✱ it's been raining like crazy the past few days where i live. i set up a nice little table in my room to do work on with my window open. i'm watching the trees in my backyard sway in the wind while the sun shines brightly and warmly. i haven't been moving my body as much as i should these past couple of days, and i'm gonna make sure i make it up today. after i write this, i'm gonna go on a long walk to get my heart rate up.

also haven't been feeling too hot in general. i've been feeling really lazy and indulgent. i've been having fun and not working enough at all. writing this to try and refocus myself and also make a little reminder of what i'm working towards.

i struggle with maintaining consistency sometimes because one thing that knocks me off my horse can be enough to put me out of commission for a while. i just need to keep getting back up. one of the things that i feel has helped me is repitition and reminders.

i find that i perform best when i constantly repeat my goals. writing them over and over again, whether that be in my notebook or here on my online notebook. i am a forgetful person, and it can be so easy to get lost if i literally don't remember what i even want to do.

it also helps to remind myself of how far i've come and how i felt when i achieved certain things. i remind myself how far i've come in my hobbies, in my studies, how the me xyz amount of years ago would be so proud. if i keep sitting on my ass right now, there won't be anything for future me to be proud of!!! i need to try harder

• the frog... CV + APPLICATIONS + STUDYING
• art studies (proko, figures); i have a lot of "art block" but i think it's just my brain telling me to level the fuck up
• selling old stuff on poshmark + mercari to clear up space and give things to people that'll love them more
• making new stickers + reopening my etsy -> segways into ART markets
• studying ICU materials to prepare for the future

✱ my goal in life is to be comfortable and happy. my "happy" can be any combination of things, really, it all just depends on how things work out. i struggle a lot with thinking "i will be happy if i do xyz because that is what it means to be successful and successful = happy." i used to pressure myself a lot into thinking that i could only be happy if my career looked a certain way. like for example when i was younger i'd think things like "i'll only be happy in life if i work in the animation industry, pitch my own show, and am well known online" or "if i'm not doing art full time then i need to something prestigious like be a doctorlawyerastronautetcetc" 😭. which tbh idk how i used to think like that. my career is less important to me now in the sense that as long as it's something i have passion in AND it keeps me comfortable and lets me live my life, then i'm happy as hell

what the fuck is the point of having a job that impresses a lot of people if you're miserable every day of your life? happy and comfortable is my goal.

having the luxury of time to make art and spend time with my people and see new and amazing things is all that i want. the means it takes for me to achieve that level of comfort doesn't matter too much to me anymore. bonus points of i do like what i do in the end (which i do!)

i think my picture of "success" when it comes to my art is to make extra money on the side with it, whether that be through selling physical things and/or doing events. most of all, i just want to have a presence with my art. doesn't have to be a big one, i just want my name connected to my art. that's why i changed my username to 'earthtopaule' a while ago. i used to be really shy when it came to talking about my art, and i was hesitant to connect myself to it because idk i guess i was embarrassed or something. but now i've gotten way better at advocating for myself and putting myself out there. i think i could do a better job of it, but it's a start. i also think it would be cool to do an art show or something. not sure how i'd go about doing that just yet.. but it's something in my mind

✱ random things for future me to remember that i need to work on (aka, when i'm scrolling bc bored, these are all the things i could be spending my time on instead)

• zines (about what? i dunno... but i wanna make them)
• games (i've always had the dream to make a long, story-driven rpg and that would be my baby. i still wanna do that One day but i think now i really want to make a bunch of short rpgs / VNs. i think i'm getting game jam fomo, honestly)
• 3d modeling
• linocutting (i literally have a set from christmas... i need to use it before it builds up any more dust. the goal is to make prints and sell them online)
• music (i have sooo much to learn... :[)
• rosetta stone lol

it's scary for me to start new things but i mean yeah ofc it's gonna be. i will do it anyways 👍👍👍👍👍

✱ helloooo i got a bunch of stuff to talk about. first thing's first: though not officially but basically official— I GRADUATED. I'M DONE. all that's left for me to do is take the boards exam and start shelling out my resume

for my program (also i am being vague about said program and any specific commentary on purpose because who knows if this site will come up in a background check or something. in short: it's not a secret at all, and you can figure it out easily via context clues, but you know) we get a pinning ceremony that is separate from school-wide graduation. it was really nice to go there and just be with all my peers one last time. i have a few that i know i want to keep in contact with for life, but the rest of them i just appreciated a whole lot and am thankful to have seen a few times more before we went on our own ways (hopefully to see each other in the workforce or something down the line lol)

i got a lot of pictures with my friends plus a picture with my favorite teacher :') i'm really really happy. i feel so relieved now. just the boards exam now, and then i can finally put things into practice! i'm so thankful for everything and everyone. i met some amazing people and changed so much over the past few years

when i first started, i was extremely anxious and also unsure if i was in over my head. it's crazy looking back down the line and seeing how your mindset has changed. i feel the confidence, and i feel so much more capable, too. i'm excited to use my skills and meet so many people

i also don't consider myself a super emotional person, though i am very sentimental. i never really cry at certain events like graduations or awards ceremonies. i'm happy about it and all, but that's the farthest it'll go for me. the only time i teared up (which 🍌, who was in the crowd, later told me he ALSO teared up at lol) was when our faculty speaker was giving her speech. the specific part that really got me was:

