positivity

workingI like what I do.

It took a long time to get better at it (and I’m still only okay,) and during most of my life I have come across as a cynical, pessimistic person. I’ve usually played down whatever I was doing that was good or that I thought was awesome, just so as not to jinx things. I’ve jinxed stuff before and I don’t like it.

But through all of it I think I’ve always held deep inside a fundamental sense that things will eventually, somehow just be OK and that whatever I was doing at the time, as long as I enjoyed it, it made me happy, then all the rest would work itself out.

You have to decide what you like. That’s the hard part. I happen to like orange, so I painted my house orange inside. I mean, I rent, but fuck it, right? As long as it’s left how I got it… it can be orange as long as I live here. So bright orange, bright baboon-ass red, straight shock pink. All next to each other. I also like having tons of fun things laying around to pick up and make art or play with. So it’s kind of a haphazard mess of weird instruments, odd bits of plastic, paints. I live in Ville Villekula.

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just some halloween costumes.

clockwork orange costumeI am too sick to do anything for halloween, which is terrible. I have food poisoning…

so here are a few photos of past years.

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on becoming outgoing

the ghost writerI used to be really, really shy.

I went through years of just never talking to anyone, just going home after work. Reading. Spending time alone or with one or two friends. Then I went through a long, angry phase of hating people who were social. That lasted a while.

At some point, BAM! I was no longer so shy.

As soon as I didn’t care what anyone thought, things got a lot easier. If someone doesn’t like me, it doesn’t really matter. I mean of course there are people that I’d like to have like me- I still don’t feel all the way happy in a crowd- but now, it’s discomfort, a bit of anxiety, whereas before it was crippling and it kept me alone most of the time.

Of course some people don’t like me much, now that I am a loudmouth. But then again…some people wouldn’t have liked me no matter what I did.

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youth of today

I once came to the conclusion that I usually have dated younger men because men my age are bitter old farts who just want to complain or make babies. I don’t think this is true in all cases but …

I do enjoy being around someone my own age and when I go out with guys my age or close to it I get really happy because the weird stuff I think about they just…get it right away. There’s no explaining why “piano wire and a block of ice” is a funny reference when I see an emo kid, or why singing a certain riff from xray spex is awesome, why long duck dong said fast makes me giggle, why I think jocks suck, or or or…

I was born in the early 70s. I remember watching the monkees on tv. I remember brown and orange and avocado green rugs. I remember not worrying about accepting candy from strangers (much). I remember a lot of stuff that just…doesn’t exist after about 1981.

And I was just old enough during the 80s to finally take part in the culture. Like during the 70s I listened to the music my parents played, but once I was 12 or 13 I started getting my own records and watching my own movies that I liked. I started being able to create and participate in my cultural environment, and ever since certain things have had a very warm place in my heart.

I was a geeky, dirty, awkward kid. I didn’t have a lot of friends. Then I went to a punk rock show and people talked to me! Nobody really cared what I looked like, because I could write and draw and add and was smart. They made me tapes, took me in when stuff was rough at home, and showed me how to spike my hair. I found people that cared about the same stuff I cared about…I tried many ways of living. I experimented with my own life in ways I never would have thought were possible without their influences.

I tried everything.

I still do.

I wonder how it is for people younger than me- if the roles we cut out for ourselves then broke in that scene ever carried over? If they feel stuffed into boxes, if any of them escape how we did? In groups or alone? I see very few younger people that are really different from the majority … I see few leading the way to the future, really thinking about it. I like it a lot when I DO see it, though.

I hope I haven’t lost all my vanity, enthusiasm, all my drive to change the world. I’m doing it in different ways of course but I still have hope that it can be done…and that I think is what I miss in men my own age or older. I love extremism, idealism…I want more of that. No matter someone’s age.

This is really just more rambling. Glad you guys keep reading it all…I don’t know how you manage.

 

 

originally written in june, 2010

routines of creative people

20063091023341After devouring all the old posts at Daily Routines I decided that I should make record of my current daily work.

