Update #91 A red dawn

Sunny salutations to you!

Started my day with a little walk in the sunshine today, was pretty nice. Fresh air and all that. Since I've checked that off the list, I can now avoid leaving the house for the foreseeable future.

Scene 4 took some time, as is the norm when it comes to spicy scenes, but it's finished. I didn't really go with either of the two alternatives I mentioned last update, but rather something sort of in-between, I guess? Not high or low effort, but mediocre effort. Yeah, let's go with that.

Fire, demon, and shadow. The three main ingredients of a good render.

In contrast to scene 4, scene 5 was real short and simple, so I finished that as well. Neat! Scene 6 and 7 are quite short as well, so maybe I'll get both done next week. Maybe. Big maybe. A man can dream.

It's been a solid and productive week all in all, and I think that's at least in part to not trying quite as hard every day. See, I've been going to a therapist since the start of the year or so. For the first time in my life, instead of hearing that I simply don't try hard enough, I got to hear that instead, I try too hard and have way too high expectations of myself. And pushing oneself too hard everyday simply leads to there eventually being nothing left to push, it's all been worn down.

I did not just leave Hot Topic. I... Uh...

It reminded me of a quote I quite like by Hemingway (who I've actually never read), it goes like this: "I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it."

It's pretty fun to contrast that with Jack London's: "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club."

They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but that doesn't stop my amusement from putting them side by side. Have I mentioned those two quotes before? I might have, in which case you'll have to forgive me.

The point is that, by not giving 100% everyday, but actually stopping work while I still have mental energy left, it's been much easier for me to start working the next day. And the next day, and the next day. So while my maximum production in a day has gone down, my minimum has gone up by a lot, and as a result the weekly total is higher.

Mm, yes. Flames. How quaint. 

We'll see if this new-found technique keeps working or not. Well, it isn't exactly new-found, I did something similar a while ago, but I kind of forgot about it. It also feels new because I think of it more consciously now.

For all I know, I might've just regained energy by the simple fact that there's actual sunlight again. Probably a bit of both, to be honest. Yeah, that's the more likely explanation.

Anyway, that's all the shiny words I had to share today.

Thank you so much for your support, and I wish you plenty of sun in the coming week!