One foot on the ground.

A couple of days ago, I felt like I’ve lost that drive to waking up and doing something productive. I felt like everything has started to get ‘old’, as what my boyfriend would say. I actually seemed to be losing interest in life - generally. I was not at all inspired. 

Last night, I got home really early from work (which, thankfully, was something new). So I decided to take out my sketch pad, pen and the fashion book Matt gave me for Christmas last year. I started designing clothes again. I haven’t done it in a long time and I’ve almost forgotten how good it makes me feel. I remember that a few days ago, my boyfriend’s mom, who happens to be an artist, complimented one of my sketches (one which my boyfriend posted online). To her, it could have been just a simple thing to do but for me, it meant a lot. To get a compliment from your boyfriend’s mom/an artist - really? Who wouldn’t feel good?

As I was sketching  mindlessly sketching sketching, I realized something about working with a pencil and a pen. I even got to relate them with life.

When I write, draw or sketch using a pencil, I usually don’t get to finish it. Why? Because there will always be that ‘eraser’ on the other end of it. Whenever something goes wrong with my work, I depend on the eraser. It helps, yeah, to erase what I’ve done wrong, but I lose interest in my work. It’s not perfect anymore. Parts have been erased already. It will forever be incomplete.

But when I do use a pen, with permanent black ink, I tend to finish my work. I don’t need the eraser to correct what’s wrong with my work. In fact, I only need more ink and creativity to make them right without erasing them. They’re all part of my work. Wrong curves, excessive lines, corrections everywhere -it completes the whole thing. It’s more satisfying because I know I did everything.

It’s pretty much similar with life. We make mistakes and there’s nothing we can do to erase them from our lives. Trying to erase them is like running away from them, not knowing that wherever you go, you still carry them around. We don’t have an ‘eraser’ to make the bad things disappear but we do have the ability to make them right. So face the consequences, learn from them and start growing. We just have to figure it our ourselves. Every mistake we made, every sad memory we’ve had, every unpleasant things we’ve said.. we can’t change them. There are reasons why we did them, why we have them - that’s to make us who we are today. 

We are all pens with permanent black ink. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes and don’t try erasing them. Face them, make them right and be brave. Life is all about living - that includes everything, pleasant and not. Accept that.

So just keep scribbling and don’t forget to keep doing what you love doing!