My Year Of Wonders

There's a bible story about Pharaoh dreaming of Egypt having seven bad years, and then seven good years. Sometimes it felt as if my seven bad years started at 2018: a sudden divorce, sudden plunge into zero financial means, an understandable congruent depression, migration to a far cheaper country for financial reasons, 2021-2022 were great but then that tropical infection happened and two years in and out of hospitals and so leaving the life I built abroad and migrating back, losing my beloved best friend, then failing to say no so ending up moving in with an abusive person and having to run away. As my cynic friend said, the author overdid it with drilling the point on this story; the bad luck of it looked like a parody.

In July 2024 I was living alone in a tiny, sweet apartment in the cheapest big city in this country, holding my own and being, again, depressed - a light version of post traumatic after the months in the hospital and the abusive roommate thing. I was doing what I loved, aka teaching Blender and taking commissions, in a beautiful white place I could call my own, but life didn't feel safe anymore. Nothing did. I think I was alive, but not really living.

Fast forward a year; this is, simply and literally, the best time I had in my life.

The man I met on July 24th is... I couldn't believe I'd love anyone the way I did the guy who was my husband, and I don't; it's different, but no less wonderful. More, in many ways. He's many things that feel too private and sweet to list, and he's also social, and has kids, and lives closer to my friends, so suddenly I'm not alone at all. 

On March dad died. He was 83. It took the past five years, a bit of therapy and then living with him for two months to understand something fundamental about my whole life. 

Dad was loving, caring, warm, hugging, generous, enthusiastic and the type to gobble life up like a hungry wolf, being a father included; he never laid an improper finger on me, though he did hit me 3-4 times a year, as was customary for his and my generation. That wasn't a problem; the frequency was as described, it hurt for no more than a few seconds, and never left marks. That part I have no issue with. 

But he scared the living hell out of me around once a week. I thought it was normal. I believed him when he said I was problematic, that I deserved threats, that I was overly sensitive and possibly not mentally okay. It's only this past year that I realized the impact of growing up like this: of constantly being scared that something horrible was going to happen to you, of home never being a safe place, of never feeling safe unless my parents weren't around.

It started when I stopped being a child; when I was no longer small and something to be protected, I think. The first time I remember starkly was when I was eight. He would yell horrible, scary things; roar. "You're not my daughter anymore", "They'll have to carry you out of this house on a stretcher when I'm done with you," "you're a monster", "you selfish, egocentric pig", "you're spoiled, dramatic, overbearing, pathetic, lazy parasite". He chased me down the corridor and broke down my locked door with a kick, when I was 16. He grabbed me by the upper arm and dragged me to the bathroom to roar at me for the way I hang my towel and hit me while screaming. From age ten to seventeen, when I left the family home, I was constantly scared and I didn't even know it. I was prone to crying, self-hating, feeling helpless and with zero agency on my life, and thinking it was normal for parents to be that way, and that I was the problem. 

Simultaneously, he would tell me I was brilliant, talented, practical, full of potential, intelligent. It didn't occur to me that these hot-and-cold, contradictory statements were confusing. He said so, so it was the truth. The inner turmoil that followed was something I only recently learned to notice.

When I was around 25 or so, a proper grown up who was out of his immediate control, the nature of the threats changed. "I won't ever talk to you again", "I'll take away your apartment", "you ungrateful, dramatic, emo-blackmailing swine", "I'll make sure they block your bank account", "you're worthless", "you're a failure", "you have no chance in the world but me", "you have no friends", "nobody loves you", "you're making things up for attention", "you're not allowed to cry, that's selfish and manipulative and you'll smile and do as you're told", and "if you don't do as I say I'll stop taking my medicine". He would cut contact with me as punishment for months on end, for holding a political view that was different than his or for choosing to have my passport done one way and not his way. He would give me the silent treatment for hours on the phone if I contradicted him. It still had a debilitating impact, even though I was over forty. 

Then he died, eight months ago, and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I had no reason to be afraid.

Dad was many good things. Generous, kind, protective. He loved me fiercely, and in times of need he'd do everything, limitless, to help - except for showing empathy or tolerating weakness. He was wonderful, admirable, but was  also all of the above; I can't say whether he was a good or a bad person. People are complicated. I just know that most of my life I loved and admired my dad and couldn't imagine a world without him, and now he's dead and can't threaten me anymore, and not being scared all the time feels like a physical weight off. It's as if I can suddenly breathe.

It's been eight months since he died, and I'm flourishing. I've never felt so peaceful in my life. 

--

There's also the inheritance. It's not much for me to be extravagant, but it means my future's (humbly) taken care of, and my present allows for more liberty than I ever had. I first went nuts with scrapbooking materials, and then two months ago got obsessed with watercolor, and then AI came and finalized this as my Year Of Wonders.