"keep your hands clean, and keep them gentle.

these hands are precious.

they will touch many lives.

they will heal the sick and soothe the anxious.

some will even will hold newborn babies,

and some will close the eyes of the elderly for the last time as they leave this earth."

LIKE I'M TEARING UP NOW JUST REMEMBERING IT. i don't know what else to say about it. i'm just so happy. it's not going to be easy (and it's not fucking supposed to be! this is serious!), and i'm thankful for it. i'm so thankful for everything. people can say what they want about it— the pay isn't worth the job, it's traumatizing, "i could never do that"— but it's just a sign that healthcare isn't for everyone. that shit will never ever EVER deter me.

like what you like. do what you do. and LIKE what you do. but no need to shit on other people. there were a lot of people that teased me for it or tried to deter me from this for a variety of reasons, both people i knew personally and those that knew nothing about me other than my major and my last name.

meanwhile, it was my life and not theirs.

if you like computers, go do computers! if you like business, go do business! if you like art, go do art! if it's YOUR money, then go throw it in the pot you wish to throw it in.

but ohhhh my god. stay out of my shit. PLEASE. we all got our own lives. go live your own! (obviously not targeted towards anyone who may be reading this because i know this sounds so mean-spirited. i'm just venting my frustrations at all the people who tried to give me unsolicited advice because they thought i was making a mistake. for. whatever reason)

i will never forget the amount of people that told me i should go and do art instead because i "wouldn't be able to handle this line of work" or "i just think you should be in art school!" i love art. i will always love art, and i will never give it up, even when i start working with my degree. but i love this, too. and that's why i chose to do it!!!!!! LIKE OH MY GODDDDDDD. i want my art to be a hobby. that's not the same for everyone, and i salute them. we need more full-time artists in the world. i'm not one of them, but that's exactly how i want it to be!

though i know most of them had my best interest at heart by encouraging me to "follow my dreams," it's annoying to have your "dreams" determined for you by other people because of what THEY think your dream is.

i think we should all mind our business more, honestly.

anyways, one last time to end on a happy note:

this last rotation made everything i've learned start to fall into place. i did the most hands-on learning i've ever done compared to the past two years, and i think i genuinely won the lottery with my preceptor. i really do think i'm sooo close to being ready to take on my own responsibility.

I'M. SO. HAPPY.

✱ after graduating i went out with 🍌 and walked all throughout chinatown. we had some amazing food, and i got a badtz-maru throw pillow and some delicious tea. I FUCKING LOVE MOLLY TEAAAAAAAAA. i had their matcha white salted cheese champaca. it was really good. next time i'll get their pistachio white champaca coconut.

it was a really hot, sunny day. i was sweating bullets, but i'm really thankful that i finally had the chance to just walk and walk and explore everything without feeling rushed.

✱ asking and receiving and the importance of it

one thing i had to really hammer into my head was the fact that i had to stop answering my own questions if i really didn't know the answer. more specifically for questions that were literally impossible for me to answer on my own.

eg. "are you willing to do this for me?" "can i have this job?"

i used to be afraid to ask things if i thought there was any chance the person would say no or that i would look stupid in asking it. i've since gotten over this by just exposing myself to rejection and doing it anyways. the surprising thing is, when i ask these "silly" or impossible questions, i've been told yes 99% of the time. it's crazy what things people will let you do if you dare to just ask (i've been missing out)

nowadays, i ask my questions anyways, even if i 100% WILL look stupid. i'd rather know than not know. i don't care anymore. think i'm stupid if you want, but i WILL know the answer.

even if you think someone is gonna say no, let them SAY IT. out loud. with their own mouth and their own voice. the amount of opportunities i've missed because i assumed an answer to a question i never even dared to ask kills me. i'm not doing that anymore.

