2026.02

https://ddrkirbyisq.bandcamp.com/album/monthlies-202602 

After more and more experience, my artworks are becoming a little more polished, a little more proficient. Maybe the same is true with myself as a person, too. Things that used to worry me, don't seem to be as big of a deal now.

Once you've done something over and over again, you start to feel much less intimidated by it. I was having a conversation with some friends recently about how my regular approach to writing music (once a week), and to some extent, artwork (once a month), has helped me come to grips with the natural peaks and valleys of creative output without letting them affect my sense of self-confidence.

The same is surely true of other things in life, too. Starting conversations with strangers. Expressing gratitude. Trying to be a little bit more friendly, encouraging, a little less stuck-up, self-centered.

The scary thing is that repetition can also desensitize you to things -- or worse. We become accustomed to having certain conveniences, we forget how to live without certain tools. We accept that things just are the way they are. Sure, there are many things that become easier with time, but if you keep on having negative experiences, it becomes that much easier to give up.

As the years go by, that sense of "fatigue" surfaces for me just a little bit more often. There's this little voice in the back of my head that says "it's pointless, I should just give up..."

As someone who tends to be risk averse and focuses on pragmatism, it's usually important to me to craft my dreams and ambitions out of what I know is reasonably within my grasp. But there are still vestiges of a yearning for something more, remnant feelings lingering like hope inside Pandora's box. They are few and far between, but it is always terrifying to look inside and see that one has faded and disappeared.