Which I understand requires some explanation, because for us artist AI is the devil. But around two months ago I was searching for reference and then the penny dropped: AI can paint better than I ever will. I've been painting since I was six, have studied anatomy, perspective, dynamic sketching, environment sketching, color theory, design, art history, oil painting and portraiture; I've honed my (admittedly not great) talent with the need to be able to paint whatever I wanted or to 'work in the industry', either as a comic or a video game artist - and now AI does it infinitely faster, cheaper and better than me. 

And suddenly I don't have to be good; there's no point. Suddenly making art lost the point I thought it had, and - here comes the magic - became something I can do just for fun, regardless of how much I suck at it. 

And that feels... amazing! I paint the most embarrassing stuff. It's wonky and full of mistakes and I don't paint people because I was never good enough at it and at any case I just want to play with brushes, regardless of what the end result is. So I (badly) paint mushrooms and patterns and bottles and oh, very bad flowers, and leaves, and refuse scenery because it's not fun, and I even went as far as abstract, which I've always hated and thought it was and excuse for talentless people to play with paint, and you know what, here I am, practically talentless and in no mood for effort so I paint abstract and it's ugly and meaningless or pretty and meaningless - I mean, how ugly can you go with rainbow pastels - and I don't care. I don't need anyone to like it. I don't need to get a job, or for my fellow roleplayers to go 'omg, Bell, paint my character' or even 'this is pretty'. I have my little sketchbook 80% of which isn't even my own art because I've followed tutorials, and I'm having the time of my life. 

This is my Year Of Wonders.

There is love. There is social life. There is financial stability, and there is nobody calling me nasty belittling names every day, or threatening me; there is no fear. There is, however, a crippled cat that's the cutest thing ever and my current goal in life is to learn to tend to his bladder (he can't on his own, and my boyfriend has been manually voiding the cat's bladder and bowels for the past four years). I still fail at that, but, unlike painting, that goal does feel meaningful.

This year I also accepted the fact that I'm obese, a lot thanks to the kids - my nephew, and my boyfriend's eleven years old son, both of whom find me very comfortable to cuddle with, or awesome because I can make the car bounce when I dance in my seat. Having spent around a decade avoiding socializing because I was embarrassed due to being fat, this did wonders - so thanks to the kids, I even went to the big geek convention in October (it was wonderful, I got to meet my favourite translator and watch Twisted on stage), and just spent a whole weekend in a mini roleplaying convention in a hotel up north, with forty other people some of which I've not seen since that LARP twenty five years ago. 

I'm fat, I don't Blender (I think I enjoy the physical paint too much right now), I miss my online community and that gone best friend - and yet life right now is the best I could imagine. And even now the cat is next to me, licking his belly and ignoring his hind legs (he has no idea they exist) and giving me drowsy, loving, trusting looks. 

I'm in peace.

A Peaceful Yom Kippur

(Not my art! Made with AI)

The Day of Atonement is a Jewish holiday in which religious people participate in various pagan atonement rituals that look like medieval witchcraft (seriously, look up the rooster one) and, since it's tradition not to drive at all, the secular crowd made it into bicycle day to make use of the empty roads. It's a very quiet day; when we only had one channel on TV here, that, too, would broadcast nothing - so the holiday was also the 'raid the movies rental' holiday. Nowadays we have internet so being bored with no TV isn't an issue, but the roads still empty, there's no music or any loud noises outside, and it lasts for a blissful period of 24 hours. I love it.

Having spent seven years living alone, I now really enjoy having people in the same house as me; the sounds of life happening so close, life I can dip into if I want, feels safe and helps me not get stuck in my own head. On the other hand, it also means constant interruptions which make the day feel disjointed. There's never a stretch of ten uninterrupted hours. You can see where this is going. 

Boyfriend's away to board game with friends until tomorrow. The kids are with their mum; it's just the cat and me. I found eleven hours of some nondescript, generic relaxed piano music and it's on now; the window's open, there's sunlight, the cat's making stupid sounds as it bathes, and everything... is so... peaceful. 

September

September in this country is full of holidays, which makes keeping a routine near impossible; with two kids in the house, it's been more social and family-like than I had in years. It's going to get far more social, because there's the Geek Festival in two weeks, and I'm going for the first time in 15 years. It's a bit daunting - I'm very fat, and I used to be a minor celebrity in these circles; what will they think of me? Will I feel confident and happy as I used to, when I was the outgoing game-master of tabletop game, the person who enjoys making LARP props and making friends with new people? It's so easy to retreat into my shell, but I miss people, and roleplaying, and real-life socializing.

So September has been distinctly lacking in daily routine, but had more nice family interactions than I had in a decade. There was time with the boyfriend's kids, enjoyable time with my brother (!), loads Office Days In Person here in my study with Quazi - it serves for both accountability and socializing -  and life feels nicely full.

