Who Am I, Why Am I Here?

I am a girl. I am also a boy. And I am a man. I think of myself as simultaneously the most feminine woman and the manliest man to ever exist. When people talk about gender fluidity, I get it. I identify as female and I don't sway on that point in the least. However, I greatly value my masculinity. And I love that my best friend, Sean, does as well.
It bothers the guys at work so much when I call myself a man. Sometimes I'll stock one aisle before two guys get done stocking another and I'll flex and yell, "I AM THE MANLIEST MAN IN THE WORLD." (We work overnight, when the store is closed.) And Jon or Patrick will say, "You're not a man! You're a girl! You're so not a man at all!" And I'll say, "I'm more of a man than you." Because of this, Patrick likes to poke fun at me and say that I "must wear the pants in the relationship."
That's another strong point of identity, though. Being dominant or submissive. Now I feel like... there is no doubt that I have a very strong will. I can be intimidating. I can be difficult to work with. I'm high maintenance for sure. But I think of relationships as a partnership. I don't assume a dominant or submissive role in a relationship. And I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with someone who felt like they could overrule my opinions or someone who felt like I should run the relationship myself.
I think of myself, first and foremost, as a future mother. I make all of my decisions based on the hope that I will one day raise a family. It's all I really want in life. Yes, I have personal aspirations. I want to be a concept artist. I want a big house with lots of room for me to do my art. I want a husband who loves me. But no matter what job I have or where I live or what kind of house I have or what kind of car I drive, I will always have my family.
Lately I've been trying to come up with a tattoo idea that represents me. And I'm currently playing with the idea of phoenix wings. Because I think of myself as someone who is strong, someone who perseveres, and someone who is loyal (see Fawks from Harry Potter). What is a better symbol of strength and perseverance than the phoenix?

 I'll let update you as the tattoo idea evolves.

This post may be a little all over the place

I had a really difficult time with this one. Mostly because I was in a pretty terrible place for the last couple of weeks and had a difficult time getting any enjoyment out of anything I loved doing.
But things got a little better and yesterday, I took some time for myself. I won't go into detail (mostly out of laziness). But mom said to include the pretzels. There were pretzels. Jalapeno pretzels and they were 500 calories and they were delicious.

I feel better when I get things done. That relaxes me. And I spent three hours getting something done that needed to be done.

5 Obstacles Stopping Me From Doing What I Want With My Altered Book:
1.) Trust. I don't feel like I can trust the people around me that I hold closest and that makes it difficult for me to explore my creative ideas, because I'm scared to share them.
2.) Talent. I worry I might not be good enough. I'm scared to put something down on paper because it's not as good as someone else's.
3.) Disorganized. I spend a lot of time I'd like to be devoting to creativity, worrying about other things. I need to sort out my thoughts so that I can access my creative side without having to trudge through all my family/relationship/work/whatever issues first.
4.) Inspiration. I often feel I lack inspiration which worries me because I feel like I draw a lot of inspiration from other things and I'd like to draw inspiration from myself.
5.) Limits. I limit myself a lot, even if I try not to. I don't write much anymore, I don't draw much anymore. I need to spend more time just being creative any way I can, and stop sitting around staring at the ceiling. Because thinking it is not the same as doing it.

1.) Trust
- What if I entrust something important to me to one of my friends I feel I have trouble trusting?
- What if I give it to that friend permanently?
- What if I do this with several friends?
2.) Talent
- What if I draw a picture every day until the end of the semester?
- What if I take the ones I like the least and redo them when the semester ends?
- What if I take the ones I like the before and afters and put them on my walls?
3.) Disorganized
- What if I get boxes and write how I feel about certain subjects and sort them into boxes?
- What if I used once piece from each box to inspire a creative project?
- What if, in the project, I had to physically use the original piece of writing?
4.) Inspiration
- What if I try drawing with my eyes closed?
- What if I do a series of self portraits with my eyes closed?
- What if I record myself singing and draw the sounds with my eyes closed?
5.) Limits
- What if I spend a week, not allowed to draw out my art and I have to use other ways to be creative?
- What if I had to use an etch-a-sketch for all my visual art?
- What if I recorded the sounds an etch-a-sketch makes and made music with it?

