Thoughts From Suburbia

As a kid growing up in the middle of nowhere, I've often wished to live in the city. There is sometimes an overwhelming feeling that everyone else lives somewhere cool and I just got the short end of the geographical stick.

So when I was preparing to make a trip down to the Bay Area, even though I'd been warned that this particular place was boring, cookie-cutter suburbia, to tell you the truth I couldn't quite believe it. Because it's the Bay! Everything there is city! I mean, someone talks about that being boring in the same way that people anywhere talk about their hometown, right?

Nope. Not in this case. This was essentially a couple strip malls and chunks of residential areas plopped in the middle of farmland and given a name.

I used to think that if my hometown got a Wal-Mart or some other cool store suddenly everything would be more interesting, but as I looked out at a sea of chain stores I realized that there still wasn't anything to do. Lots of things to consume, but not a whole lot of activities to do with someone else.

We still found things to do in there somewhere - watching the new X-Men, buying foreign candy at World Market, and visiting a couple tabletop gaming stores (which was probably my favorite simply because of the ridiculously stereotypical responses one of the guys had; he had this stunned look on his face and I could almost hear him thinking "a girl? In here? A girl? WHAT?! DOES NOT COMPUTE!" and I had to turn away a couple times to keep from cracking up).

But most of the rest of our weekend was spent inside, reading, painting, and playing games. I wasn't too worried about that, since that's not far off from my normal routine (man I need to get out more...), but I'd venture it's safe to say that I won't be planning on moving to the suburbs anytime soon.

I realize I've been harping on relationships and people in my blogs a lot recently, so I apologize for being a broken record at this point, but...

I've been thinking about how what I'm looking for in a place to settle down isn't just an urban classification, but also having places around that encourage sitting down and spending time there. Places where you can sit and read a good book, or catch up with a friend, or people watch, and not feel bad for taking up a spot for another customer.

A place where there are things to do and people to meet, not just stuff to buy.

Inspirations

This week's theme is inspiration, where we write about what inspires us.

Now that I have to think about it, there are a lot of things that inspire me. People, places, things, there are lots. I really love art so there's a lot of inspirational things related to art in my life.

There's this artist, Emy Bitner. I think she's just really amazing. She's the author of the webcomic Trying Human, I'll post a link at the bottom. Anyways, her artwork really inspires me and I love watching her livestreams. Just by watching her draw on LS I've been able to improve my own artwork. I also feel inspired by the DeviantART user Eternity-Waits, she's got some good stuff. I feel so tiny compared to them, but they make me want to try harder to improve and develop my art.

Also, seasons and time of day, especially winter and sunset. They inspire my artwork a lot. I love the winter when snow falls down all fluffy an light, (ideally, here on Cape we have muddy slush snow, it's crud). But pine trees with their branches weighted down heavily by white blankets of snow, a fox peering around the snow drifts. Those scenes really just make me want to paint something.And sunset is filled with such golds, reds and blues. My favorite color combination is gold and blue. Gold and anything else comes second. The sunset colors just seem so much richer to me that the dawn colors, they are the last ones before the sky goes black, therefore they seem to mean so much more to me and that's why I want to draw and paint with them.

When it comes to inspiring me as a person, I'd have to say my friend Toria really, inspires me sometimes, she's a really confident person who can get along with other people easily, she's not afraid to talk to new people or hang out with them, at least it looks that way to me and I wish I could be like her more and I also really wish she won't read this.

The Vlogbrothers have also inspired me as a person. I've changed a lot since watching their videos, I've become a much more active person and I think a lot more about the type of impact I have and could have in the world. John and Hank inspired me to not FTBA, because I used to forget that awesome even existed.

I think those last two paragraphs became pretty sappy. Sorry. So those are some things and mostly people that inspire me, Vlogbrothers, my friends, Emy Bitner, Eternity, Snow, sunset, foxes and I didn't mention science. Science inspires me, too, mainly stars and nebulae, I like all the colors, they make me want to paint more.

These are the links to the two artists that have inspired me a lot.
Emy's Webcomic, Emy's DA
Eternity's DA