I work FIVE jobs :/
Work has been catching up to me as I took on a new social media client early in the week. Whenever something new gets thrown into my routine it always takes a few days to adjust to the new workflow around my apartment.
I would say I work from home but a lot of my job involves a lot of leg work either photographing things or events to researching whats going on in the community. It’s my job to make sense of all of that information and make it as simple and attractive for readers to understand. I used to work at a small independent Newspaper and I still freelance stories for magazines and this job is a way I can use that skill set and make it work for me.
On top of the social media job, I work a full-time job retail/service job at an Apple Store as well as making time to do my photography and my art. Squish in video games someplace in there & that’s what a 24 hour day is for me with moments of sleep and showering someplace. Finding ways to manage my time and staying afloat is the only way I can juggle my jobs, not too many people can live this way but hopefully soon I wont have to work all of them just to pay off my bills.
Fathers Day
My dad showed up at my place with a plastic bag full of three LP albums, All Swan Lake. The album I was showing him on iTunes last weekend (the conductor he hated) was in there. He included the two other albums as they were his personal choice for me so I could hear the difference between different orchestras and conductors. As soon as I saw the black swan LP I knew that was my father’s choice as I have very strong memories as a child of him playing this record and then purchasing it on CD.
iTunes has nothing on the books that used to come in boxed LP’s like these. These were printed with full history on the composer, detailed information about the ballet studio it was arranged for, and tidbits on the composer highlighting a few of his career goals.
I love music and I try to get an appreciation for whats out there. Over the weeks you’ll start to see more of the records I have and the strange stories behind each one as a lot of my records were acquired through trades or as gifts.
Adventure Time!
Greg came over and we decided to go for a tiny hike behind the Mill Pond in my town to get all outdoors without the commitment of a full hike. The Mill Pond is stumbling distance from my house and it’s one of the best benefits of living where I do as I can take 5 steps into it and it’s as if the entire world just screwed off.
You see that video there? That is what it sounds like when you take the secret paths behind the waterfall. That crazy lump of sticks there is a small yet sturdy Beaver dam. I was slightly suspicious about what was going on at the pond as one tree that had a major damage a few years back when we had that terrible ice storm (Dec 2013). instead of lopping it off, the branch just hanged there for years from the tree over the water. This day we went back the whole tree was taken down & lying in the water as if it had fallen over.
I didn’t know what I was looking at first glance. It’s been YEARS since beavers have been in Milton. I don’t like talking too much about it either because last time we had beavers I was five and someone blew up the damn. Yeah people are miserable like that because beavers can screw up the landscape of an area crazy fast if they get out of control. Everyone wants to believe that our landscape is dying around here yet I have seen more recovery now than I can remember as a kid. The water back here used to be orange in some of the stagnant areas from dumped chemicals.
I’ve loved this place since I was a small child and it’s one of my most loved places to paint. Always take the time to meet up with friends and share in the experience of most treasured places.
Collecting
The problem with acquiring new games or collectibles is where am I going to put it all. I recently bought a new shelf to caddy the main media shelf where I keep most of my systems to stream.
I’ve been collecting since I was a kid because hitting up the garage sales was my idea of a saturday morning well spent. However I got more serious with my collecting when I started to make steady money for myself. I remember the first game n’ swap that was in my town was a Microplay though I had a hard time trading in my stuff because I had a strong attachment for my games and systems. Many of my friends sold off their collections when they left the house but I was lucky that my mom and dad let me keep all of my collections in their house when I was off on crazy adventures.
Since my parents sold the house in 2014 anything that is mine needs to stay in my place. It’s just me and my pets so I try to keep things simple and cosy like a little clubhouse fort. For a year I had my entire apartment set up as a photo studio where I would have clients stop in and get their photos done. I kind of wanted my space back so I took apart my working photo studio and put more bookshelves out so I could display my belongings better. I’m trying to move closer to having everything visible so if I need it I can simply grab it.
Dank Tank
I like me some arcade games when I go looking on stuff to sketch on Twitch. My material of choice these days are the 4×4″ Artist Tile Set because of its availability on Amazon. The paper also comes with accessories such as frames and photo albums to display the work which will be a great option for me once I launch my Esty shop.
I’ve been silently watching Murphagator since the fall of last year though I have seen his name pop up a few times I think that’s why I started following him as someone told me if I was into arcade games. Chat rooms with lots of views sometimes intimidates me (reason one for why I like drawing.) Today Murph was playing this SNES port of the arcade The Combatribes and when he was explaining what was going on with the back story of this game, someone posted a link to a cartoon ad for it in the chat.
The really fun thing now is hearing the person streaming actually laughing or having an idea of what I am doing when I show up in the chat. If I share with them or choose not to this is what I do when I watch anything. I could be watching a movie or the news, I’ll sit there and scratch out a quick reaction image from whats there in front of me. It’s also a great way to get a few hours of sketching and practice in.
Lord BBH is a decent enough streamer to upload his stuff to YouTube so there’ll be a more permanent way to archive his streams. He had his 30th episode of MAME Roulette viewers choice extravaganza #3 where we all got to throw arcade game suggestions at him & he would randomly choose from that list. It was an 8 hour stream and I was tossed out by 1am and never finished my final dank Art of the evening (though I will come back to it). As I mentioned earlier I had taken on a new client this week so I was already tired when I got home. I ran out of my 4×4″ artist tiles so I had to start using my sketchbook which is only great for pencil sketching. New tiles will arrive by thursday at the latest.
If you are up for it, here is the entire 8 hour episode
On a cool highlight for BBH, he actually beat The General in Kaiser Knuckle who I thought was next to impossible. He made a quickie video here to show off that crazy moment
I’ve been making dank art for Macaw45‘s streams since as far back as last spring 2015 before I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do with dank art. He plays some of the more interesting titles as well as old Japanese computer games and DOS/Amiga crud that I grew up with as a child. He’s been playing every single fighting game that’s out there though keeps going back to Final Fury 3 or Art of Fighting 2. Some of these fighting games I’ve never heard of though its interesting in the differences in each one and why one game is better over another game.
