llifi-kei

Time flies... I can't believe it's almost been five years since my last journal entry. I have been distracted by both my studies and WoW, but many things have changed this year and I am headed in an entirely new direction. I enrolled in a Certificate III in Visual Arts at TAFE which is a 6-month course finishing at the middle of this year. I am enjoying this very much, however I think I would prefer not to pursue a career in the arts as it is too uncertain and I prefer to make my art on my own terms. Instead I am considering enrolling in a Bachelor of Computer Science with a focus on software engineering. However, I should still have enough free time and energy to produce more art than previously, so watch this space.

So many people I knew five years ago are no longer on dA, is anyone still here?

I almost feel like a newbie again, there have been so many changes and things I have forgotten. And what is with all these llamas running around?!

It's been a long time since I last logged in, I know. One could say that a *lot* has happened during this time, although the main reason would still be that I have been spending 95% of my free time playing World of Warcraft. On occasion I find myself drifting out, thanks to my non-WoW playing friends.

Thanks to Famarii I discovered a highly amusing blog by the name of "Hyperbole and a Half". I spent quite a bit of time tonight laughing my way through the entries, and hisuikousei also introduced me to a nifty dragon animation that perhaps many of you have already seen, given its age and the number of favourites it has already accumulated.



But if there is any deviation that you should be thanking for this sudden burst of activity, it is the following, because it appealed to me so much that I just *had* to log in and add it to my own favourites.



(I stumbled across it whilst checking out hisuikousei's favourites to see if she had added anything else of interest... almost like old times again.)

I checked some of my notes, felt compelled to reply to one for the chance to communicate online like a decent human being once more, and then realised how much I miss the self-expression of dA. Not necessarily just through art, but the overall community and culture as a whole, in which I feel comfortable to express myself in words exactly the way I wish to. Such as typing long, convoluted posts like this in a strange style of formality.

I haven't properly checked the rest of my message centre yet since I am baffled by dA's continuously changing layout and I don't exactly feel the 'right' sort of connection with art right now to answer anything as the artist of my own work, if that makes any sense.

On the subject of creating art, my absence from the drawing scene has been compounded by the recent refusal of my tablet to cooperate with my laptop. I believe it may be a problem concerning tablet drivers, especially since I have not used it for half a year or so. Or perhaps disuse has physically affected it?

At any rate, despite my obsession with a certain game, I have not stopped questioning my place in the world, and all the things that have happened in the past half year or so have changed me, so much so that I am not certain that the creation of art holds much importance in my life right now. Thanks to dA, I have gained an enormous appreciation of art and the effort which goes into it, and that is something I will treasure. But the demands of 'real life' call, and by necessity I must change to meet them. More responsibilities... more change. In short, do not expect many, if any, updates to my gallery in the near future.

Drawing, creating... sometimes I feel as though I did it because I thought it was the only think I *could* do. It is difficult to explain. But there is more to life than art. And the direction in which my studies are heading... well, there are so many *other* things to be learned as well. And I don't want to feel like I am drawing/creating only because others 'expect' me to.

Perhaps it is that I am still trying to find what it is that I love doing... or perhaps I have already found it without realising it. Self-exploration has always played a large part in my life, perhaps too great... and I am driven by some urge to 'understand', and yet I do not know what it is which I want to understand. 'Everything', I suppose.

Anyhow, I did not expect this post to turn out the way it did (as usual with these 2am posts where I am hardly in a coherent frame of mind, more like some melancholic person 'drunk' on tiredness), but when I let my thoughts roam freely they tend to turn to such sombre topics as these. Perhaps I have developed some sense of responsibility, to admit to things that others may not wish to hear. But I feel as though I owe it to you all, who have stuck with me this long, to speak honestly, if quite belatedly. Of course I may still log in from time to time, but don't count on much activity.

Take care, all!

Wow, I'm on a roll here XD

Anyhow, so things are getting pretty busy over here with uni and such, my timetable (not necessarily of classes but 'extra-curricular' stuff) is kinda scaring me for this week.

Anyway, journals are not fun with just massive blocks of text, so instead I will talk about shiiiiny adoptables lol

Firstly, I'd like to introduce you all to the newest member of my ever-growing adoptables family:



He is a gift from AdoptaChirimo, I love their adoptables And he is so sparkly and rainbow-y too~ n__n He gets to be named after something med-related because too much med stuff is floating around my subconscious T__T But hey... medicine saves lives* and thus could be pretty and sparkly because of it, eh? Err lol... XD

_{* Actually, with all we have been learning about medical errors lately I am not too convinced on this part.}

And next is a baby krakulu from AmaDoptables which is another of my favourite agencies... n__n



This one is the offspring of my (rainbowy) Icyl and Gonah's rainbow Tsume... fluffy and angry, lol And he gets half-named after something from WoW because I can't help it lol... but at least his name still gets to be 'original'. XD

Kraku are actually really fun because they seem so random and crazy and cool because of it XD

And then there is my Queso...



I won him from a guessing game, we had to guess what this whole bunch of kraku were based off and it took me about a month to guess this one lol XD He is named after what used to be one of my favourite Spanish words and it was so fitting for the occassion sooo...