Most of my free time this month was spent scrapbooking, if you can call it that when it's done mostly because one wants to use all the cute stickers and washi tape one spent a silly chunk of their inheritance on. 

It feels silly to post the scraps here when I already did on my non-Blender Instagram, though Instagram feels so public and advertisy that I never have the guts to write anything next to the picture.

Here's only one, then. Turns out that, unless I deliberately try to veer from it, my scraps end up being blue and gold. 

There's something that feels sensual (as in - of the senses, not sexual) about smoothing pet-tape on high-quality paper, or drawing letters by hand. The craze started around mid-June, so it's been 3.5 months now, and I'm still as obsessed with it as I was with Blender in 2016. This is fun.

I miss Blender very much, but with my online presence at five percent of what it used to be, there's no commissions coming in - and it's easy to sink into the comfort of real-life routine: boyfriend, kids, cat, scrapbook. Still, I hope my Blender-craze will return one day; that, more than anything, might get me back into Warcraft.

Warcraft has gotten too easy and too grindy for my taste, so it's never been about the game - it's always been about the roleplay. But life is so full and satisfying, and searching for a guild that aligns with my preferences is daunting.

So that's September: relaxing, wonderful mundane life. In love. Inspired. Peaceful. It feels like a vacation - and I guess it is, now that the four-decades-long abusive relationship that controlled my life isn't a thing anymore. It feels... it feels amazing. Maybe one day I'll find the guts to make a scrap about that.

Scrapbooking irl

Last night I wrote a long entry, then immediately chickened out and removed it, due to a combination of not wanting to jinx it, and a learnt-tendency to be wary of what I share in public. So it's time to do my best to sum it up and see if that helps. 

1. Most of the realistic things in my life are as good as can be. There's no world peace and I'm not in a healthy weight, but the realistic things that can make one's daily life either a misery or a smooth, lovely joy, are all on the good side and have been for a while. This is when, were I the type, I'd knock on wood. 
2. It's been almost a year of having this new love, and his kids, and his derpy cat, and all of those make me happy and relaxed, and give me meaning.
3. A toxic presence that's been in my life for a few decades is gone - probably the biggest, deepest negative influence on my life. It being gone feels like both winning the lottery and being on a relaxing vacation; there's nothing to fear. I've been afraid all my life and there's no need to be anymore. This is... it's wonderful. It's so good.
4. My current, surprising passtime is scrapbooking. I didn't mean to; I just wanted to get some sparkly stickers and suddenly there's enough washi tape here to wrap a castle. After a decade of being exclusively digital and in 3D, working with my actual fingers, with scissors and paint, feels oddly satisfying. 
5. The one thing I really miss is a regular excuse to do Warcraft-Blender art. Just like with writing and even scrapbooking, I enjoy the craft (the act of creating) but have nothing of my own to create; when someone pays be to do it I feel obligated, and free because it's not my concept that needs depicting (I hardly ever have 'concepts' worth depicting, scrapping or even writing). Having neglected by Blender art presence (and playing Warcraft), there's no commissions coming in - hence no drive to Blender - so no excuse to indulge in my hobby of playing with models in 3D, problem solving composition and lighting, wrestling with Eevee's transparency / depth of field adventure - and streaming; I wish I knew why I can't bring myself to do it, even though I miss it and love it. That's one for therapy, I guess.

Those are the updates. Very happy, very relaxed, free of stress or fear, lacking excuse to Blender. Mostly fulfilled ('fulfillment', it turns out, can be managing a 5-person household; but for me it's teaching Blender on streams, or doing commissions while teaching, and I really miss it). Still fat. Having daily bursts of bliss with the local cat. Scrapbooking mostly to use the pretty things I got, but (as usual) without a solid concept). Got back in regular touch with some real-life friends - the upside of living in the country I grew up in - and it feels alive and real and healthy and lovely. My man is the biggest Pratchett fan I've ever met, and Pratchett-themed pillow talk is the joy I never knew I wanted in my life, and it's been like that for a year. And I'm studying calligraphy and stock investments (yes, really). Life is... it's... I'd be very happy if it just went on like this, unchanged, for many years. 

One scrap for Jack, aka Nico the Cartographer, and one for a memory from 2003; all just an excuse to use cute stickers.

Rabbit holes upon rabbit holes in the Egypto-Victorian suit

Work - or whatever one would call this 3D hobby - is the exciting thing I look forward to when I get out of bed in the morning, mood willing. Managed to get back to it a couple of weeks ago thanks to streaming - the people there energize me - and currently am working on a suit.

The not-commission is a take on an fantasy Egyptian prince, with a Victorian aspect - that sounds like a hot mess, but 'fantasy', 'ancient Egypt' and 'Victorian' have been my GMed tabletop roleplaying campaign themes for 30 years, so it's my comfort zone. The Egyptian outfit is finished, and I've been working on the Victorian one for a while and am having a blast, because it requires learning a plethora of new tools. 

