, and yes, I did find another tick on me.  I swear, I am the tick queen.

Once home it was back to working for me!

I have been in the midst of final FINAL FINAL edits on the book I've been working on for about a year and the 2nd to last review required me to make quite a bit of changes and new little tutorials for it so that took up quite a bit of my week following our return.

But I must have been feeling a tad impulsive this month, or maybe it is that same sort of "snap!" because I decided to reach out and book my tattoo artist for a tattoo I have been wanting for years!

I finally came up with a full design and decided to JUST DO IT!  I drew the fox chasing the Jackalope and my tattoo artist added the flowers and made some small adjustments to the composition so that it would flow well on the body!

I went in for the first session and we spent about 3 hours drawing and getting everything placed on the body before she jumped into doing thin lineart for the tattoo.  This tattoo is pretty huge, reaching from just under my ribs down to just above my knee, so it will take a few sessions to complete it but I wanted to share the design with you guys because I'm so excited about it!   Although I am nervous about the future sessions since I'm sure they will hurt much more then the first session, that was just thin lineart.  I'm sure I'll be fine though, I do love suffering for art, it seems!  haha!

On the Art Front

I think it's no surprise that I've been busy.  Between the usual goodies, book stuff, and an author commission with a tight deadline, and trying to get a little ahead since I am out of town at the start of October, it has been a little overwhelming.

I've had to start getting better at saying 'no' to projects even when they are interesting to me because right now I just have too much on my plate.  I get so afraid that I'll miss out on something really cool or an opportunity that could open future doors, but I just have to accept that I can't do everything.  It is a hard pill to swallow.

What else is on the horizon?

Hopefully I'll get a little recharge, because I am heading out to Scotland for the first time for a little over a week.  In fact, as you are reading this, I am probably in Scotland right now!  I'll make sure to take lots of pictures for next month's blog and videos to share in my stories!

When I return home, I'm excited to jump into the next tutorial that will be on how to draw different female bodytypes!

It's also OCTOBER!  The most magical time of the year!  I don't have any plans to follow a any prompt lists but I would like to  do  more dark and gothic artworks, and maybe also lean into the inky vibes.  I think giving myself permission to be more limited in colors, relying on black and gray ink with maybe an accent color could be an interesting exploration for my style!

We'll see when I return!  Even when I make plans, I do tend to enjoy following wherever the wind takes me when it comes to personal art!  Haha! I find that allowing myself a bit of flexibility to draw what I want instead of sticking to a specific plan tends to lead to better results.

Anyhoo, time to wrap up this blog! Love you guys to itty bitty pieces and thank you for coming along on this journey with me!  🌈✨Hugs hugs everyone.  Make sure to use bug repellant to keep the blood suckers away!   Speak to you soon!

Chrissa XOXO