COOLFROGS

Snapped an excellent picture of the frog yesterday.

I have recently been struggling with the ability to slow down. The id has been shot— that lil feller desires instant satisfaction and I’ll tell you he gets his dopamine in droves.

The modern world seeks to shrive us of our complete and total control; self discipline is almost seen as a negative per causation of the short-form life essence farm that is the ever churning internet. And when I say self discipline, I’m not talking about the hoity-toity nature of fitness culture or some Tik Tok life coach broad’s GRWM, I mean more about the excess we consume as a whole from the soul eater that is the digital plane.

Recently, for me, one of the strangest (and most distressing) problems caused by this is the inability to rest mentally. The allotment of time between full-time work, a spouse, and the most dangerous of afflictions: vision. I inundate my mind with countless projects and creative outlets that ultimately culminate in that wretched crash. But in enduring this through rough times, the common human condition of procrastination, of which I have had a keen inclination towards within previous ruts, is seemingly nixed for something worse. There is a total apathy towards everything physical, almost a deeper symptom of selfishness than this procrastination. It becomes an apathy towards pain, pleasure, excitement, misery. It only becomes greatly inflamed by the sight-catching nature of the web.

This has been for the better half of a year. Between constant health problems and this apathy I had became more than that of a dull blade, but altogether a flaccid, rubbery prod without insomuch as a glimmer of gorgeous light refracting in its craftsmanship. Something you’d laugh at. It created an odd place within my mind, an aspiration to reach that state as the once-sharp knife without a true desire for it. It became a fear, a fear that it would not return. A state of terror and torpor. In slumber, dreaming I of rising.

However recently, I have found a glimmer of hope that has driven me. I cannot lie and say I feel consciously the same as did, say, three years ago. Yet I feel like as I cleave my pick into the ice wall of which I had fallen down many moons ago, I reach further upwards to the stage at which I will return to my mental stronghold captured barbarically by the Bannerets of Despair.

In this, I plan to post here more often. To update regularly with projects and plans I have over the next year. Whether that be simple wood carvings, something I wrote, or perhaps hopefully even updating my journey towards a Computer Engineering degree. For those that would read and peruse what I post here— my sincerest thanks.

As I end this post, let me be clear: I find that beyond the the bounds of the constant machine of hopelessness that is the virtual, and the musings of my mind there is a central hope. What I wrote here will certainly be the most morose thing I post on COOLFROGS.blog. It is merely a preface to my future plans, my reasoning for this den of dewy little amphibians and wonderful works. Do not be dismayed, and remember,

GATORS WILL SAY IT’S AI.