A New year…. A New Me?

So it’s always around this time of year people set their New Years Resolutions, resolve to be better at something, to change something, to leave behind the old them and grow into something new.

Well I have spent many years trying to be a new me, a better me, a different me. However all that does is forget that the me I was/ am got me to this point, they are a fighter and a survivor.

That me has been through an abusive relationship, has struggled through bullying in friendships, in the work place, has had a breakdown and daily they struggle to manage over whelming anxiety. It is that me that has kept me getting up in the mornings, who gets me on a train every day and gets me to work – even with a rapid heart beat or palpitations.

What I am learning is regardless of my thoughts about that me, that me is tough, funny, strong and yes weird as hell but a damn good weird. That weirdness has allowed me to see the world as I do, and has provided me with some damn awesome experiences.

So this year I wrote a really long list of resolutions, 14 to be precise which sounds intense. However they are simple and really could be summed up in 3 – enjoy life more, be kind to myself and create more, the 14 are:

What is interesting is when I wrote these I wasn’t really thinking a priority order, I just wrote as they came to me. It’s interesting that the 3 at the bottom came to me last, that in itself shows me how important it is to embrace them!

This is going to be a short and sweet blog, I am not sure I have ever written anything this brief but the point isn’t to wrote long essays, the point is to just write. So really this is a blog to say hey I am back and I am writing again, to give you an idea of what the year may hold and to try to start putting those goals into action.

This is also about me saying that it is never about a New you because you is awesome – you got you here, you has survived and fought and never take that you for granted. This year is the year for being kind to yourself.

Trying this art thing and learning to accept being adequate

So art… you know art is hard, creating is hard and being imaginative and original are well yes ok are hard.

So one of the things I’m trying to be this year is more creative… those who have been here a while know this was something I started with d&d and being a DM. This is something I am still doing but for the most part I find writing comes fairly easily  to me and thinking off the cuff as a DM is the easiest part, I find I go through life rarely Really knowing what I am doing and feeling like I’m blagging most things. Even this blog of course is an attempt to be creative… in fact it was my first attempt and in a lot of ways my default creative, because I always have thoughts and I can always write, not always grammatically well but it’s not terrible.

So what more can I do, well photography is something that if you have read more than this I have started to get back into. It started with photos of beautiful clouds for a friend… which in turn taught me to re look at nature, to find beauty and in turn I discovered I really don’t have a bad eye for photography at all. I’m now working on teaching myself to edit them which I am writing about in these blogs so you can see my 1st attempt (here). This brings me to art… I’ve always liked to draw but I don’t think I’m particularly good at it. I have a fairly ok imagination, I can imagine how the piece should look and in theory I get the technicalities of art but my God it’s hard. I sometimes feel my mind’s eye is more talented than my hand…. my hand is sort of rubbish and doesn’t do the lines on the page as I want them. I find it frustrating and at times a little demoralising…. ok a lot demoralising.

Why persevere? Why keep doing something that you think you suck at? I hear you ask….Well because at times it can also be relaxing and rewarding and there is a therapeutic element to it. You see one of my biggest problems and the thing that probably most set off my breakdown last year is the fact that I am a perfectionist. As someone who is highly intelligent, has high expectations and is used to doing things well I hate, and I mean hate doing things badly. To the point where if I have no choice to do it and it is not perfect I will beat myself up, I only ever expect perfect from myself. If I can avoid something I’m not good at then I will, I’ve proved that time and time again when working out. If I can’t do either of those things I tend to be slap dash as a way to protect myself, if I’ve rushed something and its crap well I didn’t try anyways. I did this with being a DM at first, I thought I’d be shit so I’d do everything last minute including battle maps but I’ve had many people complement them and I’ve also been told off for rushing and still producing good maps, it’s a bugbear of my boyfriend… he thinks if I put more time in I’d produce exceptional maps. The problem with the breakdown last year is the lack of belief and confidence it has left. I realise a lot of what I do these days is that slap dash approach because well I stopped believing I was any good at anything so learnt to present quick/ rushed work because well then it’s fine if people hate it, criticize it.

