How sad, no more colorful journal but I have other things
I'd rather spend the money to subscribe on.

I used to write a million lengthy journals, I thought maybe I was sharing too much but I couldn't stop myself. And then I could. I just stopped, who knows why, maybe I grew out of it. I stopped doing much on deviantART, except submitting artwork when I had it. I intend to keep doing that, and I've got some things at school that I need to photograph and post when break is over.
Despite my lack of activity, I've received a number of favorites and watches which I am very, very, very thankful for. If you're reading this, I'm sorry if I haven't thanked you individually yet. My tendency is to want to expend a great deal of energy looking at favoriters and watchers galleries and thanking them... but this is exhausting so I end up not doing anything at all which is not the best strategy, hopefully I will put in the time for satisfactory thank yous soon.

Probably a large contributers in my graviton away from deviantART are my growing circle of actual, real, life friends living close enough to me for frequent socialization, and my adoption of two new passions: Argentine tango and cooking which leave time for little else besides studying. Hopefully I will begin to incorporate both these new loves into my artwork and writing.

Things Cooking in my Brain

Gender studies- depictions of femininity, specifically in visual culture. The appeal of the sexualized female body in conflict with the responsibility of the educated and gender conscious to promote positive and healthy images of femininity in a culture in which oversexualization and female objectification are something of a norm. Depictions of men frequently aren't balanced or healthy either.

Vintage Posters, esp. Art Nouveau. Visually appealing designs and images. Hopefully I will be studying lithography next quarter and will be able to learn the technique used in creating many of these posters.

Music and dance- how does one capture something so ephemeral and intangible in a still image? What would that look like? I have some cool ideas.

Aaaand... I want to make a web gallery. Something simple but interesting. Haven't gotten around to that yet, but hopefully I'll stop reading long enough over break to start something.

Geeky Little Things:

Harry Potter. I thought I could just let it go and grow out of it. A couple months after the seventh book I stopped listening to my Harry Potter podcasts and called it a wrap. The Tales of Beedle the Bard came out and I didn't buy the book up for several weeks. Then I did, along with Harry a History tagline: the true story of a boy wizard, his fans, and life inside the Harry Potter phenomena, by Melissa Anelli of Pottercast (my favorite Harry Potter podcast) and The Leaky Cauldron.

It is amazing to read a journalistic exploration of something that's been such a big part of my life, especially something as seemingly trifling in the real world as the Harry Potter fandom. The book has brought back memories of my own experiences with the online Harry Potter community and has illuminated just how big the whole thing was, how new and different it was from anything that had happened before and the role of the Internet in bringing so many fans together and allowing ordinary fans to reach levels of enormous celebrity within the fan community without leaving their own computers.

It's been a fun, informative book to read and it's made me realize just how much Harry Potter has shaped my life, just how much my early days in the fandom have shaped how I use and understand the internet and has given me some idea of how dramatically it has effected the lives of many, many people.

And I realized that I'll probably never, every stop loving Harry Potter.


And so we conclude another epic journal entry, when I start writing it takes a long time for the words to stop coming.

I hope to hear from some of you, old friends and new. I promise I'll reply.