(originally written on 15 August 2025)

In my pursuit to stop feeling like all I do is work & consume things, as I've come to the conclusion that my favorite hobby (coding) was taken away from me (by my own actions and guilibility - "TuRn YoUr PaSsIoN iNtO a JoB" - the trap of my generation), instinctively, I ended up trying out various artistic activities, drawing being one of them.

What is fascinating about drawing is the fact that it is a largely mental activity. We all have the physical ability to draw (if you can write, you possess all the motor skills to draw). As such, drawing is largely a mental skill. You need to be able to see things in the real world, mentally process them (proportions, sizes, relationships to one another), add your own touches (abstractions, style), infuse meaning, and you know... actually translate all this to the real world piece of paper that's sitting in front of you.

Ever since I've started drawing, and more specifically, learning how to see, it's as though a whole new world of sensing has opened in front of me. I find myself staring in awe at the beautiful compositions that I notice in the world around me, both products of chance or manmade design. A mere coffee shop display arrangement, the sky's evening gradient draped across jagged brutalist landscapes. I can't draw that well yet, but I can see their beauty. I try to take a photo of them, maybe there's some way I can preserve them until my skill catches up, yet they never look the same. The magic is lost.

One such scene, however, I didn't even try to photograph, because even in the midst of it was sure it would be incapturable.

In the backseat of a car, on the way home from the contest that has a 2/2 rate of getting my friends into the hospital, but also the only place where I've seen the Milky Way. It was dark, at night, and on the far right side you could see the silhouette of the medieval fortress city we were going to stop in. The car was dark, and the sky alight with the stars of the Perseides. And in the front seats, my ex and his new girlfriend gently singing, their voices harmonising. And I don't know if the yearning in my soul is over the man in front of me or what he represents - warmth, gentleness, connection. Wishing that things had gone differently, but not in any realistic sense, just wishful thinking. Making peace with the fact that there are really things that are wrong with you, ways to act that could have lead to different results. Being surprised by feelings that I thought were dead five years ago.

But then again, I think they really were. I think it is the part of me realising that I really don't like my current life. The damn contest, which is very fast paced, even as a judge you don't have much time, not even to sleep well, and the previous 2 weeks at work that went horribly, were what tipped the scales. Seeing these two being warm, while my home was so deprived of affection and closeness, on top of everything else, and it's no wonder I broke down crying in my hotel room while I was trying to sleep.

But the scene, the composition, it was beautiful. I tried to capture it with my mind's eye, but I'm sure that no matter how advanced I will become at drawing, putting it on paper, it'll lose its magic. Unless I somehow figure out how to draw sound. And the realisations I got from this whirlwind of a start to August, invaluable. Hopefully, I've found the bottom of the ladder that will lead me to a life of my own design.

reply to this post by mail, if you'd like 🕊️ ~ivy