Whatever little I learnt of Substance Painter was mostly wiped during my two months off, so that needs re-learning. The outfit design is currently benign - bland Victorian, nothing Egyptian about the silhouette, and I'm not sure I can be bothered to change that; was this a design class, I'd have failed it for that alone. 

It needed folds, which meant a week or two invested in tackling sculpting, then cloth physics, then cloth simulation brushes, then stencils, failing each and using some amalgamation to get the result I could pull. It looked embarrassing, so there was much research of men wearing suits and how folds and wrinkles really look.

Then a week of researching elements that go on the garment: hems, seams, wedges, buttons, button holes, historically accurate design, sifting through disappointing amounts of AI slop and trying to deduce what makes a Victorian coat look Victorian and not, say, a WWI coat. Not that anyone will ever notice; this isn't even a game asset or a paid one. I don't understand why I'm obsessed with making this, but as long as I have a creative obsession that keeps me engaged and immersed, I'm happy.

More research about how to make a heavy European fabric look like one, and I got the coat and trousers somewhere that feels decent to me; no seams or pockets yet:

Then a couple of days looking into satin and silk for the shirt, failing at achieving what I wanted - I probably need to work on observation and analizing - and getting a bit fed up with it so compromising on this:

Now the waistcoat. My few attempts at fixing the faulty normals on the collar failed, but today I bumped into a possible solution! Then some research about Victorian waistcoats merited they're the one gaudy part of the suit, with heavy embroidery in rich patterns, metallic threat on satin or wild silk. That led to the rabbit-hole of researching textile designs in both ancient Egypt and Victorian England, and I thought - paisley wouldn't cut it, nor would the intricate floral designs that seem popular in the 18th-19th century; what I need is a pattern of ancient Egyptian elements, that still feels like the Victorian patterns. 

So more ref collecting, more analyzing, some sketches, some attempts to make it in Photoshop, lots of failing, getting a modern Photoshop for the pattern-along-path feature that my 2012 Photoshop didn't have, et voila! I don't have a pattern yet, but I have the plan and the right tool for it. 

Since I started researching and analyzing last year, during the Stormwind Library project, my notebook gained a somewhat Henry Jonesesque feel, which delights me more than it should:

This makes me feel like making corsets again, or Warcraft image commissions, or roleplaying in Warcraft - the blessing and curse of great passions with a short attention span and a rabbit-hole tendency; perhaps it's lucky I don't currently have a sewing machine, any incoming commissions or a roleplaying guild that suits my needs. Besides, while immersing myself in this Egyptian Guy project is the thing I mostly write about - the thing that got me writing in a public blog again - my life outside art and online stuff has never been so full or enjoyable. There's a boyfriend, there's his two kids which I was surpsied to enjoy the company of which, there's the funniest, derpy half-a-cat (yes, really), and half my time is spent cooking, shopping for groceries or proposing to the dishwasher, a miracle I've never had before. And living in the same house with kids and a cat, that feels like having a real family; something I haven't had for around 40 years. And it feels rather lovely.

More updates once I manage to crack that waistcoat design challenge!

Post-stream energy keeps giving!

It was my plan to go back to sleep once the boyfriend left for his board game night; but somehow, still buoyed on yesterday's stream sense of energy and normality, I ended up editing the first episode of Dracula (the 2020 Netflix one) so I can share it with ET. The show is excellent but rather gory, and I'm not sure the story interests ET at all - he's less into Gothic Victorian horror than me - so I edited out all the gore and abbreviated the story into something that would upset Stoker; it's the video equivalent of this:

Jonathan Harker: So the castle was creepy, I got sicker every day, the count looked younger and had better English every night, I forgot Mina's face, found some zombies and a dead baby, and escaped.

Sister Agatha: Rocks.

It happened that I even cropped out most of Dracula himself, which is a shame because it's a wonderful rendition of the character; He's the scariest Dracula I've seen, as exquisite as only Steven Moffat can write, but he's not the thing I want to share with ET. It's Sister Agatha; a nun, possibly my favourite 'strong female character' ever. There's the classics like Buffy, and all of T. Kingfisher's ladies, and most of Whedon's really, but Agatha's the relentless pursuit of science and zero nonsense makes her the kind of woman I wish I could be. 

The stream's blessing - I might have to coin that into a reusable term - continued after I was done editing - where did these five hours go? - and somehow the big plastic box in my room is now gone, all its content sorted after six month of it sitting there and exuding my guilt. My study feels much nicer now; at this rate I might even hang the curtain. This... being productive... feels so nice. Feels like life. 

