I decided around mid-June that August was going to be my most productive month. It’s been 5 days, and I have started making some dumb merch over at my Redbubble account, a bunch of gif loops, and have gathered all the ingredients for more notebook making.
I’m rather proud of myself right now, even though it’s 5:14am and I have midday lunch plans tomorrow and my room is filthy again.
I’m going to be in Zurich all of August. Besides gif making and all that other personal work I’ve got going on, I do have actual work to do as well as people coming back for exams to cling to. I stayed up until a bizarre hour to write a little in my well neglected journal last night. I’m also abandoning a lot of things just to do some animation for hours and hours in my room, but it makes me feel better somehow even though I’m starting to get a permanently red left eye from staring at the computer a little too much.
One thing I really do need to start doing again, though, is eating properly. I can definitely feel my body falling apart slowly if I keep eating only when hungry, considering I’m almost never hungry.
I’ve been working my laptop mercilessly as of the last few days, and on the first day of my super productive month, it crashed right after I freshly backed up all my files. If that isn’t luck, I don’t know what is.
I’ve also miraculously gone back to uploading things onto my sketchblog, which is slowly turning into a gif sanctuary. This can only be a good thing.
I saved this last loop into a bunch of gifs the whole way through, so I may post a loop making progress thing at some point this week with it, if I don’t make anything better for the job. I’ve spent all day making this ridiculous thing.
I love it. It’s all my favourite things in one: a selfie, a loop, an animation of something dumb and impossible. I may colour it some time when I’m not so deliriously tired.
I still don’t own a scanner, nor have I found a solid place to develop and print my photos, but that’s ok. I’ll manage and make things with what I have.
I’m slowly going back to being okay. I still have no idea if this next semester is actually going to end up being useful to me at all in terms of academics, but I really have fallen in love with Zurich at this point. Things here are, while slightly unaffordable, really quite nice. It’s occurred to me that it’s completely possible for me to move to Europe for a few moments of life, which would be nice now that I have so much affection spread around here. Being two hours away from another country and culture really still blows my mind, but I would love to get used to it.
I know that what I have here, this year, is an anomaly. I know that all the attitudes and the types of people I’m meeting here are all in a very particular mindset, and I know that I could possibly never encounter any of it ever again. I know I can’t hold onto it forever. I know that, and I can still love it unconditionally, which is kind of freeing in it’s own way.
I’ve still had bad days while I’ve been here. I’ve been battling myself less and less, but when the bad days hit, they hit hard. I’m getting there.
I realise that these six months and the people I’ve met during it have all changed me and my attitude towards a fair amount of things in my life. I can’t help but be grateful. I loved who I was before this year with all of her naivety and rose tinted future, but I like where I am now, and where I’m going now. I love being in a microcosm of design and work and creativity just as much as I love meeting people who are living an entirely different reality to myself. I would love to find somewhere in between to exist, in the middle of the two.
It’s been 3 months since I’ve started learning how to stand on my own two feet. It’s going to be long, but I’m finally starting to feel good in my own skin after all these years and years of making other people my home. I don’t have that itch to run away from myself anymore.
The sun’s coming up. I should sleep. Here’s to a good August.
It’s the small things,
Annie.