So art, art is something that is difficult to really rush – I mean you can do 1 minute sketches, which is something I am trying but otherwise it takes as long as it takes to draw or paint or colour. Being creative or arty is rarely perfect especially first time and requires patience, practice and time to be good, so this year I want to focus on something I suck at in order to become better, but more importantly in order to learn to be less of a perfectionist and to not be so critical or hard on myself. As I write this I have posted my first attempt at using markers on twitter in fact it’s (here) and the stress of it not being liked or commented on is, well hard – I rarely put myself in a position to fail and I am even less likely to do it on a public forum. I mean anyone and everyone can see it and they might say it’s shit (I mean it is but that my job to say) and thinking about this gives me palpitations, makes me panic, I feel just a little sick…. I might just delete it all. Instead I will leave it on twitter and try to have the determination and belief that there is nothing wrong with not being perfect, there is nothing wrong with sharing something less than technically perfect and in time the anxiety will lessen and the battle against perfectionism is one step closer to being won.

So remember comfort zones are great, but once in a while step out of them, challenge yourself and you might be surprised. Besides my artwork of Zahra might not have many likes, might for the most part go ignored on twitter and that’s fine because you know what I did it – I tried something and I stepped out of my comfort zone and more importantly I survived, although likes and re-tweets are always appreciated!

 

 

Weekend writing and photography – trying to be more creative

I had a great intro to this blog planned, I promise you it might have been close to literary genius but I got distracted editing photos (there was a point to that) and well now you have this intro which is a tribute to probably the greatest intro of all times….

 So being more creative –  I know I have discussed this both here and on twitter before, both my desire to be more so and the benefits of being more creative as an outlet. For some time now I have been getting back into photography but with limited funds I have been relying on the camera on my phone which don’t get me wrong is a good little camera but the photos have been somewhat dull. Not in topic, I think I have an eye for the right image, but nothing is the colour, depth or vibrancy that real life offers. The answer editing and recommended was the phone app snapseed.

This is a nifty app with a lot of different elements that can be touched up and played with to bring contracts, shadows and warmth back to images that look washed out, dull or grey. Now because I do not really know what I am doing I can’t give you a technical analysis of what I have done but I have played, changed and brought life back to the photos… But I’ll share them and leave it to you to decide.

When it comes to nature shots I like subjects that look magical, other worldly like a bleak lightening like tree or fire in the sky. Mostly what I take never has the depth that I want to capture hence the editing. Partly I am writing this because I like the images but rather than just share them on twitter I also want to keep a record of what editing I have done – that way in time I hope to learn when is it time to add shadow, or when is it time to remove highlights, add warmth, take it away. In time, I might learn what I am doing and in time maybe start presenting better photos.

Below I will share the original image and the final edited one and notes on what effects were used and my thoughts on why I used those effects and why I thought they would work. Feel free to give me your thoughts, recommendations – this is all part of the learning.

Image 1: Beach Scene in Norfolk

I initially used the brush function to change the saturation set on 10, in the lower part of the image and Exposure set on 0.7 to add light to the sky and the top part of the sand, then tuned the whole image in the following way: Saturation +23 Warmth +11

Suddenly we have a sun-drenched beach scene with golden sands, it isn’t as dark or as cold looking. I wanted to make the sand look less dirty and sharpen up the colours in the background.

 Image 2: Spider web

This time I just used the tune image function in the following way Contrast +73, Highlights -62 Saturation +61. I love this image but I wanted to dew drops to be more prominent and I wanted the colour contrasts to be more vivid. I am not totally convinced the droplets are as crystal clear as I wanted but maybe that is as much due to the original photo as my editing!

 Image 3: Lightening Tree

I call this image lightning tree because some said to me they though it looked like forked lightning, I wanted to bring out the contrast in the image to play with the light and darkness and the shadow. Firstly, because the image is quite dark (it was a very grey raining day I took it on) I used the brush function to lighten the whole image with Exposure set to 0.7. Then used tune image in the following way Contrast +78, Shadow +94 and Saturation +34. I like how the forked lightning branches still look like lightening but I think adding more colour and saturation to the image has given it some life. The colours and tones in the bark have really come out now and there is something more magical about the tree.

 Image 4: Sunlight through the trees

This image I was never able to photograph in the intensity I originally saw it, I think now with the editing it is more than it ever was in real life. With this image to bring out the bright light and to add the shadows and contrast back in, so the image captured the light playing through the trees I used tune to do the following Brightness +72, Contrast +92, Highlights +45 and Shadow – 43. It wasn’t a matter of just making the sun beams more vivid but also the sunlight and shadows at the bottom of the image more prominent and making each tree more defined.

