Today I suddenly felt like my brain has been choking my heart. Sometimes I feel like those two are always in a battle.

I feel like I need some new hobbies, or rather, I feel like I need to get back into my old hobbies. I checked out a book about skateboard art and another book about Zines. I miss making stuff in Photoshop, stencils, drawing, web design, etc. When I was subscribed to Transworld Skateboarding my favorite thing each week was an article about some artist who was related to the skateboard industry.

Favorites that I can remember:
Andrew Pommier
Lori D
This dude

I had more to link to but I just went to the site that listed the links I wanted to get to and realized it's gone now. Which makes me sad because I have no other way of ever getting to it.

Update: I just found them thanks to the internet archive. But there aren't as many there as I thought there were.

I always feel super insecure about any artwork that I do. Especially at BYU. Mostly because I know nothing about art. I stopped taking art classes in 9th grade. (I just dropped out of one yesterday also.) But I want to do it more and just learn as I go and not worry about theory or whatever. It's not like it will be my job. Plus, I am one of those people who wants to get into a new thing so I spend a lot of time reading and learning about it and never actually doing it. I think it will be good practice to say, "I'm doing this. React how you will" and then put it out there without more thought to it.

I realize that I miss doing all the creative stuff I used to do in High School though. A lot. I got pretty decent at Photoshop and stuff back in those days. I am going to post this motion graphics thing I made. It's not super awesome but I think it was pretty good for what it was at the time. I was 16 when I made it.

Also, I notice that whenever I go through identity crises (which seem to happen to me every few months since being at college) I almost always remember skateboard culture that I was so into growing up and realize that is how I feel comfortable defining myself. Sometimes I feel like I'm just some intruder kid from Wyoming trying to fit myself into some subculture where I don't belong or don't understand, but then I realize that that's BS and that growing up skateboarding is what influenced me and my interests and what made me what I am today instead of some kid working at a gas station back home at 22, married to some girl I knocked up while listening to Toby Keith in the back of my truck. Skateboard culture is so much more than just skateboarding though. I feel like, to a certain extent, skateboarding is sort of a safehouse for misfits (in a positive way). It's a positive place for those who don't feel connected to mainstream culture, (but, like I said, in a positive way.) For those that realized that there's just a lot of cruel pretentious bullshit going on in society for no good reason and it's a safe place to step back from all the social facades and be real. (As a disclaimer, there are always a bunch of punk ass kids at the skatepark who don't get it and are just straight up punks, but that's not what it's about. Those who are truly in touch with the culture realize it's more than that.) I feel like I'm doing a terrible job at explaining this. I wish I had all my old magazines because I could quote an article about that. I always feel at home when I realize that. I never feel out of place and I never feel like I'm trying to be something I'm not. One time freshman year one of my sister's older friends asked me, "So what are you all about man?" and I really didn't know how to answer him, which made me feel like I didn't know who I was, what I was doing in life, and what I cared about. Which was true. Then later that year when I moved back home and starting skateboarding with my younger friends and reading skate magazines and watching videos a lot I felt like I had rediscovered a part of myself that I had forgotten was at my core. It wrote the thesis statement for my life.

On a side note: Today I think I decided that I like Philosophy more than Sociology. That's fine though, because I'm already 1/3 done with a Philosophy minor.