✱ random thing i've always hated: when people pretend they're fine or that they don't care about the situation they're in because they think it will save the other person's feelings.

for an example: you're out with someone at the thrift store and haven't had any water all day. you want to ask to stop for a drink, but the other person is having a wonderful time looking thorugh every single rack. you keep it in, barely having the energy to talk or look through racks yourself. you are no longer having fun, but you don't want to tell them you're having an issue because you wanna be "nice." < this is what i'm talking about

to be fair, i understand that sometimes a little white lie is fine to keep the peace in certain situations. but i reallyyy hate when people do this over the littlest of things. especially if it's someone i care about a lot.

i've had people pretend they're not exhausted, scared, or on the verge of passing out from dehydration / starvation because they didn't want to "inconvenience me" and wanted to "push through" instead of just... telling me.

i think there's a big issue of people mistaking

the constant desire to sacrifice yourself at the detriment of your own health; a lack of self respect/self advocacy = being an amazing person

it frustrates me to my core. tell me when you're terrified. tell me when you're about to collapse from exhaustion. tell me you're hungry. tell me you're thirsty. tell me you're cold. TELL ME YOU WANT A BLANKET. TELL ME YOU WANT TO ME TO TURN THE MUSIC DOWN. don't just allow yourself to get worse and worse, whether that be from a headache, lack of sleep, or feeling like you're going to die.

whenever people told me about this, it was after the fact, too. like after going on a long ass adventure, people would say "omg i feel so much better now that i have water. i felt like i was gonna die." MAN WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME. THERE ARE 8520492343450 BOBA SHOPS AND CAFES AROUND US. and then i feel like shit because i realize they weren't having fun and/or were making themselves uncomfortable to make ME happy, yet i couldn't be more upset.

pleaseee stand up for yourself. you're a person too. i hope to god people can stop doing this around me

✱ sharing:

sorry stacy - digital alice

 THIS VIDEO IS SO COOL MAN. the animation + the song. wowww. i want to be able to make something like this. blender and fl studio i am Coming. just wait for me...

ribo.zone's game page

 i still have yet to go through all of these, but it's really inspirational. i've always wanted to make games, so i'm very invested in looking at other people's work. i think i'm gonna try and make a bitsy game!!! (just to get my feet wet. maybe then i'll finally launch aseprite and rpgmaker...)

oh and i have nothing to say about it yet, but i started playing space funeral! ("playing" is code for i'm watching someone on youtube play it)

✱ slowly trying to add more to this site... i finally went back and made the [sitemap] page. i'm really happy with the layout. blue and green is my favorite color combo, right next to pink and green.

✱ i wanted to talk about art again. i said this in my other post, but i have barely been drawing anything. still DESPERATELY need to update my art page that has not been touched in. 2 years. discord taking away hotlinking really messed me up (and that was on me). i think that's next on my list. file.garden is gonna save my life, i think

admittedly i spend more time (at least in recent times) just TALKING about art and how much i wanna draw more than i actually partake in the physical act of drawing. i'm giving myself a pass for this because of college. which, as i said before, i'm finally about to be done with. it's almost time for my art renaisssance

something i think about a lot, though, is how common the "i'm not getting any better at art and nothing is turning out how i want it to i hate art so much it pisses me off i hate drawing die die die i never want to draw ever again i hate everything" meme is in the art community.

and i guess when i say "art community" i'm talking about art twitter circles or something. and i guess any social media sphere where artists gather, but i'm mostly aiming this at twitter, since that's where i see the most discussions about it. and sometimes by "discussions" i mean people making tweet #8540948353405 about how much they hate being an artist and art and how miserable it is so be an artist. like ok man

i know not everyone is super serious all the time, and most of the time it is meant to be a joke (?), but idk i think i get tired of seeing that over and over again.the self pity and learned helplessness.

like i understand, yes art is hard. BECAUSE IT IS! it is a skill that needs to be built up over time. and it will get to a point where there's a plateau, and ya gotta study way harder. pick up the references and the anatomy books, do gestures, study art and get to the bottom of WHY you like it specifically, etc. and it's not always fun. of course you don't HAVE to do that, but if there's something in your art that's lacking and you WANT to improve it, that's the way to go. like i really don't want to sound like i'm saying this to be mean, because really all i'm trying to say is that i wish people were more willing to go through the feeling of 'this looks horrible. and i'm gonna keep drawing anyways. because that's how i get better!' instead of giving up right away or wallowing in despair that will not fix the issue

i completely understand that there are people out there that do this completely for fun and only hold the passive desire to improve but for the most part are just like "yeah that'd be cool if i could draw like [really good artist here] but also i'm chilling", AKA hobbyists! and it is my personal opinion that those people need to be left completely alone (unless they otherwise ask for criticism).

the only time i'm like... dude... is when people constantly complain all the time (usually in a very obnoxious, repetitive, and public manner), and then proceed to do nothing about it and/or completely dodge any actual advice to rectify it. which i wanna make clear is the population of people i'm talking about.

