Ava Jarvis @AvaJarvisArt@kitty.town

Updated my art blog: https://blog.avajarvisart.com/

Behind the scenes entries for the following pieces:

https://kitty.town/media/eO2LrWjtVtk1eJ5RYlk https://kitty.town/media/Hjvmo0xyPWF0C0ThYXc https://kitty.town/media/FsIADbLqHmri_UpoOnw

It was nice to have a safe place to hang out for a while.

Hey all, life has been difficult for a me. I don't really want to go into the stalkings and murder attempts and such from the past.

I am only stable by a very thin thread and I think that thread has broken. So I'm going to try to stay off social media everywhere, including here.

Virtual hugs are nice in case anyone wants to send some to me.

Off to do art to take the edge off because boy is the edge cutting hard today.

@jillybobww Happy birthday!

I need to do some art to take the edge off.

Nota bene: I do still use expensive paper and other surfaces, I just use it for final projects. I'm not going to spend excess cash for a daily sketchbook.

There is very much a market of middle-class and higher artists who prefer and can easily afford sketchbooks in the Moleskine price range. This is what Leda Art Supply is aiming for, and if you're a limited art supplier, this is a way more lucrative market to explore than working-class and lower artists like myself.

Capitalism is a bad reality. If Leda Art Supply wants to survive, this is what they have to do.

TBH I'd be more upset at Leda Art Supply raising the prices of their sketchbooks to match that of Moleskine's expensive lines if I didn't have alternatives just as good and cheaper at Pentalic and Strathmore.

The alternatives aren't as pretty on the outside. But all these sketchbooks are acid-free, and both the Leda books and Strathmore's 500 series mixed media books comply with ISO standards for long-term archival. If you're not in North America, Canson's XL series is also a good alternative.

I am bitter forever but I should go pursue art for a while to take the edge off.

I've thought about why people don't move from Twitter, and my conclusion is that the big content creators are indies and don't have time to migrate/repost content. All social networks have a hatred of the others, and make migration as difficult as possible both ways.

No migration means no movement of those creators or their followers.

Something to fix. Or just ignore and let Mastodon sink into further irrelevance! We seem to prefer that route as a federation overall so eh. Doesn't matter.

These days I'm more free than in the past. So now it's stuff like the next video on a show I like, the next episode of a podcast I like, the chance of possibly being able to read long novels again (I've got a to-read pile...).

And now, of course, art.

Find the things you enjoy and make a commitment to enjoying as much of them as possible. Even very little things are worth more than an eternity of darkness.

Also spite. Spite is good, too. 2/2

I've kept moving despite long periods in my life when I had no hope of ever escaping abuse. I didn't hope for the abuse to end, because it just wouldn't. Somehow even when I was little I knew that I couldn't keep the flames of hope going, and if I depended on hope, ultimately that would break me.

So I learned to keep going, not on hope, but because I wanted to enjoy things. Even little things, like fantasies I made up for myself, or being able to go outside sometimes. 1/2

I wrote a toot and it got super-boosted and now I am going to go fall offline again for a bit because it is too much and I'm slightly overwhelmed. (Which is AJ-speak for "fall offline for as long as I can stand it" and "my brain is making bacon-sizzling-in-a-pan noises")

Good things do exist! I want to mention at least one, which is the Cornell Lab bird feeder live cam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjALrXRNzGE

Also Kitten Academy's live cam.

https://kitten.academy/live-stream/

I highly recommend a privacy blocker because both of those are YouTube streams. And then enjoy.

I didn't get encouraging words from most of my managers. Why didn't they tell me any of this. Why did they let me end my software career in utter disgrace, so broken in health that the reason I gave them my 2-week notice was because I'd ended up in the hospital due to the stress compromising my ability to breathe.

I don't know anymore. It seems so cruel. I'm glad some of my colleagues were nice.

Goodbye tech forever.

Whenever I feel bitter and sad about what happened to me in software development, I remember the young engineers (well, at a certain point, simply younger than me) who told me on the day I left, or after I left, how much I had taught them. How much they had appreciated my advice. How much I'd helped them.

They told me this not out of selfishness, because I'd no longer be in a position to help them anymore.

Funny, my managers never told me their feedback. I thought I was poison in the end.

I am depressed and am gonna go offline again for a while. I really am too sick to be online talking to the public at large.