I definitely love the ideas from number 4.

Savory Chicharron

I had a Chicharron for the first time today. I was unaware of what it actually was until afterwards. It's a sort of pork rind. It was light and airy. It tasted somewhat like an onion ring... without the onion. Like a funyun done right. A funyun that doesn't totally tear up the inside of your mouth. It wasn't very crunchy. It was sort of cracker-like.

I felt the best way to describe it would be to say it is savory.

I thought about maybe making a food that smells savory, but that seems too literal. I couldn't think of any way to make something feel savory. And even if I could find something that felt savory (because I thought maybe velvet was sort of savory feeling), I wouldn't have much hand in making it. So I decided to make something that sounds savory.

I've never made music before, so it was a little scary and odd.

I wanted it to have deep tones but still be light. And it ends abruptly. Partially because I didn't know how to end the song, and partially because my food, just like the song, ended abruptly.

Proof I made the music myself.

MORE PROJECTS

I decided to take the word "more" and try out more things I've been meaning to and need to try out and get out of the way.
First things first I made a dress from bed sheets and hopefully it looks Greek enough for my shoes. Although I probably won't actually wear the dress to class and I will most likely go out and find something more "wearable" to wear with my shoes - I made a dress anyway. Because I could.

Afterwhich I decided to make some "poison" caramel apples. The first try didn't work out too well because I made the caramel myself and it got all hard and stuff. I decided that maybe I don't have that kind of time and energy so I went out and got some caramels from the store and coloured them with black food colouring. I don't have a picture of them but I can say that it was definitely an apple covered in black caramel. Basically it should have looked like this. I'll make them again and make sure to take a picture.

I am making a bento box for Sean for Thanksgiving this year because he always works on Thanksgiving and because he loves Asian food (and also for a good reason to use my bento box I bought a couple months ago). I made a diagram of what I will be putting in his bento box, as well as a list of all the ingredients I will need to purchase.

The bento consists of shrimp fried rice, a california roll, two salmon onigiri, and one or two (I haven't decided yet) shoyu eggs, the kind they put in authentic ramen. I am currently in the process of making sticky rice for the first time so I'll have to let you know how that goes in class. If I can't for whatever reason figure out how to make sticky rice, I can always get the microwavable stuff but I wanted it to be made from the heart. I have no idea where to find little shrimps for shrimp fried rice. If anyone has some advice, that'd be great. I know how to make sushi, I just don't want to go half way across the state to get some really good fresh fish, immediately make sushi with it in the car or something, and rush it over to sean's house before he leaves for work. I'm not sure what kind of dried seaweed I'll be using yet. The last kind I had I really didn't like so I'm gonna go buy up a few kinds and try them out. I did however make authentic ramen and some shoyu eggs to go in it the other day. What the shoyu eggs were supposed to look like.

What my shoyu eggs actually looked like.

They weren't very pretty but they WERE very TASTY. And the ramen turned out just like the authentic ramen Sean and I always get at Mitsuwa (an Asian grocery in Chicago).

Aside from my Asian cuisine endeavors, I started on some Slenderman shoes for my friend's birthday this week. Every new pair of shoes I make is an adventure for me. I haven't ever made two pairs of shoes that are alike and I rarely use pencil when I make shoes. I almost always start with pen, as I did with this pair. Not sure if I want to make the second shoe the same as the first for symmetry or not.

  And lastly I started on my Halloween costume. My sister (8 years old) and I are being Anna and Elsa from Frozen. I'm not a huge Frozen fan, but she is. And I thought it would be a lot of fun. Since I have red hair and she has blonde hair, I'm going to be Anna and she's going to be Elsa. What I have so far is just the raw ingredients.

I'm going to alter the shirt so that it... fits me. I'm going to cut the vest at an angle. And I'm basically going to paint the designs onto the vest and skirt. It's definitely not cosplay level costuming, but I never planned to take it to a convention anyway.
So in the past week I have tried out 6 things outside my comfort zone and I hope to take this momentum and run with it.