Hobbies and art class

I think I'm cheating on my paper jour - holy cow this keyboard is loud!  Alright, change of topic, if only for a moment.  It's a little interesting that people have different limits to what's perfectly acceptable and what will not stand.  I'm at my parents' house at the moment, and working off of their desktop computer.  I've brought my laptop, but the wireless internet doesn't work at their house anymore.  It stopped working and they never felt the need to fix it after I left.   Also, the internet on the desktop computer doesn't work all the time... they keep it unplugged to remove crackly interference on the phone.  I'm so fucking connected all the time, hanging out at my parents' place feels like camping.  I should stop being a goddamn princess.  Also, their soundcard is fucked, so if you do plug the internet in, no music or youtube.

To be fair, I would find this bearable, too, if I had my dad's turntable and record collection.

Back to the topic at hand, I think I'm cheating on my paper journal with this blog.  I love the journal, don't get me wrong, but I can't do this in it:

********Before you click on that, you should know it's a 53 minute video.

Going to the beach the other day reminded me that there are a lot of things I enjoy that I don't do anywhere near as much as I'd like.  I never seem to get to the beach until the end of summer, and I live in an area surrounded by the great lakes, so I'm about 45 minutes away from some form of beach at any given time.

This makes zero sense to me.  And the list of things I love doing, but don't do as much as I'd like, is massive.  Some examples include:

reading
writing (although, clearly, I'm working on it)
drawing
singing
listening to quality music
painting

I was about to write "focusing on the arty hobbies," when I realized they're all arty.  I went through a really tough time in university, it's a miracle I left with a degree, to be honest.  I will talk about it more later - I promise, since it's a direct reflection of my mental health - but I have to mention that the time when I felt most balanced at Trent was during the summer between my third and fourth year.  I needed a credit to catch up and the only course available was visual arts.

At first, I really didn't feel like I belonged in that class.  I'm a horrible drawer (as in "holding a pencil and drawing", not "square box with a handle on it that slides into a bigger box"), there was no way I was going to keep up with the other people in the class.  After my first week, the reality was clearly much different.  Truthfully, some of the artists in that class could have run with the best of them, and probably still can.  One in particular was so amazing, I was sad in class the one day, and the teacher said to me "Amy, why are you glum?"  in a fairly cheerful voice.  "B is a better artist than me." I sighed.  "Amy, B is a better artist than me." she replied.  B really was amazing, and I would be heartbroken if I discovered that she was no longer creating in some way.  She was also one of my few genuine same-sex crushes.  I'd have done anything for her, short of coming out.  Sadly, she already had a "good friend."  She was shy and full humility, something I look for in men now that I'm all growed up.

When I really put my heart into my work, it seemed to really fit in and even sit higher than many in the class.  My nights were filled with tea and painting, wine and sketching, scotch and writing, and I was always finding the strings between the art I was working on and the academic texts I'd immersed myself in for the previous three years. 

Of course, I'm not sure how much this reflects my mental health.  I don't think there's one person out there who would dislike having four months to play with their inner self.