kate and her six confessions

(via)

Playing along with this meme I saw on Diana's blog!

1. My two biggest pet peeves are women wearing coats or sweaters on their shoulders instead of using the sleeves, and the addition of the letter "s" to words where it doesn't belong. Examples: Anyway(s), All(s) you have to do, I talked to some people(s), etc. I'm not a grammar nazi or anything, but this one thing just annoys the heck out of me!

2. I once had a post up about this, but I deleted it out of embarrassment... I was a huge fan of Shane West in high school (he was in that sappy Mandy Moore movie A Song to Remember) and went to see his band perform for my 17th birthday. I told him it was my birthday, when he asked how old I was I said "legal" and then I had him sign my chest. *facepalm*

3. I am terrified of mirrors at night. We have a full-length mirror in our hallway, and I always run past it really quick if I have to go by after dark. I always think I'll see someone else in the reflection with me. Super irrational, I know..

4. I wish so badly I had a more scientific mind, because I desperately want to be an astronomer or quantum physicist. I read science books more than fiction, and I love trying to wrap my brain around scientific theories that in reality I'll probably never comprehend. I understand the words, but when it comes down to the t-x2=(c)8-n∞ stuff I'm totally lost :(

5. I really love the smell of garlic, and I don't understand why most people ridicule it. I'd burn garlic candles if they made them! And wear garlic perfume, and bathe in garlic bubble bath. I just love it!

6. I don't really want kids. I'm not a very maternal person, and I have zero desire to ever be pregnant. If I end up with someone who does want children, I'm okay with adoption, but kids aren't even remotely close to being on my checklist of things I want to do in life. I like cats better, lol ;-D

creative self confidence in the internet age

Artists are notoriously either super-confident and egotistical (hi, there Dali!) or painfully insecure in their work and talent.

For those of us in the latter category, the internet can be remarkably encouraging or dreadfully soul-crushing. First you have the fact that there are definitely going to be at least 1,000 artists who are 1,000 times more talented and creative than you are (see the above illustration by the 1,000-times-more-talented-than-I artist Gemma Correll) who get 1,000 comments and favorites on every new drawing they post. They'll have fan bases and powerful bloggers who drool over their latest work. You won't be jealous, but you'll ogle at their greatness and wish that you had one inkling of the talent and raw creative magnetism that they hold.

Putting that aside, though, there's also the fact that almost every single website on which you can post the fruits of your creative labor will have some sort of feedback system. Below your post, viewers will have the option to favorite, comment, retweet, reblog, like, digg, stumble, unlike and heart. There's a world of feedback just waiting to be tapped into each time you decide to share your creations with the world. Knowing of those possibilities makes the dead silence ache even more. Of all the websites, Flickr, to me, is the worst because it tallies up the views for you whether you want them there or not (believe me, I've tried to get rid of them.) One, twenty, forty, two hundred. Two hundred people have viewed, and not one has offered an inkling of support. To the perpetually insecure person with the active imagination you can literally see these phantom viewers in your mind's eye, turning their noses up at you and shaking their heads in disbelief that someone as untalented, as horribly unsuited to the creative professions as YOU would dare to post their artwork in public. They click on, presumably hoping to find a picture of a fluffy cat in a funny situation that will help rid their memory of your appalling creation.

Twitter and facebook aren't quite as bad because you can imagine that every single person who follows you is out to dinner at the exact moment that you post your tweet or status update. They aren't snubbing you or ignoring your desperate pleas for someone, anyone!, to click and view your product of hours and hours of painstaking work. They're simply not there to see it. And by the time they do return, hundreds of other people have tweeted or updated and pushed your cries out of the way. But nevertheless, the silence hurts. You could have had all the confidence in the world before hitting that publish button, but once the damage is done you find yourself over-analyzing your work and questioning whether or not it was ever good to begin with.

If Van Gogh were around today, he'd suffer from the same ignorance as he did in his time, only now he would be ignored by the typing masses instead of the art critics. Or maybe both. Painting at least once a day, he'd upload painting after painting -- probably joining the daily painters group on flickr in an attempt to get noticed -- but the comments would not come. In a fit of desperation, he'd tape himself cutting off his ear, and post the video on youtube, with a link to his etsy shop, just in case. But his reckless attempt to get attention would still go unnoticed. He'd watch in horror as the view count went up on his video, but still nobody commented!

Wallowing in despair and self pity, he'd check himself into a mental institution and spend the rest of his days creating wild, vibrant paintings of the facebook like button.

getting dressed in the morning

dress - f21
headband - f21
scowl - homemade

I've been getting about zero hours sleep lately, and when I *do* sleep it's been in the morning or afternoon into early evening. It's insane. I realized that my chronic sleep problems might be due in part to the fact that I work from home and have no set schedule for waking and sleeping and living. So, today when I woke up at 1:45 am (seriously. UGH.) I decided to get dressed, eat breakfast and stay awake all day until about 9 or 10 at night, and then -- get this, when it's actually dark out! -- I'll put pajamas on and go to sleep. I know, crazy, right? Who lives like this?!

