I decided to write this text because, let's be straight, I'm getting bored at the fact that I struggle to keep things simple, compact and short, and I never seem to finish anything (read: blog texts). I will now list some things I am or have and which affect my blogging.
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| The cat is from Kave, then croc, penguin and laptop came from Lahjakas, the easel was also bought, and I don't know the history of that flowerpot which serves as a seat. The rest is made by me. |
I am a perfectionist. Posting a blogtext takes forever, because I don't want to publish them before they're the quality I want.
I am autistic. I got the Asperger's syndrome diagnosed when I was 13, I guess it was 2008. I think that due to my autism I have a habit to think everything the complex and more logical and scientific way that people who don't have this. I analyze, I ponder, I draw images and maps in my head, I think how this and this correlates with that and why and how and what started it. And more often than not it goes out of hand.
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| I've made this kind of bridles into functioning 1:9 scale miniatures. I call them fightmore. |
I have ADD. It basically means that I struggle to focus on boring things - like applying millions of layers of one color so that the transparent becomes a new color layer. Of course there's also much more than that. But patience, while normally can be achieved by stubbornness, just doesn't come that way for an ADD person. It's like AD/HD but without the... H.
I am depressed. I think it was diagnosed a couple years ago, or before the pandemic went crazy globally. There have been easier and worse phases, and this disorder is one of the biggest explanations to my current struggle to make art. It's annoying, but I can't do much for it. Do you know what it feels like, when you read about mental issues for ages, and then randomly find out that you do suffer from them as well? It's an absurd experience, but ah so useful what comes to accuracy in pessimistic storywriting.
I have zero patience (depending on thing). Check the ADD paragraph. But this is exactly why I haven't been that much into hair-by-hair coloring on model horses, haven't done much dapples ever and overall don't care that much about really complex colors. I also don't add as much detail to anything as I wish I could. It just isn't possible.
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| Drawing on paper is a different story then. I can hone and detail a doodle for hours and not lose my interest towards working on it. |
I can make simple things sound overly complex. Check my animal doll tutorial. Or snaffle bit tutorial. None of those are complex, but I make them sounds like that. Apologies, but that's very unlikely to change ever.
I overthink and overanalyze, count "what if"s. This is why I struggle with opinion texts and rants. I love the idea of those, and writing them, but I haven't actually published that much of them. Should I? How many readers are going to throw their computers (or smartphones - hooray!) into a wall if I let them read my harsh and blunt opinion texts? (Didn't you just read my secret opinion about smartphones...?) I want to figure this thing out especially, because I and Kave want to post them more than anything. We want to bring up conversation topics, and sugar-coating is not an option.
I don't double check, I double-double-double-triple check. This means that I'm going to through-read a text at least twice before I publish it. It's not that fun really, and I struggle to through-read with thought, except when I should focus on everything else.
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| You didn't expect this photo. Haha! |
I have zero idea what I am doing, more than I just have an idea about what it can be about. This applies to everything. I also believe it is why I have no idea if I've written enough; when to say the text is finished and ready for publishing. How do you everyone else know that?
I hate the fact that I can't lay interest on more than a few narrow topics at once, on one phase. A phase means a time which I can't tell the length of. When an autistic person has a special interest, it often dominates their attention and life for a certain phase, which can last from hours to decades. My oldest passion have been dinosaurs - I've hobbied them my entire life. And my passion to horses started when I was about seven, then it lasted to 2011 or so and eventually modified into the less crazy level (doesn't mean I could not be a horse crazy still...). Examples of short or occasionally repeating interest phases could be this and that animal group (like once pinnipeds - for a few hours) or something else biology-related.
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| The childhood me could have freaked our due to excitement if saw this - or learned that they can have dinos like this once they grow up. |
Speaking of passions and special interests, one of mine are rats. This isn't a surprise to everyone, I guess? Unless you're a first time reader? I've been crazy about rats since 2007 when we got real ones, and that also is why and when I started drawing them (and got really serious about that in 2011). And because I'm a model horse dork, I also naturally became a model rat dork. I think we're a rare breed.
Long story short, I struggled to find a nice way to make tiny rats until 2014, when I learned what silk clay and foam clay are, and figured out a logical simplified sculpting technique. Making my own rats has been a big thing to me personally, because I'm really picky about realism, and rat models aren't very common - let alone accurately sculpted ones. After figuring out how to make thumb rats I was able to gain a massive rat collection. Only a minority of my rats are factory made or sculpted by someone else.
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| Most of these are by myself, but seven thumbies (behind the rainbow ones) and the tiny dragon are by Kave. And that black rat on top of the taller container is by an IRL friend. |
Lately I've also been really much into genetics, especially color genetics. I've been inventing totally unreal colors and their genetics for my fictional rats (not only clay rats, but also characters). This got kicked even further when I recently started to do teamwork with my Swedish hobby friend Decors, who I probably brainwashed into making clay rats. (Ooops.) I love pondering these and playing with ideas and writing standards.
But, suddenly I had a problem in my hands: I had way too many colors to identify, name and describe, yet I should figure out how they are related to each other, how one can breed them, what kind of modifiers exist and all that. And more. I like complex things and science, but this sudden flood of new things to think and write is just too much. It's overwhelming me. Yet I struggle to read certain genetics terms, while I can understand the colors and map their tracks in my mind just fine. I can't explain this in any way, it's so abstract but also so logical to me personally. I understand recessive, dominant, heterozygous and homozygous. But I can't get what a locus is. I also don't remember much about epigenesis, what I read about years ago...
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| Don, a rex coated reddish brown "halves-l" buck. |
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| Ulla, a red flame doe. |
Horse colors are more or less easy to understand, I think. At least most basics and dilutions, since I've read about them for so long already. Actually, I'm using some horse color genetics as a base to correctly model some of these entirely fictional rat color genetics I am cooking up here.
I really don't know why my brain can't grasp some things, no matter how much I try. I'm a visual person, so maybe that has something to do with how I learn genetics as well. (When I think how the cream gene in horses does work, I always combine and repeat visual images of the actual colors in my mind, instead of trying to write it. And when I read about these things, I visualize them in my mind meanwhile.)
So, have I now written enough? How should I determine that?
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| I know I'm not the only one who plays with their own works before sending it away... And don't worry, I made a braided rope to match the halter after taking this photo. |
I'm terrible at writing end words for a blogtext. Argh.
