a personal and genuine journey

If you’re new to reading this blog, welcome. If you’re not, then you know why this exists and where this (might) be going. Every few weeks, months, or whatever, I am compelled to re-explain the impulse behind my writing and sharing in this space. It may seem repetitive or self-indulgent, but it’s absolutely necessary for me to keep these thoughts alive in order to preserve the definition of tide & bloom: a personal and genuine journey. My journey.

Do you remember the good ole days of blogging? Livejournal, xanga, whatever your poison might have been, there was a time when you were able to pour your heart out to the internet without fear of retribution or consequence. You weren’t worrying about what your prospective employers were looking at, you weren’t scared that your family would judge you, and everything was raw and real. Looking back on what I used to put out there as a teenager, I’m embarrassed but also really proud of how much I was willing to feel, and how willing I was to really go there. As silly, ridiculous, and melodramatic as my writing was, it was definitely authentic to who I was at the time.

I hope that to some degree, this is true of my current blog as well. I began writing here as a desire to have a genuine documentation of creative, emotional, and professional growth. That means that sometimes I’m super inspired and rarin’ to go, blogging three times a week…and sometimes I’m really down on myself and don’t know what to do or write about. I do my best to paint a picture of depth, illustrating who I really am, what actually matters to me, and what thoughts influence my direction. 

That being said, I have to tell you that I will not be blogging as heavily in the next few weeks. It’s for some pretty good reasons, I promise. One of the main reasons is that I’m in a period of transitional adjustment; I’m working full-time now and there just isn’t enough energy in me to be working forty hours a week, and creating artwork, and blogging, and living life to the fullest. That’s not to say that I’ll disappear or that you won’t see what’s going on with me; it just means that it’ll be somewhat irregular and perhaps maybe that every post will be that much more important (like this one).

As an artist, your life is always going to impact your process because your work is an extension of you. My challenge now is to see if I can maintain – maybe even accelerate – the pace of progress I was going at alongside this new routine. I’m going to try to force myself to be more effective, somehow stretching the minutes and hours of each day to fit in more. I know that this is possible, but I’m wary about how long it will take for me to get it down right. I’m scared that many things will suffer; my health, my relationship, my quality of life, my dedication to my own creative work. But at the end of the day, I just gotta try. Like, REALLY try. And I know I have it in me and I’m sure you would say I have it in me too. It’s just another rocky path along the way, another challenge for me to prove that I can be everything I say I am. My next goal here is to present to you a new painting or two within the next month. I really hope I can do it.