Anyway, so I was actually dressed all day which is something unusual for me. And I'm going to do it every day now. woo hoo. I'm hoping that the whole wake-up-at-a-normal-time-get-dressed-then-work routine will help me get to bed at a reasonable time each night and actually fall asleep and stay asleep.

If you've made it this far, yay for you! I have no clue why you're still reading this, since I'm obviously writing it half-consciously. Part of my brain is off dreaming, and that's the part that usually writes these things. It has no clue what this half is doing or saying and probably won't approve of the boring post when it finally wakes up from its daydreams and reads what was posted here...

scratch-n-sniff

I got these super neat stickers at Michaels yesterday. They're scratch-n-sniff in the strangest scents... I got pickles, pizza, popcorn and suntan lotion and coffee for my mom (she's an addict.) The pickles smell like a deli, the pizza smells like pizza with lots of oregano on it, and the popcorn smells like Jelly belly popcorn, not actually popcorn (but that's ok with me because that's my favorite JB flavor!) The suntan lotion is ... just blech.

But seriously, the pizza stickers. They smell SO good.

But they're kind of dangerous. I kept smelling them all afternoon and by dinner time I just couldn't take it anymore, and had to call out for the real thing.

ps. Speaking of Michaels, why oh WHY is Paula Deen selling a line of ugly paper goods there now? Not like Michaels was really that cool to begin with, but this totally ruins it. Speaking of which, why can't I live in a town with a real art supply store, instead of these chains that cater to stay-at-home scrap-booking soccer moms? :-\

Help for the night owl who likes tv

I live with my parents and my brother, all of whom turn in around 11pm. But I have an entirely different schedule, and prefer to go to bed around 6am. (My favorite perk of being my own boss!)

While I enjoy this schedule a lot, having my television on while everyone else in the house is asleep definitely causes its share of problems. If I have the volume too low, I can't hear it (no, I'm not deaf.. my tv is just on the other side of the room from where I sit, OK?!) but if it's too high I'm always waking somebody up.

My first thought was to get Listen Up, the amplification device they sell on late night infomercials, but I'm not an old man with a nagging sleepy wife, so I didn't think it suited me that well.

THEN I found a headphone extension cord on Amazon for $3 and it literally changed my life. It's 50 feet long, so I traced it along the perimeter of my room to behind my bed where I can plug it into my headphones whenever I want to watch tv.

The perks are many. The cord is so long that I was able to conceal it (a shorter one would have been suspended in the middle of my room, probably becoming a jumping hazard for my cat when she attempted to get on the bed), I won't feel like a 78 year old man when I need to listen to the tv at night and I get to wear my favorite headphones instead of a hearing aid incognito.

I don't know why that guy in the blue pajamas didn't think of this; he'd look so much cooler wearing my bright green headphones.

roller skating is a pain in the...

When I purchased my roller skates last year, I was lured by their cute girly exterior. The bright, clean white boots sitting daintily upon bubble gum pink rollers seemed like the perfect sport for a lazy weakling like myself. They look like they're made for three year old girls -- roller skating must be a piece of cake!

Um, no. I tried them out for the first time today at the park. I dragged along my brother, Kyle, who was probably very embarrassed to be seen with me in my matching helmet-knee pad-elbow pad-wrist guard get up. And probably even more embarrassed when I gripped onto his wrist and would not let go from the moment I stood up on the skates.

Roller skating is hard!

We made it about halfway through the park (maybe 1/3 a mile? I don't know.. it seemed like 8.) before I decided I wanted to go back. I took dance classes for 13 years, so I thought I was coordinated enough to pull this off. But keeping your balance while shuffling your feet, and trying to avoid falling headfirst onto the sloped pavement is a lot harder than doing a pirouette.

Believe it or not, though, I made it all the way through the park without falling down! By the time we got near the entrance, I was pretty worn out, and collapsed on a bench while my brother called my mom to come pick up my body. I took off my elbow pads and wrist guards, closed my eyes and dreamed of ice cold water and air conditioning.

Kyle got the bright idea to meet our mom closer to the entrance, so I heaved myself up, gripped his wrist and tried once more to skate. Naturally, since I had just removed my wrist and elbow pads, my feet gave out from under me not two feet away from the bench. I fell bum first onto the pavement, and stayed there until my mom came.

I think I have a pretty awesome brother. After all of this, he still said he'd go with me again next week. That is, assuming I'm up and moving again by then.

I want pink knee pads.

I got really pretty roller skates last summer, but never got around to purchasing the (absolutely necessary for me) knee pads and elbow pads so that I could actually use the skates. It's already warm enough here now for me to put my falling-on-my-arse-in-public skills to good use, so I went searching on amazon for knee and elbow pads. Unfortunately, THIS is the loveliest option for adults:


As a kid, I loved my hot pink helmet and sparkly streamers on my bicycle handles. As a grown up, I might not want my bike decked out like Barbie, but I'd at least like something a little less macho than black and orange he-man knee pads. I'm resourceful; I'll probably just buy some of that Krylon plastic spray paint and make these more suited for a person with hips and long hair. But, still.. why can't girls have pretty sportswear? I'm sure I can't be the only one who'd prefer a more feminine alternative to these Rollerball pads.

UPDATE: I ended up finding a light blue knee pad/elbow pad/helmet combo on amazon! whee! :)