I am a bit sad though that there always seems to be so much to keep me up late; there is always *something* that can/needs to be done online, lol....... like a paper-adoptables raffle which I need to draw really soon >.< So if you want a chance to win a charta, hop over there right now before it's too late. XD

Oh, and I forgot to mention that I am currently suffering from a cold. Lucky people, 99.9% of you are too far away from me to catch it... XD

I blame my cold for my recent super-uncoordinated-ness and lack of concentration lol. XD

Anyways, hope things are going well for the rest of you... and I didn't say the magic word even once this time (Well, not in the right context that is XD)

Time flies so fast...

It's hard to believe we're already in the fourth week of semester. WoW really does make the days fly past... ~__~
(As you can tell, that previous... "incident" did not deter me from playing for long.)
But I doubt you all want to hear more about that time-parasite, and I have saved (most of) you by splurting out my WoW-related ramblings on facebook instead.

Anyway, so some of you may already know that I was part of the publications team for the medical students' society at my uni last year... basically, just taking everyone's articles and putting them into a (hopefully) nice layout for their quarterly magazines. But we still have one final project to get done which is more of a 'course guide' for this year, so working on that (or attempting to) has been taking up much of my time for the past week or so. Which was not helped at all by an afternoon where my computer seemingly refused to start up and I had to do a system restore which most helpfully removed Microsoft Word and Adobe InDesign from my laptop, rendering it 'useless'.  Or a Friday evening, most of which was unsucessfully spent trying to *reinstall* InDesign onto my computer without success. (It finally worked the day after when the mobile internet was plugged into my computer, although the setup never mentioned anything about needing internet access so I don't know if that was coincidental or not.)

Anyway, it is *mostly* done by now, except for some gaping holes in the layout where there wasn't enough text, and I need to work out what to do to fill up the rest of the space. ~__~;

Apart from that, we have our first 'mid-sem' test next Monday. Which is really just half an hour of multiple choice questions, so nothing too *major*. But I'd still better study for it so I don't fail, lol. >.>;

I admit that most of the (limited) time I've been on dA lately has been spent following yaypets, although my actual activity related to such has been somewhat limited as well.

And paper-adoptables has almost fallen off the edge of the world. @___@

Addiction is bad. But at the moment my life probably isn't in the best state of balance anyhow. And at least it keeps me occupied.
I suppose one could say that the novelty of going to uni interstate and staying in residential college has most definitely worn off by now. There are positives to balance the negatives, of course. And I have a sneaking suspicion that I may be one of those "grass is greener on the other side" people... ~___~;

I am really sorry for not uploading anything decent to my gallery for ages. I suppose one could say that I just haven't been feeling that creative lately.......... the problem is, this 'absence' isn't the first I've had on dA. There have been previous obsessions, and I suspect that there always will be more. After previous prolonged 'absences'... that's what led me to create new dA accounts. ~__~  

When I created this account, I thought this should be my last. But who knows? And is it possible to change one's nature? ~__~; This is all beginning to turn rather depressing, but I suppose I never had *quite* the number of friends and acquaintances on dA before to tie me to this place. And I have been beginning to realise the importance of effective communication lately... silence is not a good thing

Anyway, I hope you all won't hate me *too* much for being kidnapped by WoW...

Just letting you all know that I'm still alive; I hope that things are going okay for the rest of you.

I got rather ^#&$ed off at WoW last night, which was probably actually a good thing in retrospect (although it was extremely embarrassing and made my ego sore at the time, lol). Breaking the illusion of the game being a random happy obsession paradise was probably a good thing, because I have managed to wrestle back a bit more of my 'former' life again. I don't necessarily say 'better' though, because it still involves me spending most of my free time ensconced in front of a computer- just that it's dA on my screen instead.

So I did some rather belated housekeeping of paper-adoptables this afternoon, and somehow ended up actually looking a bit more closely at my message inbox. And replying to stuff. Getting caught up reading random things, people's journals, taking a look at new deviations, replying to stuff... it was actually kinda nice. And it feels natural, normal... and here, there are friends. Lots of people I can get along with, and even if people are almost strangers I feel perfectly comfortable talking to them. dA feels like home.

Yes, I was/am obsessed with WoW, but in some ways I was content to let that obsession run its course (as if I had any hope of doing otherwise), because WoW was so different to anything I had ever experienced before. I always *wanted* to see what a multiplayer online game was like, always wanted to share a gaming experience with more people than just my lonely self... but at the same time, it was also a good 'social' experience in general. Getting to see what the people in other places are like. Learning to deal with people who aren't necessarily so kind or patient or understanding as many of the people I know on dA. Or learning how to just grit one's teeth and ignore some random puffed-up arrogant #$*$ yelling obscenities at their own team... people who seem to get #&$#ed at just about every little thing, blah blah. WoW is/was cool, but in the end I realise that I can be more of myself here rather than there. In retrospect, I realise that in some way I was trying to pretend... some sort of defence mechanism, I suppose. I enjoyed it, but was not fully myself.

I suppose another thing is the sheer amount of experience needed to get from level 70 to level 80. I simply can't spare the time to do that and nothing else. Uni has started once more, and I've barely done a shred of extra study at all. Last night was #&$#ing annoying, but I'll accept it as a good thing to be forcibly made less obsessed with WoW. I don't know where things will go from here, but I know there can be no middle path. Either I play it obsessively... or not at all. That's just the way everything is with me; moderation is a foreign concept to me. >__<; But, we will see.

For now, I am content with the way things are.