Back to the Beat

Took a nice rest over Thanksgiving, but now everything is back at its usual pace. Or, at least, warming up to it.

(Pencil on Paper; digital color)

There’s one more month of 365 for 2025 and I am tired. Not of the project. Someone asked me at the beginning if I started it to encourage myself to draw more and I had to explain that I just do this anyway, I figured it might be fun to drag others along with me. As an experiment.

That part of the experience has been extremely fun. It’s nice to have art people to interact with without having to go within shouting distance of social media.

The part that’s difficult is the “being me” part. I’ve never understood the basic concept of open disclosure or vulnerability. I paid to go to therapy for years and at one point made a joke about my therapist's partner being a serial killer because they had a craft room that no one else in the house went into… instead of just saying, “that sounds nice.”

Most people who meet me think I'm brutally honest, but I'm just opinionated. There’s a big fucking difference. I’ll tell you why your favorite movie sucks but I sure as hell won’t tell you how I feel.

This makes the instruction to be honest in my various types of work… tricky. It makes a lot of shit tricky, if I’m being honest (sharing and caring!).

“I” am currently filling a lot of roles right now and the stress of their incongruence is wearing on me. There’s always the question: Which one should I be now?

You’d think in all that therapy and an in-progress graduate degree in counseling I’d appreciate the necessity of congruence. And I do! But it’s like I’m built to fight it. Or the world around me is built to prohibit it.

I’m not sure which.

That’s all to say, again: I’m tired.