Grief and External Strength

It was my intention to use this diary - 'blog' always feels like it's intended for other people to read, while the stuff I write is usually just a thought-dump, so 'diary' fits better, even if it's open for others to read - my intention was to blabber about Blender and 3D when I'm excited, but there's more right now. This is a positive post, despite the coming paragraph.

My father died five weeks ago. It was a complicated relationship, with lots of love and care, but also lots of other stuff - stuff that means this loss is not as unbearably painful as losing a parent usually is. It is, however, still grief; it's confusing, to find oneself crying, or unable to function, while not feeling the loss as keenly as I felt mum's when she passed away. 

How is this a positive post, then? Because of several things. The boyfriend and his children, for a start; we've lived together for a few months now, and it's... well, it's wonderful. This kids are clever, creative and considerate, and I discovered I'm not the terrible cook I thought I was, and it's fun to cook for people I care for who care back; the youngest and I play Skyrim together, the eldest is a cosplayer who knits fantasy stuff, and the boyfriend - my age, my nationality - is a Pratchett geek who shares the same mental background I grew up in; it's like setting one's relationship to Easy Mode. And I'm in love, and have people to care for, and live with people in the same house so there's no longer any feeling of loneliness. I enjoyed my alone time a lot in the past few years, but living with three other, nice people, feels like constantly having friends close-by. There's lots of personal space, but also time together; my daily life feels rich with meaning now, and that meaning is doing stuff with and for other people. 

It's a known thing that doing stuff for other people helps with sadness or even depression; in 2018, deep in post-divorce emotions, a friend recommended I delve into 'doing things for other people'. When Covid happened I got the chance to do that and started teaching 3D for free on Twitch, which leads me to the other reason this is a positive post. 

Streaming has been sparse for the past two years, what with the medical emergency (I scraped my knee on parrot poop in Thailand, got major infection, sepsis and surgeries - it was adventurous) and the moving back to my home country, rebuilding a life, moving thrice in the same year, all that; and somehow I didn't feel confident enough to do it for a year now. Which is weird; the streams are very intimate, mostly informative, not performative or aimed at monetizing, and still I felt anxious about doing it. 

Fast forward to last month, dad passing away. I'm capable of happiness and feel it, and enjoy it, when I'm with the boyfriend, the kids, or friends; I can do my part around the house, which is cooking, cleaning, entertaining the younger or taking the older to her riding lessons; but when there's none of those to get me moving, I can't seem to do my usual, productive along-activities (3D work, or psychology classes); I stay in bed with a book, or simply sleep. I don't feel the grief most of the time, but I don't... do anything unless circumstances force me.

Then, a month ago, some random person in Warcraft gave me a mount! Just a stranger! It was so nice of them that I offered to make them a picture, which I ended somehow doing on stream, then people showed up and had questions and demo requests and when the stream ended I felt energized and happy and driven! I showered (I do that regularly, but during grief it requires effort, and this one didn't), arranged my room a bit, even listened to a lecture. Streaming filled me with energy again! 

It's been four streams now, since father died, after a year of not streaming. When people ask for Blender help and I provide, I feel satisfied, content, happy - worthy. I feel that my time and knowledge are well-spent, improving other people's lives this tiny bit; just like it did during Covid, after the divorce. 

It would never have occurred to me that streaming - not entertainment streaming, but teaching strangers for free - would be something that gives me so much satisfaction and meaning; as much as to buoy me into productivity even during grief. 

Blender in Persia, hair cards and fire

 

Could be I've been too hasty to call this diary gone; Unexpectedly, there's suddenly stuff I can, and want, to share - that isn't as private as thoughts and emotions. Incoming explanation. 

For six or seven years I taught Blender for Warcraft art, and made Warcraft art with Blender, mostly commissions. I suck at commissions; diving into polishing the models can be a bottomless pit, and I happily fall in because I enjoy it, but it meant that even with charging around 60 euro per commission, I would be paid something like one euro per hour. That was disheartening, but when I managed to put that aside it was pure fun. More than that; it was the thing that got me out of bed in the morning. 

Not the depressed kind of 'I've nothing else to get out of bed for', but the enthusiastic, passionate kind of being hyper-focused on something both challenging and rewarding; and Blender's been managing to keep me hyper-focused since 2015. Even when bad things happened - divorce, two years of surgeries and losing all my savings to medical bills - even through those, Blender never stopped driving me, intoxicatingly, blissfully. 

But I hardly ever made stuff which was my own. I made commissions, the second-best drive there is, because once someone paid there's obligation; I made roleplay illustrations of my guild, which was the best ever - the art wasn't, but the passion of making it was among the most powerful hyper-focus experiences of my life, and lasted months on end; but stuff that's not for anyone, that doesn't interest me. To enjoy creating, I need an enthusiastic audience.

