Update 2/? - Resilience
'Sup fellas, I'm happy to finally be able to write on that blog again. Like I said previously, I didn't want to post anything here until my blog would be updated too. A very dumb decision, but what can I say, that's how I work.
Anyway, I was really hoping to post this update in July and we're in September so yeaaaah, never make creative promises, that's all I can say. So what changed ? First of all the blog, as you noticed through this page alone, but we'll go back to that later. I wanna talk about the small changes first. The contact button is now a pop up, I found it more convenient this way personally.
I went back to the commission part to change a few buttons that I thought weren't on my level graphically talking and it pissed me off to have, like, "the bare minimum" slapped on my face everytime I need to use it (because I can't remember my own prices LOL) so I changed a few things here and there.
I'll probably change one or two very small things you won't even notice later as well but for now it's ok enough. I'm not trying to reach perfection, because I'll change and my style will improve and my knowledge will and everything will, but still, this is basically a showcase of who I am and what I can do so it has to be as close as possible to that perfection we all pursue.
This website is more than a professional showcase for me, thus the blog, it's a part of me, it will probably perpetually evolve with me but I want a strong enough base nonetheless.
Speaking of the blog~
I was a bit too ambitious with my first idea of a blog. Or rather too disorganized and chaotic (I don't have a screenshot of what the mobile version looked like but it was even worst). There's just so much I wanted to share that I got overwhelmed by it, in a way. An about me page, a page about all Sam's appearances (heeeeh I didn't really give up on that but I need to think it a bit more), my latest bluesky posts, my latest X posts, my latest insta posts, random quotes and the actual blog sunk below all that.
My blog is the intimate part of me, I did it because I like writing, it helps me a lot. Like a diary, it's a diary. It's the embodiment of everything I am, the best, the worst. All my struggles, all my passions. I made it public in hope it can reach people who need to hear the things I wish I was told when I was younger, but that's basically what it is about, a diary. Maybe as a desire to leave my mark, in a way, in case I fad away like all the "me" before "me". That's why I had the need to redesign everything after all, I lived many lives and I hope this one will last but I needed to make it more like the me I am now.
And in a way it makes me happy to have this need for organization and peace. The goal of the first (well, technically second 'cause I used to have a an average blog somewhere else before) blog was to be buzzy and chaotic and disturbing and cluttered and noisy. The goal of that second version is the absolute opposite, I want it to be organized, peaceful and quiet. And it's nice to see that I'm no longer at war with the world, that I'm seeking understanding rather than fighting it.
Anyway, that's why it took so long. Not even because of the absolute Hell of a Summer we went through in France that I'm still recovering from (my health is SHIT right now you have no idea lol, these repetitive insane heatwaves totally destroyed my balance and anihilate the effects of my treatments) but because I made way too many tests, way too many arts, way too many try that I like overall but it wasn't it, it wasn't the somewhat calm bitter-sweet experience my current design gives me.
(there were more arts than that but these are the one I kept in order to finish them and turn them into something else because they looked cool enough).
I have a dissociative disorder without possession. I'm writing about it atm and it will most likely be my next post so I don't want to talk about it too much here but it's a different kind of DID than the one most people know. I don't have "alters" per say, all "me" are "me" in a way, it feels like me, which make it difficult to notice when I "switch". I know I definitely do when I'm upset, otherwise these are long "fronting", in the way that each "me" was "me" for years and I think the reason I have the need to slap MCU Sam everywhere is because that new "me" was born out of him, I guess I got too attached and recognized myself too much in his pain and anger, it makes me at peace to look at his struggles. And it's kind of the mood I wanted for this blog, peace through pain, pain through peace. I'm doing better on all aspect of my life, physically and psychologically I was able to highly improve my health. It's still way too far from normalcy and it's still way too often painful and it will stay this way forever, that's the point of being disabled after all. Right now for exemple, as I said above, I'm suffering a lot. My body is so heavy and hard to move around, my mind is so busy and hard to understand. I spend most of my time sleeping. And y'know, I'm used to this, I have chronical illnesses so one day I'm good and the day after I feel like I'm dying, one day I do so many things and the day after I want to die. It never truly bothered me, because I'm used to it and because I accepted my faith a long time ago. I always thought it was resilience but recently I understood it was surrendering. And so, the better I feel, the more I realize I want to live and the more I want, period. The better I am and the more painful these moment get, the more I think I deserve better, the more impatience I get. The better I get, the more painful everything is. But it's not a bad feeling.
