Through much procrastination and compromise we arrive at my small slice of the internet.
Hi I’m Rom, and I spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out how to start my first rambling blog post. Overcoming the inertia of starting is always painful, but it only gets smoother from here on right?
I think it’s been maybe a year since I said I would write a blog and I finally got around to doing it. With the internet changing in ways that seem less human I am here to offer you my rambling (and art) with as much human compromise that I can personally tolerate.
There’s three reasons why I decided to pay too much money for web hosting and my own domain:
- You can’t post art online without it being scraped. (Grok is harassing me.)
- It’s better to read rambling in an organized format instead of social media (Grok is harassing me) or DMs.
- Instead of scrolling through short form content sometimes it’s nice to sit down and read a wall of text.
Now I have a place to ramble as much as I want and the fact that you, the reader, have taken time to read about it is good enough. I say that because the existence of Romanized Rambling is a small victory against procrastination. Rambling delivered with some reluctant compromises that will probably bother me for a couple of days. (I’m sure the robots scraping the website won’t mind though.)
I say ramble, but I would like to keep these posts relatively structured and organized. The content of my blog will mostly be about overcoming the struggles I face as an artist and coping with said struggles with Umamusume. Expect to see lots of posts about horses and horsegirls. I don’t really know if my experiences are going to help anyone but it helps me reflect on things that worked for me.
I also think it’s cute to have some sort of consistent thing I do on every post so here’s two things you can expect to see:
- Some compromises I had to make while writing the post.
- A declaration and commitment of what I will do to improve something for your experience as the reader.
Sometimes these two things might be closely related.
Anyways, today’s compromise is that I did not draw any illustrations in this blog post like I had planned (and WordPress kind of sucks, but coding html from scratch takes too long).
With that being said, let’s talk procrastination.
Procrastination
Sometimes doing the thing is really hard.
Specifically I’m going to talk about doing the things you actually want to do rather than the things you have to do.
I think planning and goals are really important, but I dislike how often poorly taught these concepts are. Which is why I won’t even try to take a stab at it for now, instead I’m going to talk about something simpler. How do I even start doing the thing?
In my case there were two big barriers that prevented me from even drawing when I wanted to.
- Getting started is incredibly difficult, changing a 0 to a 1 is always difficult.
- I don’t like compromising in my art. (It’s even painful to look at my own art.)
Both of these are really bad if you want to get better at drawing. I think I would spend more time thinking and worrying about drawing than actually practicing. Having input with occasional output isn’t much better than all output with no input. For the last 4 months I would say about a third of my free time was spent drawing which is certainly better than the 1 sketch every 3 months I used to do but still not ideal.
The hardest part is always starting that first sketch and turning the 0 into a 1.
Drawing is too hard, I see why people play video games instead. Never mind that I make playing video games as hard as possible on myself too, it will always be easier than drawing. Nowadays video games try really hard to keep you consistently playing to the point that it is a habit. The key to this is that convenience is really good at helping you overcome static friction.
I think that even if I start drawing and it only ends up being for 2 minutes it’s always going to lead to a better outcome than having never even started. Habits can take a really long time to build, but there are some ways to make it more convenient to start drawing.
The environment is important, I always keep my desk ready to start drawing. My drawing tablet is always right in front of me and I don’t need to go out of the way to find my sketchbook or set up any tools.
Recognizing how much energy I have and already knowing what I am willing to commit to is helpful too. If I’m low energy I like to sketch based on references or default to compositions/angles that I am comfortable with. It’s very helpful to make things as painless as possible and make drawing something relaxing after a long day. Kind of like free dopamine when you just want to swing big and do big dam in a game but a bit more productive. When I have more energy to work with, I can spend more time studying and challenging myself with new things.
Learning to accept compromise with my art was a little harder. I think this is partially due to a lack of goals or even losing sight of what I have actually achieved. I don’t think goals have to be anything too fancy, something like I want to learn how to draw hands and I’m going to dedicate my practice this month towards some nicer hands. Good focused practice is important, kind of like rhythm games. It’s better to practice at the point in the song where you fail and to practice songs that you can just barely pass.
As painful as it is, sometimes looking at my old art makes me realize that things will get better. If I expected something better it’s a very unrealistic expectation. A better mindset would be my efforts will definitely be rewarded and right now I’m just getting all the bad drawings out. I think it’s healthier to accept the flaws it has and moving on to the next drawing. I believe that sketching is very important to improving at art. The more often I place myself in the situation of needing to turn the 0 into a 1 the better.
Of course, that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t ever complete a piece of art until my technical skill is “good.” Almost everything is made with some sort of compromise. We can’t truly make everything as perfect as we want it to be and that’s what makes compromise a very human quality.
Practice should be consistent and focused. Habits help make it consistent but goals keep you in focus.
The horses that stave off my procrastination
Maybe you have a favorite athlete that you really relate to and always root for. As for me, I have horses or in other words, my oshis. Cygames is very good at writing complex, human characters out of horses. Which means they are also really good at selling me characters that I didn’t even pay attention to in the first place. They also got added into the game with perfect timing while I was really struggling with trying to consistently draw.
Anyways, Win Variation and Bubble Gum Fellow. I’ll keep it short since this is going to be a little preview of future posts to come.
Shion is a character that is painfully relatable to me. I think a lot of artists can relate to Shion’s struggles of trying to achieve the “ideal” but in the process, begin to doubt if all this practice on fundamentals is actually doing anything. Maybe I’m just not talented enough to achieve my ideal. It doesn’t help if you’re always seeing someone in front of you achieving everything you’ve always wanted. Even when you do achieve your ideal it may just be that the image of your ideal in your head was way too unrealistic to begin with.
Despite all this, Shion believes that hard work will eventually be rewarded and she turns these negative emotions into positive energy to continue on. I admire those qualities a lot.
I think in a way Bubble is more horse than human, she’s able to do anything she declares without fail. She’s the first to take on any kind of difficult challenge that would make most people hesitate. In other words, the first penguin to jump in and take the biggest risk. This is in a reference to the real horse being the first 3 year old horse to win the Tenno Sho Autumn, a race stacked with older and more proven horses. Although, being infallible at doing things doesn’t make you immune to a mental slump, or limitations of physical injuries.
Bubble is really good at helping me overcome procrastination. It feels good to declare you’re going to do something and then actually pulling it off.
So as Bubble always does, I’m making a declaration – I will draw illustrations in the next blog post.
Sometimes just declaring it aloud is good enough to stave off procrastination.
Also, both of these horses were very consistent at placing in the top 3, even if Win Variation never did manage to win a G1. Perhaps it’s that kind of consistency I also wish to achieve.
first, good luck on the dream of a journey