The commission stream trickled off those past two years; I've been busy with hospitals and maybe there's other reasons; perhaps the market is saturated. Life, as I wrote yesterday, finally stopped being a dramatic medical rollercoaster, the emotional debris of that settled down, then the Guy appeared and suddenly life is wonderful again. Only, I realized after two or three months of domestic bliss, I'm missing an excuse to get out of bed in the morning. If I'm not forced to do so to make lunch for the kids - he has kids, that's a whole new and unexpected can of awesome - or for him, or to spend time with someone, I'd just stay in bed. That worried me, and I couldn't settle being so happy on one hand and feeling so driveless on the other, and my attempts to force a drive to do things I usually love - study psychology, study Blender - weren't a success. This has a happy ending, I swear, and the reason I felt the need to write this post.

A few years back I helped someone with Blender. She dropped me a message not too long ago and offered a joined project. I gave it a go, but the model wasn't something I was excited about and it didn't catch on, nor did my attempts to force myself into it. She didn't give up on me, but prodded me again; finally she said something which my brain translated to 'think up your fantasy character, the one you'd write stories about or dress up if you had a doll of' and my braid felt as if it caught fire. 

That was five days ago, and I've been at it almost nonstop since. My childhood fantasies about fairies and knights faded in favour of 18th century fantasy, tropical pirates - that was part of the reason I moved to Thailand - and then, post parrot, another old aestehtic crept up on me: the fantasy, Tolkienesque Arabian Nights a-la ancient Persia, which makes me feel things, I'm not sure why. It's not the culture - I can't say I felt many positive things for pirate culture either, and I know nothing of ancient Persia - but the aesthetics makes my heart sing. It's even been this diary's title during its current incarnation, for the past year. Arabian Nights! The architecture, furniture design, thoughts of sandy desert beaches with white cities and great windows and a dry wind and the scent of jasmine and horses; I wish I could explain it better. It's a bit vague even in my mind. But I do know that, when I studied oil painting in 2004, I went to Villa Morocco and photographed my friends for reference, sprawled on embroidered divans in glittering mashrabiya lights. 

And now, finally, there's an excuse to dive into that; and I have an audience of one, that girl who's pulling me into and through this, and, along with the Persian fantasy, that's enough. I get out of bed as soon as I wake up, frantically dash through the morning rituals and rush to Blender.

*

The challenge is half the fun. Maybe even most of the fun. Yes, definitely. 

This is an entirely new area - working with non-Warcraft models, making things for them from scratch; it's all exciting, it all neccesitates learning or inventing new techniques, and it's frustrating and hard and frustrating and my brain is on blissful fire.

My first-ever card hair (the image above) looks like poop in a bucket, and took me three days of tutorial-diving and experimenting and inventing stuff that's been invented by a hundred other people, and I'm not sure it even suits the model requirements, and it's certainly not very Persian, but managing to make it feels great. It feels like my first two years of Blender, when everything was a challenge and I had nobody to ask how to do stuff; just Youtube diving, experiments and facedesking. In 2015 I figured particle hair in three days and how to make it look good within two months, but right now, for me, card hair feels harder. I missed that challenge; I had it again when I gave character animation a go, and again when I tried to make a whole complex cathedral-like building only with geometry nodes (spectacular fail), but none of those had an exciting goal. This new project does. I'm on excitement fire.

It's three in the morning. My sleep cycle is the healthiest its been in almost two dacades, because I live with three other humans and one hilarious cat, and get up, or go to sleep, at acceptable hours; but not when the muse is calling. These past few days have been the good ol' can't-stop-Blendering oh-I-don't-want-to-go-to-sleep, and I'm happy to find it happens even when one is nearing 50. Less happy, perhaps, about the sleep cycle not syncing with the other people in the house; but my most productive hours have always been 22:00-04:00. Will have to see how to balance those two needs.

So this post is about being happy - more than being happy; it's about feeling at home in my own mind again.

But this bliss is resting, for once since 2018, on a base of peaceful mind; and that's thanks to love. It's not all one needs - I've been inspired and capable of great joy and even happy without it, sometimes - but this peace, this no-stress - that's entirely up to a healthy love with a wonderful man. See? The Beatles. They knew. 

The Beatles were right

 

Life did a 180, and since life wasn't great since January 2023, a one-eighty is a very good thing.

I met a guy.

That was six months ago. Two months ago we moved in together. He has two kids and I regularly play Skyrim with the 10 years old and cook with the 16 year old. There's the world's most hilarious cat. There's love and laughter and homeyness and reading Pratchett together. The Ozmpic worked as well as it can, aka peeled 20 kgs off me and then stopped, and it hardly shows but it changed everything regarding my health and independence. I can easily get up now if I sit on the floor. It's expensive, and I'll need to keep using it for the rest of my life or I'll re-gain the weight, and it's worth it.

There's regular psychology classes and they're eye-opening and invaluable and already make a big difference in my coachees' lives, and in mine; psychology is fascinating.