there is nothing wrong with disliking your own work and being frustrated with it. every artist is at one point or another. but DAMN there is no need to constantly and publically flog yourself on social media while not. idk. doing the very things that could fix your issue (studies... practicing...)

it sometimes gets to a point where it's like "dude. do you even want to improve???" because within the time it takes some of these people to make 500+ tweets about how much they hate their art for reasons x, y, and z, they could've picked up the pencil and studied a reference, an informational video, an art book, or even just sketched something out and practiced. just ANYTHING to address the root issue

i'm not happy with my confidence when it comes to anatomy. specifically legs. i also think my art looks very stiff at times, and my internal, mental library that i keep in my cranium for poses is very lacking (because i do not reference or study nearly enough nowadays). i said 'this looks like shit' a few times to my practice drawings, googled some art books pertaining to those specific subjects, watched a few youtube tutorials that i liked, and moved on. like that's literally the key instead of going to twitter or instagram or whatever and talking about how ass my art is, how badly i wanna quit, and then posting a comic with the same formatting of

artist: i wanna draw

artist: [draws]

artist: [finishes drawing and picks it up to look at it]

[close up shot of the art. it is implied that it looks like shit]

artist: wow this fucking sucks i hate everything and art sucks i will never do this again why do i even try again [proceeds to not draw]

[ending shot of art piece on fire while artist walks off into the background]

1 GYUBILLION LIKES AND RETWEETS

random dude: THIS IS SO RELATABLE. FUCK ART I'D RATHER KILL MYSELF

and then proceeding to not draw for weeks and then repeating the process tenfold because well. what else is to be expected from a lack of practice and studying. i don't practice as much as i should or as much as i want to for a factor of reasons, so i've remained unhappy with how my stuff looks, but i always remind myself that beating myself up or comparing myself to other people is dumb as hell. and the last thing i'm gonna do is publically complain about it when i know i didn't do enough of the necessary work to try and make it better. also, two people's paths aren't comparable when there's so many factors that go into it.

when did they start drawing? how often do they practice? what other responsibilities do they have to juggle alongside their creative works? what access to resources do they have? etc. etc. people stopping themselves from working on their craft because 'oh well [random person] is better than me, and i hate how my art looks anyways so i'm just gonna give up and then complain about how i'm not getting better' is silly. like noooo we need to make things. it's so fun and amazing please why do people think this way

i guess it just frustrates me so much because it just feels like at this point people wanna complain just to complain with the way they completely dismiss any advice or actual plan to address the issue they're having. like art is hard yes but it's also so fun and creating is amazing and connects people. finding something you're unhappy with, working through it by practicing, and then feeling the understanding come to you and then SEEING it on paper too is so so satisfying and i wish more people were willing to go through that instead of feeling helpless and running to tweet about said helplessness for the millionth time

also this does not apply to people struggling with depression-fuelled art ruts that prevent them from drawing i'm not talking about that. i just mean people that are perfectly capable of drawing, proceed not to draw, and then complain and complain about how they aren't improving the way they want. meanwhile they are putting 0 energy into improving. i think i'm just tired of seeing so much negativity surrounding art because this shit is supposed to be fun

✱ i started watching atla with my friend the other day. i have never finished it to this day, and i only know things about it in bits and pieces from whenever i'd catch it on nickelodeon. the movie releasing made us want to finish it (he hasn't finished it either. he actually never got past episode 4)

i love it so much i wish i'd watched this more when i was a kid. i wish they still made more shows like this

my bouts of nonstop drawing are usually due to me getting really obsessed with a show or game, so hopefully i can get really obsessed with atla and launch me into a huge spell of motivation to draw stuff

✱ hello! got rid of my old blog and starting anew. KUCHIPATCHI THEME, NOW!!!!!

i'm about to graduate!!! life has been really good but tiring. 2025 was a really good year for me, and the first almost-half of 2026 has been amazing too. a lot of people close to me are graduating at the same time too :') i feel so lucky to be done and be able to celebrate with everyone

i haven't been able to do a lot of the things i've been wanting to do (drawing, writing, learning new skills, etc.) because i overestimated just how much i could multitask with school and how much i could withstand without getting tired out 🥀 but i'm so insanely excited to be able to just WORK without having to worry about assignments following me home

i met a lot of wonderful people in 2025 and grew a lot. i'm really happy and thankful for everything i have. i seriously can't believe i'm almost done

✱ i've been playing tomodachi life a lot recently. i wish it had more quirks and more opportunities for drama / hatred to stew between miis, but i really love the game regardless

i have hundreds of screenshots at this point

i'm having a blast. currently working on my little telenovela between the powerpuff girls and rowdyruff boys right now