I was going through my wall posts and read a comment from ISKEY that I forgot to reply to during my move 2 months ago and started writing it as a comment, but I think this is gonna be its own post now since it's so long.

I just wanted to share with you guys a little bit about my journey with depression and anxiety and how dealing with that made me a better artist. I see a lot of new artists struggling with feeling less-than because they're comparing themselves to other artists that inspired them or that they admire.

I stopped doing my art for a long time because of how I felt when I did it much of the time. Very few things I created were things I would go back to to look at again or show other people.

It took me like 6 months of work, but now I'm in a place where I can sit down and create and the entire process is enjoyable and I feel like everything I've created is beautiful-- even if it isn't exactly how I planned it-- and I can enjoy going back and looking at them in my sketchbook.

That process for me was definitely part of a larger effort to treat a lot of things in my life the same way. There are so many things to stress over in life that if I continued to judge myself over small things, then I'd never be happy.

Teach yourself that if something comes out different than how you wanted it to that it's okay. It's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to fail and it's okay to just try when you're not sure what the outcome will be.

If you put your mind to it, you can do almost anything.

Popularity is being the first one to the party and the last one to leave.

Since you guys care about the random trip-related crap I'm posting:

Today I noticed my mom takes tons of pictures of the sky. Then there's me, bent over 2 feet from the ground trying to get my phone camera to focus on a fern I found.

The further north you go, the less authentic the names of Mexican restaurants get.

California = El Patio, Adalberto's

Washington = Taco Time

They have excellent tater tots on their menu.

I love my mom, but when you're in the car with a person for 2 days, the things that annoy you about someone get about 10 times more annoying.

We hit our final destination in about 6 hours. Trying to make a mental list of good things about when I get there and annoying stuff I'm moving away from.

1. I'm no longer going to have to wait for Mom to make geo-tagged Facebook posts about everything we do.

2. Bills are going to be paid on time and stay current.

3. Cats won't wake me up in the middle of the night.

4. Overall time it takes to get ready to go anywhere are going to plummet since my mom doesn't have to do his make-up before we go.

I started packing today since I move out in a week. It's neat what you find in all your old junk. I got a fat stack of old Game Informers, a ton of lined/graph/construction paper, a hat, and a bunch of fabric markers and Sharpies. Tomorrow we do the other end of the room. :)