No commissions were coming in - perhaps because I've been absent for a year or two, perhaps because my prices are too high for the saturated market I helped create - but recently a friend wrangled me into a new Blender adventure that set my brain on inspired fire and, if this works, it's likely to keep going for quite a while and even make a little money - more than the commissions ever did. And it's new and exciting and challenging and I get out of bed and run to tackle new challenges and problem-solving, just like my first year or two of Blendering; this is bliss. 

My journaling-for-processing, once done here in this diary, has been private for the past few years, open only for one close friend to read; so this journal here is hardly used, because the diary has always been a processing thing for me, and what's the point of doing that publicly if I already do it elsewhere? It's not as if my life is as fascinating - or as medically dramatic - as to merit having to update people how know me. It's not - luckily, joyfully - very interesting.

The place I live in isn't a tropical paradise. It's not even a desert city which I can warm, in my mind, into my Tolkien-Umbar-Arabian Nights fantasy. It's a big city in the center of the country, and I can catch a ride with my man every day, if I so wish, to the area where my bestie lives. And one of my coaching clients, who turned into a friend during those five years of coaching, lives ten minutes away from here and we've seen each other more, these past two months, than we have in the past few years.

It would never have occurred to me that the divorce would end up being a good thing, but it did. So did coming back from Thailand. So did, even, the lack of commissions. 

I'm very happy.  

Ozempic

 

A post about Ozempic is long overdue. 

It'd be easy to write 5k words about it - the miracle diet drug that actually works and is transforming one of the deadliest modern pandemics into something effortlessly curable; its high monetary cost and so far near nonexistent side-effects cost; my history of overweight to morbid obesity from age nine to fourty five; the fact that Ideas have people, not people have Ideas, and the Idea of 'Bell is fat' has been driving me as its vehicle all my life - and what it means to have... that... stop.

What it meant as a life-long struggle was feeling like a hopeless loser, a spoiled, lazy and damaged person. Hold on, this gets happy, I promise.

The doctor put me on it four months ago. I was morbidly obese, with 100kg overweight, a metabolism confused by 30 years of diets, and a history of repeatedly losing and gaining large amounts of weight, always with a method that requires constant effort, willpower, discomfort, time and hunger. I'm not listing those to whine; that's how diets are. That's also how going to the gym or university is; we've all been there. But one can graduate university, while dieting is a daily, eternal struggle.

Ready for the happy part? I lost 15 kgs in three months. Since then I already dropped two sizes on my top; probably 5 or 10 more kgs, this month alone. And it's effortless. I'm hungry twice a day, I am as emotionally and hunger-ly satisfied by the simplest food (egg on toast) as I would be by my favourite former craving (sushi or pasta). I might feel like pasta, but it's about a quarter of the craving it was - and I can sate it, fully, by having two eggs on toast. 

The medicine is very expensive - around 200€ per month - but it saves me that same mount in groceries. 

Hunger became Not My Issue. It doesn't consume time, or mental resources, or craving resources, or money. 

And suddenly there's hope. Sure, I'm almost 50, but in a year or two of this I'll be able to walk freely. Wear trousers. Not be ashamed to be a burden so can join trips with friends. Will fit into bus, train and plane seats. No more isolation. No more fear, embarrassment, misery. This isn't weight loss; it's hope for a quality of life I gave up on ever having. 

Suddenly it no longer feels pointless to care for my body, so I do: I do some skincare, some hair care, I suddenly care about looking neat - after over a decade of wearing tents and letting my hair and skin go untended. I don't mean to dye it blonde and inject Botox; I just mean cut it to a shape that could look more flattering than the current style (Accidental Gravity), and I manually dye the few gray hairs in my eyebrows (no Gandalfs allowed) because it's amazing how it neatens the look. 

This is just one aspect; this is only the beginning. Imagine how immeasurable the effect of this one medicine is, on how many meaningful aspects of my life. 

Yesterday I had to go buy something. Down the fourty stairs in the stairwell, cross the road to dump the trash, and only then I realized how easy it was to move, suddenly. As if, in this past month, the weight loss crossed some threshold beyond which the skeleton and muscles can actually handle the weight they have to carry. Suddenly mere walking doesn't feel dangerous and a great effort. It's just... a thing. Like breathing. 

Can you imagine?

I could cry with joy.

That medicine needs to now be there forever; as soon as one stops, one gains the weight back. I'm okay with that. Anti-depressants on a minimum dose have been keeping my emotional range healthy since 2018. The occasional ADHD pill solves all my scattered attention issues when I wish to focus and Get Things Done; and last year a doctor removed a tangerine-sized chunk of infection from my leg, then made my body grow flesh to fill that hole using a VAC. Adding a miracle, effortless weight-loss medicine to this simply cements my appreciation for modern medicine, flawed and impotent though it sometimes is.

