So, you’ve got two deviantart accounts, a facebook page, an instagram account, a sedcard (or two) on modelkartei and some other accounts all over the web that you don’t use anymore *cough*fotocommunity*cough* *cough*patreon*cough* and now you put a website online with a blog?! Seriously?
Why?
Well… for one, because I can and I like it – and for two… Do I really need a second reason? I honestly don’t think I do! And that is probably the biggest ephiphany in a while. But let me explain: I have been trying to get my muse back for a while now. On deviantart, while I still love the photomanip community, it is hard to do something out of the box and still get some reaction back. I know I do not need a ton of faves as long as I like what I have created. BUT some things are so ingrained that these habits are hard to break, especially when you’ve cultivated them for years (or in my case over a decade). I haven’t even realized for the most part that what used to be my home on the internet slowly became “the place where a million messages await my answer” while my art seems to be just… also there? I don’t even know how to describe it. I tried getting back into the community the way I used to, running a contest, engaging,… There will always be a good handful of people I talk to via comments about more than “this is a great image *insert love smily here*”, but they, too, have moved on a bit. None of us is in school / university any more, so time is naturally limited. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but a place that basically lives off user engagement to a degree that is hard (impossible?) to keep up while working full time may no longer be the place where I want to sink my free time into.
Not that I want to dramaqueenishly close my dA accounts never to be seen again, I just want to refocus.
Some background
A few things happened in my life that lead to me actually realizing the above: When we relocated to Karlsruhe from Frankfurt, but I still had (and still have) the job in Frankfurt, I was forced to examine why I do what I do. Is it worth commuting two hours one-way (but with the train, not the car) to keep working at Air Liquide E&C? Once I answered, yes, it is worth it, I also had to figure out how to get some of my work-life balance back. I used to put all my effort into work, then when I got home I was completely knackered and the weekends were often spent desperately trying to “do something worthwhile” – that was before I started commuting, when my boyfriend and I had separate apartments during the week and only saw each other on weekends. It felt like I was constantly waiting for the weekend to arrive, only for the both of us to realize at some point that you cannot always force your weekend to be that pinacle of together-ness you are craving.
Commuting, where I am “forced” to find something to do during my train ride that just passes the time, actually helped me figure this out. Now I can allow myself to do something “unuseful”, just for me. I often learn Italian (or Spanish) with the duolingo app since I love languages, but if I don’t feel like it, I just ignore the “you lost your three day streak” message and turn to watching youtube videos, reading books,… and in the future maybe writing blog posts. When there was this “7 days, 7 black and white pictures of your everyday life” tag going around a few weeks back, I started taking more pictures with my phone – and opened an instagram account where I deliberately post whatever I fancy. Meaning: I forbade myself to think about if people would like what I post or not. I will share what I at the time see and like.
And the same thing I plan to do here: if I want to share pics taken on my phone, I will. If I want to share tips and tricks for photoshop, I will. If I feel like sharing a recipe, I will do that, too…
So, you can expect a very, very colourful mix of things on here, including my art, my resources, my tutorials and bits from every day life.
I hope you will take the journey with me and lave a comment once in a while (I am not prepared to give up on interaction, you see ;))
Love,
Jasmin