2 Years Later...

My most recent Polyvore design

2 Years ago today I started this blog, beginning with images (coincidentally, images that I started using when I first opened my Polyvore account, at around the same time) from my GCSE Art and Design course. It started as a blog about art, concerning the creation of different types of artwork that I'd learnt about, but now my blog is much more about myself, somehow, and how this increasingly is shown through my art.

So basically, where as the the art did all the talking previously, now I do the talking, and the art is simply a more visual explanation for my thoughts.

I'd like to think that I've learnt a lot, since that 16 year old, bored after GCSEs (although admittedly I am very bored after leaving school, and genuinely cannot wait to get my results, go to university and start learning again, but that's just me I think) who had little direction in life other than some mediocre artwork and a random blog. Not that the art has really improved dramatically, although it has evolved somewhat (I primarily use Polyvore rather than GIMP to make images, and rather than photo manipulation I tend to use internet images and "arrange" them into bigger pieces rather than create the components themselves from scratch if you know what I mean).

This post is a pretty big milestone then, certainly, I know there are much older blogs around, but as far as Blogspot is concerned, the average lifespan of a blog seems to be under 2 years, so I think it's an achievement that I have continued to update this, if only for its consistency rather than for any extraordinary content, after all I'm not trying to change the world, I just want some way to record the things that I do and that I find interesting, I'm not fussed about having 100s of followers, although of course I like the idea that at least someone is reading what I write.

At this point I'd like to thank my actual followers (currently at around 15 I think?) for putting up with this nonsense, in the hope that they find something (if only occasionally) worth reading on here. As a side note, I have had over 3,900 views on this blog, which is far more than if I had decided to never publish it!

So here we are, I'm not world famous, I'm not a celebrated blogger or by any means a talented artist, I'm not a budding author or even an exceptional writer, but I am I believe, much closer than I was 2 years ago to finding myself, though if there's one thing I can be accused of, it's forgetting the past in favour of obsessing over the future, as opposed to say, living in the moment. (Ironic for a potential History student, right?)

For example, I tend to forget or overlook the things I've already achieved, the work I've done, however small, and instead I worry about what the future holds, where will my life go next etc. (to be fair, until I get my A2 results I don't even know where I'm going to be living in 2 months!) This however, is no way to live, there needs to be more of a balance I think, between positive reflection and active (but not anxious) anticipation of the future. That can be my target for the next year, until this blog's next milestone ;)

Maroon 5's song Payphone actually sums up the above scenario pretty well;

"You turned your back on tomorrow
Cause you forgot yesterday..."

The only way to the future is to remind ourselves of the best parts of the past -

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"

- George Orwell, 1984

Who would have thought Maroon 5 and George Orwell would ever have belonged in the same sentence? Only on this blog!

A tree, a real life representation of Carl Jung's tree of self actualization....just kidding -

(A photograph I took on a shady walkway in Calpe, Alicante, if this picture is rotated it makes a really nice desktop background!)