I enjoy this pain, well, not the pain itself, obviously I hate it. But I love hating it, I love caring about my own life. I love wanting a good life. This is the bitter-sweet peace through pain I'm talking about and the mood I wanted for this blog. That's why the main color palette is blue and pastel, it's slower, more silent than the usual neon (I think colors it term of sound don't mind me).
This is the warm and sweet embrace you crave and love while you cry. That somewhat hurtful nostalgic comforting feeling.
This is resilience.
It's not the only reason, professionally-wise it's also a way to show I can do more than these loud and hyperactive neon arts I love doing. The point was to have a totally different energy for the commission part, for the blog part, for the membership part and for the portfolio part. A small palette of what I can do.
And on a pure user experience pov this previous blog was an absolute fucking DISGRACE. Too much, just too much. And that screenshot above was made BEFORE I added even MORE. I want my blog to look like a blog. There's nothing shameful about a blog but somehow I didn't want mine to be one at first and that's typical of that previous "me", they had the need to be different in everything. Not as a way to be noticed, but as a way to reject what they were. It was this very twisted and contradictory '"welcome to my world but stay the fuck away from me". And it's not what I want anymore, I want people to feel welcomed in my world. So the main goal was to make this blog more user friendly. With the addition of very common little things that "I" removed on purpose, a search bar, a navigation (that I still gotta work on, in the way that a lot of posts aren't properly tagged), tag list, since we're mentioning it. I kept the Pantheon, which is very important to me, but made it more visible and appealing and I put the microblogging part all below, below, because the main blog is more important. I still wanted to keep it because there's a lot of things I wanna talk about but also I'm terrible at reviewing so it's often 2-3 sentences, definitely not enough for a blog post, but still enough to be shared. Couldn't find a better way than instagram to showcase it though. In the mobile version, this is absent. I kept the bare minimum, blog posts, search bar and Pantheon.
I wanted to have this nice background I put on the main blog part on the posts and Pantheon too but unfortunately Wix (which is what I use to be able to build my website without having to learn to program) doesn't allow it. Though I enjoy working on this website so much that I wanna learn the basics to be able to pull a website by myself (when my health is more stable), so who knows, maybe one day I'll be able to add that. Maybe one day I'll do your own website.
For now I can't give them background because they don't have a "fixed" size like my blog main page. I'm not planning to leave these two pages empty like that though, I'll do a repetitive background eventually, so the size won't matter, I just don't know how or what yet and I really wanted to post that new blog asap so I'll do that later.
I still have a lot of work on that blog part, there's a lot of blog posts that feel not good enough, or not good anymore to me. I need to properly tag them but also to rewrite some of them, to add, to remove. If a post go through big changes, I'll post it like a new one anyway so don't feel surprised if you feel like you already read it but do read it anyway, it's not the same person you're talking to anymore and maybe you'll like (or not) the new vision I bring to past "me" 's words. Because I'm not planing to erase them, only add, the way the "me" I am now is born of all the previous "me".
Next part will be the membership part that is a huge ugly-ass "place holder" right now, but I need to do something cooler. I barely advertise my ko-fi and Patreon membership and yet, it's probably more important than commissions in the way that it's a "more stable" income than commissions. Like, sure people can unsubscribe and they do, which is absolutely fine btw and I'd like to take this occasion to ask you to not feel bad about it, you helped more than you think already and money isn't the only way to support someone, take care of yourself. But yeah, as I was saying, with these alone I can pay all the meds that aren't payed by my insurance, my gecko's food, all my subscriptions (I don't have much anyway 'cause I'm strongly against renting medias, but things like my phone subscription, my website, stuff like that) and that would be cool if one day I have a big enough earning to pay a part of my bills or food, or both. So I need to push that a little more and for that I need to make a fun page to properly advertise myself.
I'm also reworking my portfolio, it's the most important part but the last because I need to fil it. Not like I hate what's inside atm, but it's just "not me" anymore, I need to update my arts, to redraw some, to add new stuff etc... And this will be built through time, thus why it's the last part.
I'd like to add a kind of newsletter also like I mentioned in the previous update, so you know when I post a new post but you can also keep track of my arts and not just the ones I post everywhere but the silly doodles I don't post as well. I don't have a career to update yet so I don't feel like I need a newsletter, but more and more people grow tired of social medias and ask me if there's a way to keep track of what I do without it so, even if only 2-3 people use it I think it could be cool to do that. Gotta think about it because I don't wanna add more burden work on my already heavy shoulders.
Anyway, that's all for now, thanks a lot for the support, I'm going through a lot and seeing more and more people enjoying what I do is truly helping me to keep going.
So until next time, enjoy~
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