Image 5: Sky on fire

The day I took this the early sun breaking through the clouds looked like fire rolling across the sky, like something foreboding and apocalyptic. It was quite disheartening not to be able to capture it. To add the fire back in to the sky I used tune to add warmth +26 and saturation + 38 but also to add the contrast to it I wanted to also darken the image so I used brightness – 40 so the trees in the for ground were darker against the blazing sky.

 These are all first attempts and I will continue to play and learn and hopefully document, but in the meantime advice is always appreciated.

 Now having been doubly creative by editing and writing about it I am going to use the rest of my weekend wisely and watch Critical Role, but remember find some time to make something, write something or art something.

As I side note I will add that as the editing and anaylsis of the images were done through my phone I will aplogies if you see them differently, graphics cards are a tricky thing and even loading these images onto my PC has made them look slightly different to how my phone shows them.

 

 

 

 

New Year, Newly Resolved Me….

As the saying goes a New Year a New You – this year I am not going to say that I’m not looking to be a new me. Let’s take things easy on myself and try not to change everything. Why? Well for two reasons really, firstly if you’ve stuck with me all this time you’ll know what happened this time last year, and one of the things I have realised is I put too much pressure and expectations on myself. I set hundreds of goals both achievable and unattainable and then breakdown when I can’t achieve everything, unrealistic or not I have set myself. I am also too hard on myself I may not be perfect, but then who is? But I am honestly not as bad as I think I am and therefore do not actually need to change everything and that brings us nicely to reason two. I don’t actually want to be a new me. I know right? Slightly terrified to say it because now you’ll hold me to it, but I sort of like me – don’t get me wrong I could exercise more and probably be less lazy but on the whole I think I am alright so why should I be a new me.

So I am going to be a newly resolved me – I’ll still be the same goof that you know or maybe don’t, that will never change. I am going to try to spend more time being kind and loving myself. My plan is to do this in simple ways for example I’d like to go back to yoga I am not saying this will be tomorrow or next week but that is something over the next year I’d like to get back into. Towards the end of last year I re-found though my job a love for music and that is something I wish to continue with. I plan to read more, the most upsetting thing about my breakdown and the year or so leading up to it was I stopped reading – I am getting back into it but I want to make sure I find more time for simple things like reading. This blog too I let this slip while I was working hard to re-find myself so I am not going to set in stone how often I plan to write – but I will definitely try to find more time for this.

I want to spend more time on photography this year – it was a great part of my healing process in 2016 and has become a massive part of my life now – and I want to keep up with it. Sticking with the creative side I definitely want to do more D&D this year – more DMing and more playing with a variety of people – I want more DM and D&D experience. I want to try and draw more, apparently I am not bad and I find it really rewarding so here’s to trying to be more creative!

Find the right balance between me time, partner time and friend time, there are so many wonderful people I already spend time with, who I need to spend more time with and those I have never met but want to meet/ spend more time with. So this is going to be a big part of my year – trying to put more time and effort to those who deserve it and not worry/waste time on those who don’t. I only have so much of me to give and only so many cares I want to give and one of the reasons last year happened is I spread myself to thin, I try too much with others and I give all I have to give to others – often those who don’t deserve it and I give very little to me.

They only fitness target I’m setting this year is related to Tough Mudder, I proved in 2016 I am fit enough to do it – this year my only target for it is I’d like to be able to run more of it than I did in 2016, I on a personal level feel let down that I struggled to run more of the distance between the obstacles and my team waited a lot for me. I would like to also have a bit more upper body strength, just so I don’t have to be lifted and pulled around over obstacles quite so much. I honestly don’t care if I tone up, lose weight, get super fit this year, those resolutions are off the list and more realistic ones replace them.

I think I wrote early in 2016 about wanting to be the best goat herder I could be (HERE) and one thing I realised is I wanted to be the best, better than everyone, top of my game that missed the point because I wasn’t being the best me I could be. The best me is the creative, funny, weirdling that if you know me well enough you know I am. Well here is to 2017 a new year and a newly resolved me, I resolve to be the best me I can be, to be kind and loving to myself and others and be a weird as I can and have as much fun as possible. No targets just do more awesome things and try to be awesome.

Whatever your 2017 resolutions are – don’t forget to be kind to yourself and do good things for you. Go achieve greatness for you are great! My advice to anyone reading this is remember 2016 was tough for a lot of us and 2017 can be so much better if we make it so – be kind to yourself and good to others first and foremost.