I suffer from insomnia, and have throughout my life. The hours in which I do these things slowly shift later and later, until the day begins at nightfall, This progresses until eventually, I once again wake up early in the morning. Right now I’m in the morning phase, in about three months I’ll be back around to the night time again. But the order in which I do everything stays the same, only the tattooing hours change, being sometimes early in my day and sometimes at the end of it. I do all but the tattooing every single day, I take no days off usually unless I am feeling under the weather in which case I shorten all my work hours and spend more time reading or watching movies. I do at least some little bit of creative work every day.

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Innawoods pictures, 8/13.

The end-of-summer trip.

car

car vape

bow

backwoods handicrafts. grass tiedown.

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My dog is a bit paranoid.

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also yes, I’m going to clip his toenails right NOW. yeesh, they grow like weeds.

insomnia.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/resonanteye/portfolio

When I was a kid, I stayed up all night and was exhausted every morning. I lay in bed, wide awake, waiting to sleep.

Now I don’t know for sure if it is a result of chemicals in my brain, anxiety from some trauma I have long forgotten, or just a natural state for me, but at night I am wide eyed and alert. I think clearly, I work better and harder, I thrive. When the sun comes up I begin to yawn, and I would, if I could, sleep always on a late-afternoon wake-up schedule.

I think there is some kind of name for this. I don’t know if it’s delayed sleep phases, or what. But, also, over time my sleep gets a tiny bit later, and later, and later. until I have come full circle and I wake up at 8 AM! I have tried every means to control this sleep mayhem and haven’t found a way yet.

Right now, I take ambien one night- lunesta the next- temazepam the next, then start over. I don’t want to get tolerant of my sleeping pills, I want them to keep working for me.

I guess the only reason I even try to make a day schedule or any normal one is that I like to be able to go to work and tattoo people! And I can’t wake up at 5pm and do much of that…

So I keep trying for a somewhat normal schedule. I’d love to go to sleep at three AM, wake up at noon. That’s nine whole hours. I usually get ten hours, but I could do with nine, right?

I mean, the hours I am awake I work, I do all the things anyone else would do in the daytime, in the morning.

If I could survive just selling non-tattoo artworks, I could stop fighting my sleep schedule, and maybe that would make a difference. But I don’t know for sure, I’ve never done that.

Well, here’s to all of you wide-eyed people under the stars. You’re not alone. If you have any advice, ideas, or experiences of your own with insomnia (especially lifelong insomnia) feel free to overload the comments below, I would love to hear about your sleep struggles.

It’ll be more fun than counting sheep, I promise.

totally self-indulgent photo post.

just some photos of me on my days off.

nothing to see here, move along, move along.




ah hell. have a gallery.

 

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my daily routine.

 

image

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I have two separate routines for work. it depends whether I am having a tattoo-studio day or a home-studio day.

if I’m working at the shop, I wake around ten or eleven and lay around like a slug until it’s time to rush to work. I arrive, drink coffee, plan out my hours. talk to clients. clean my inks off or monkey with a machine until  “real work” shows up. I leave right after the shop closes for the day. I usually don’t do any other art on these days; working on commission is draining (satisfying though!)

if I’m not going in to the shop, I wake up late, noon or one. I have coffee and laze around a little.then eat, and start looking over the mess I left the previous day. usually I will have something drying and ready to be worked over a little more. so I pick up where I left off. at some point I’ll reach a moment where everything is tacky. then I start something new…I work a little, stop and stare. smoke, have a sandwich and more coffee.

a lot of times I’ll just get in the car and go exploring, searching for objects or supplies, detritus. things that make me feel creative. it’s a lot of walking along the river or the side of the road.

I work until very late at night when I’m doing my own art. I’ll stay up until the birds are talking. sometimes I work all night and into the next day. coffee is my friend. this happens a lot more in the winter. I tend to have a very hard time waking up in the mornings, it’s always been that way.

of course I spend about two months each year  “on the road”; I can’t call it a vacation because I usually am tattooing just about that whole time- I don’t like not working anyway. but when I travel I have no routine at all, and when I return it takes me a while to get back in rhythm with my schedules and routines at home.

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