Introduction

Allow me to explain why this blog started.

It began when I read this book:


It's a book compiling blog posts and other stories from Allie Brosh. Her blog is hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com. Her blog posts are long posts about very random things that happen to her, and is complete with purposefully artistically crude drawings. She has absolutely no qualifications for being a professional blogger, and no artistic credentials either.

I had a blog before this one, at rainydaysat340.blogspot.com. It was not exactly my best work. When I started that blog, I posted 4 posts at once because I had already written them. When I wrote my posts, I had a length requirement for myself, because short posts looked aesthetically horrifying to me. At that point I already considered myself a good writer, and 2 paragraph posts didn't live up to my expectations. And that was where everything went wrong.

I started to post less, which at first wasn't that much of a big deal. I looked at that stats page on my blogger dashboard, and my page views were going through the roof very fast.


But then it started to go wrong. There began to be pressure from the outside to post more often. This led to me staring blankly at the computer screen with nothing to write about, churning out some crappy story about candy canes, and posting it with a palpable sense of defeat. Because in posting those horrible posts, I failed myself and the standards I had set. The quality of my posts went wayyyyy down, and then I basically abandoned the blog. I couldn't take it anymore.


And then, I found Brosh.

Over an 18-month period she published exactly two posts. Count them, two. They were long posts, granted, but still. The fact that she has very low quality in her art, and no experience in blogging, were probably the most inspirational things about her and her blog to me. It helped me realize that I don't need to do the impossible just to get over 1200 page views all-time. (which is good, because the impossible tends to be very hard to do.)

It reminds me, actually, of a familiar situation at an art museum. There is an artist named David Hockney, who had a lot of art on display in this museum. But the thing is, some of it was paintings and drawings...on iPhones and iPads.

I've always wanted to be a good artist. Who hasn't? You grab a piece of paper and a pencil and say "I'm going to make incredible art today. It's going to be super awesome and cool and I'm going to do it before lunch." And then...well, you know what happens. You give up. David Hockney didn't give up. I know this because the iPhone and iPad drawings at the museum were animations of him drawing. You could almost hear what was going through his head while he was drawing this picture of flowers in a vase:

No no no, these petals are too big...eh, I'll just draw over it. No, that made it worse. Whatever, just go with it.

That's the difference, I think. When we (and when I say we, I'm referring to those of us that try to make great art in an afternoon and fail spectacularly) sit down and attempt something, it needs. To. Be. Perfect. When David Hockney sits down to draw something on his iPhone, he actually has lower standards than we do. He just keeps trying because he knows that it doesn't need to be perfect.

I don't know. It's entirely possible that David Hockney is actually a huge perfectionist and just has a massive amount of talent and purposefully makes his iPhone drawings slightly unrealistic, If anyone knows that that's true, don't ruin it for me. For now, I'm content to remain optimistic that someday, I could be Brosh or Hockney.

And that's good enough for me.

To finish the story: I started this blog. I didn't create any art actually, I just threw that in there because I think it helped me get my point across.

I already have many ideas for other posts, because I'm a creative person. But I'm going to hold off on those for obvious reasons. But rest assured, I will be back. This is not going to become RDA340, I can promise you that.

Thanks for reading!