I feel like a lifelong storm of bricks finally settling into what they were meant to be. My dream body isn't a temple; it's a worn cottage, a comfy thing to occupy, hopefully with some nice things about it. And being able to dream of that again, that's incredible. 

Last year's scrapbook - Jungle

This blog was reset a few times and it's mostly no great loss, but I miss the digital scrapbook pages I made last year. I think it started as a way to memorize words in Thai, or an attempt to indulge in making roleplaying props without actually roleplaying, or possibly to make use of AI images that deeply moved me but, being AI, are morally wrong. I can't remember; but it developed into being a sort of journaling-with-images thing. And that blog is gone, and there weren't too many of them, so I'm just going to re-post them here. 

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When I was a kid I dreamt of knights and fairies and green meadows and rain, which stood to reason, what with being a D&D player who lived in the desert in a town where most teens cared mostly for surfing. Then I grew up and realized that rain was cold, that green meadows were also cold, that sunshine on said meadows didn't necessarily mean it's warm, and that I hate the cold.

And somewhen in my 30s I realized what I now fantasized about was jungles and the idealized age of exploration (without, you know, the colonialism and racism and genocide) and tropical shores. And then I moved to the jungle and that feeling wasn't there, not even as I sat with a drink on the beach, so I guess it's a place I can only go in specific roleplaying, and that, too, has been a while.

But I realize I'm talking bull, because that page isn't about that at all. I think it's about missing Jammer, who's the only person I know who understands, and the text in the background pretty much spells it out. Amazing how blind I could be when I made it. 

Hopeful

 

In Hebrew there's a saying: there's comfort in the fact that everyone's suffering along with you. I always thought that wasn't true, but after this year I think I understand it better. It's not that another's pain brings joy or comfort, it's that it gives a different perspective. My year was what it was; but a friend had seven surgeries and nearly died, others are undergoing divorces or the scariest thing of all, an ill child. And, of course, the war with all its horrors. 

And that changed the way I felt about my year. Not about the past two months, but all the other dramatic events my life underwent suddenly feel - and this sounds absurd - lucky. I'm so lucky. And I cherish it, and I'm grateful for it, and I wish I could pass it on, especially to the people who gave me that new perspective.

There's a small apartment, my own little tent in the proverbial desert. There's a chair probably designed by Torquemada, a white IKEA desk and a very soft bed. There's also my home, aka my desktop computer, and I'd be nose-deep in Blender tutorials were it not for this chair; truly, it's a work of anatomical-discomfort art.

It's the nesting stage, which I always like. The apartment is so empty, which makes my mentality feel clean and unburdened. I'll have to add a new chair, and a bookshelf, but hopefully nothing more.

The 'hopefully' is the overall sentiment I'm trying to convey, I think, or, rather, 'hopeful'. I never thought that leaving my Thailand dream and being forced by circumstances to come back here would have that aspect to it, but there it is. I think that's something to be grateful for.

--

The AI generator made this version as well, and it's too nice to forget forever, so there:

Oasis

 

My tropical dream life is gone, which has enough upsides (decent, free medical treatment, for one) to make this not feel like a tragedy, but rather a change I can even enjoy. I know the mentality in this country; my friends are here; I can have a real-life tabletop party to run Call of Cthulhu to if I feel like it (and I might, which is great, as I haven't felt like GMing in years). Writing this makes me feel better.

This past month, though, has been not good. In a year that was one of the worst in my life even before the war, this past month was close to the worse of the past 14 months; I lived at my dad's, and it was unhealthy.

The thing is - I know he means well. I know he loves me to bits. I know he'll give me any money I need and more, except the right to say 'no'. And, later, except the ability to say 'no', or speak without being scared. I didn't see it when I was a teen; I did, now. I'm 47.

I took a temporary place in the next big city, 250 km away. It's still the middle of the desert; there's a hospital here, and a university and a couple of collages, and it's huge; with no land limitations, the city sprawls wide and hot, with buildings from the 50s and a crumbling infrastructure, with wild chrysanthemum in the yards and considerably less gloss than central Israel, and, I'm told, soon to have zero greenery because it all grows yellow when winter is over. 

I don't care. Great Beancan In The Sky willing, tomorrow I'll sign a contract for a small place in a quite, filthy building with nice neighbours; I'll wash the floor and get a desk and live my tiny, quiet life, and will be allowed to buy blankets whenever the fudge I need them. 

It's not the prettiest place on earth, nor one that sets imaginations on fire. But it's not as if I ever set foot outside in Koh Samui, which certainly is one of the prettiest and inspiring places on earth; besides, if I can dream of fantasy explorers in the jungle regardless of never going into it, I can imagine fantastical Arabian night cities with markets and bandits and starry nights and genies. And if currently I feel pathetic and battered and worthless, well, I'll get better; I'll make myself better. It's just going to take some quiet and time.