WHAT’S ON YOUR PAGE? II

Hello and welcome to a brand new segment of WHAT’S ON YOUR PAGE? the space where we analyze and judge the deeply personal sketches I have jotted down throughout the previous week… or not.

Let’s get rockin’ !

I call this one “Ode to my ongoing battle with social media addiction that I am loosing”. I wanted to depict the feeling of opening an app just for a glance and instantly being sucked in for 30 mins to 2 hours of brain melting dead time.

I’ve recently quit smoking after years of failed attempts and yet I feel social media addiction is a bigger plight on one’s life than any other. The most insidious aspect of it is that most people don’t seem to be aware of it’s existence. As if there was nothing better to spend half of all one’s waking hours that following other peoples lives.

After writing this text I’ve already thought of three clearer, cleverer, more impacting ways of expressing this thought. But at the time I drew this, I had just torn myself out of one of these social media comas, and didn’t have much brain juice left to give.

I guess in some ways that reinforces the point.

I’m rather happy with this one. Although it’s not especially profound it’s that one in ten where all the sub-objectives line up and meet in the middle.

I woke up grotty and strongly disagreeing with gravity. I may have been hung over. I started off with just a grumpy bed-headed, mug in handed, me. Realizing this didn’t do my sate justice, I started adding more and more mugs.

So it’s sincere and came from my current feelings, it developed as it was being created, it’s simple yet very relatable, and visually appealing. Even looks good in a circle. Meets a lot of my desired outcomes.

Unfortunately, I think it was so satisfying that it motivated my inner “make stuff other people will like” pressure.

So I missed a day. That’s the kind of thing that would poke at my neurotic OCD , but as this is a therapeutic project, I try not to let it get to me. Ruben, you are forgiven.

Time-wasting. My #1 pet peeve. Not time-using, time-wasting.

I like to be productive and put my time to good use. Maybe a little too much. I also consider rest a very useful and productive use of my time, when done properly. Loosing time to addictions such as social media (yes, this again) does not count as rest.

This is a jab at myself for continuously and consciously wasting my own time.

Missed another one :/

Don’t worry, this isn’t the beginning of the end. Just getting into the groove of things.

No, this isn’t erotic. Although the thought did cross my mind as I was drawing it and I made no effort to steer away from it, so whatever.

T’is what it says on the tin. I felt like I had too many different things on my plate and was being pulled in all different directions. This isn’t an uncommon sentiment of mine, I frequently go from feeling like a god who can do everything at once to suddenly being overwhelmed and wanting to drop it all.

I keep finding new ways to express these sentiments as I write about them, maybe I’ll revisit and expand each concept one day. I could categorize the themes and explore each one as much and in as many different ways as possible. Then collect them all and hey presto! book deal.

Same ol’ same ol’. It seems the predominant theme of this week has been fuzzy headedness, absent minded, overloaded, however you want to put it. Drawn, once again, after spending too much time on social media.

I like using myself as a character for these pieces because it’s what come most naturally to me and I don’t want to inhibit that, but I do want to try and keep it from having the opposite effect. Maybe if I get too used to it I will be stuck in a chronicles of Ruben project rather than a conceptually free-flowing brain juicing project. I will endeavor to draw something other than myself, without completely banning the practice.