Block party.

I use more toothpaste per day than I do shampoo.  Such is the virtue of having short hair.  It's not that I don't wash my hair (although people have been shocked to find out that I do actually use shampoo), it's just that I have very little.  I often wonder what I would look like with long hair - maybe a ponytail.  I think my head would be too round for it though.  I'll just cut it shorter and shorter until I have the Jason Statham look down.

I've held back from writing this second post for nearly the whole weekend.  I am both eager and hesitant to write this.  One part of me wants to type until my fingers wear down past the bone and all I am left doing is mashing a bloody keypad with soggy stubs whilst behind them, my body has become part of the sofa, with just my head distinguishing me from the soft purple cushions that so softly beckon me to stay.  Another part of me just wants to go to bed.  Then there's a third part that knows that if one brings on the crazy too soon, one will scare people away.  There's so much I want to say but, like some sort of editor or scolded child, I will think about what I want to say before saying it and then filter it down until nothing but gold remains.  It's a long process and I can't very well be expected to master it one the first try (hence this drivel), but master it I shall.

It would seem that I suffer from creative blocks at the worst possible moments in life.  At the moment, I have three and a half projects looming over me like a think fog.  It took me five hours to get through 1/4 of the final stage of one of these projects today.  I knew what I wanted to do and I (sort of) knew how I wanted to go about doing it, but it was taking me so long.  I suppose the best way to fight a creative block it to barrage it with creativity.  I just open a sketchbook and let the lines go wandering.  There's a picture in there somewhere - I'll come back to it another time and finish it off*.  All I want to do, as those of you who know me, is draw all day, every day.  It seems that blocks know when I'm needing to do actual work, though.  I don't understand.  It's still drawing - I just have something specific that I'm needing to achieve.  But no.  No no no.  If it's work that needs to be done, my mind won't let me.  Anything else, yea, go for it.  You want to draw a fish with a golf club?  Cool.  You want to draw a lumberjack with huge legs, cutting down a tree with six arms?  Do it.  You want to draw a castle?  What for?  Work?  Ah, then no.  No you can't.

(I'm still working on refining the drivel).

So me.  What can I say?  I'm a bloke.  I'm a Christian.  I'm a student.  I'm an artist.  I'm a drummer.  I'm a bassist.  I'm a singer.  I'm a goon.  I'm a Greenskin.  I'm a secret geek.  I'm a film buff.  I'm a hopeless romantic.  I'm a Cornerback.  I'm an Englishman.  I'm a patriot.  I'm an adventurer.  I'm a Stephen.  I'm a photographer.  I'm a novice gamer.

If you don't know what those are, I'll probably go into detail about all of them at some point in the future, so don't worry yourselves.

I've found that starting a blog is a lot like starting a sketchbook.  You don't know what to do on the first few pages, so you throw down anything that comes to mind.  You go back to halfway through old sketchbooks, redraw things from there and improve on them.  Unfortunately, the last written thing that I can go back to and work on is the opening to an essay on a designer that was born between the years 1750 and 1940.  Or a Facebook post.  Either way, it wouldn't bode well for you, the reader, so I shall end it here.  For the next post, I think I'll take notes and stuff like that.  I've already written and re-written a fair few sentences in this post.  Maybe I won't have to do that so much in the future.

I'm off to play Call of Duty with my brother.  It's late and I need to be up early but hey - what's life if you're not pretending to be in the Second World War?

* I won't.