by Henk ter Heide on Monday August 11, 2008
Going through a little dip.
About ones a year (I think), I lose my ability to think in pictures. I don’t know why that happens. Whether it has something to do with the season or just with being tiered or something.
When it happens it feels as though my world comes to an end.
I can’t think and I can’t think about doing anything.
Although I have had this many times before and it always passes, I never remember that while it’s happening. It always feels as though an important piece of my life will be forever gone.
The strange thing is that activities that are totally unrelated to thinking in pictures also come to a halt.
When I can’t think in pictures I can’t draw. That sounds kind of logical.
Nor can I write. That may sound less logical to people who think in words. But I have to see the story in my mind before I can write it down.
But what I don’t understand is why I can’t do my fitness trainings. Not only does it become utterly boring but I don’t have the energy.
And then it passes.
After a few weeks my ability to think in pictures comes back. But I never notice that it has come back.
I start thinking in pictures again as though I had been doing that all along. Without realizing that it was something that had been missing for a few weeks.
So instead of picking up where I left of I go on doing nothing for a few more weeks.
Nothing as in watching TV and doing video games. Which is fun but it leads to nothing.
Only today I realized that my ability to think in pictures had left me and had come back and that I should resume working on my blog.
I just checked that stats of my RSS feed for the first time in almost a month. I found that although I hadn’t written anything in almost a month I haven’t lost a reader.
So may I extend a warm felt “thank you” to my loyal readers.
Thank you!
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Saturday December 8, 2007
Discovering that I can deviate from a habit without being at a turning point in my life.
I might as well give up. My life is a failure.
I used to sport every Monday and Friday. But now it’s gone.
Last week I was thinking about going to the sauna. I didn’t but by the time I decided not to go it was to late to go sporting.
This Friday I had to go out to buy a new coat and next week I’ll have to go to the autism club.
That’s it. No more sport.
And if I can’t succeed at sporting twice a week then I won’t succeed in drawing and writing a blog. I might as well stop with both.
This is been going on for whole of my life. Eventually I fail at everything I ever tried. My mother is always reminding me that I’m a failure.
She’s right. But I wish that she would stop saying it.
I just caught myself going down familiar a slope.
But for the first time in my life I realized something about habits:
I’m autistic. I need my habits. I need it that everything goes the way it always goes.
But although it feels like the end of the world to deviate from a habit, it isn’t.
I’ll go on drawing and writing and although I’ll only sport ones next week the week after everything will return to normal.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.
by Henk ter Heide on Thursday June 21, 2007
Did you know that every day about 170,000 people start a blog and about 120,000 blogs die?
Apparently most people blog for about two months and then they give up. Since most people who stop blogging don’t write a goodbye note nobody really knows why, but probably because people run out of ideas to write about.
I never quite understood that. There are thousands of subjects in the world and being on the Internet you run into them on a daily basis. So how could you run out of ideas.
Swimming trunk boy portrait blending colors 1th sketch
But this morning I run into my own little dip. I had the feeling that I was nearing the end of my rope. That it would be only a matter of time before I’d run out of things to say.
There is only so much you can tell about yourself. I’ve told you about autism. I’ve told you about my work. I’ve published my old stories that tell a lot about who I was before I found that I’m autistic (all be it in Dutch). So what to talk about next…
If this was just a other personal blog intended to tell the story of my live this would be the end of it.
But this isn’t just an other personal blog. This is the place were I publish my drawings and although I don’t know what I could talk about next, my drawings are still going strong. There are a few subjects I want to learn to draw; people, animals and trucks. Every time I run out of ideas about the next subject for a drawing, I try one of those and without exception I find that I have to try some new technique and thinking about this new technique I have several ideas about drawing I can do.
The stories I tell aren’t that important. In a sense they are only bait to get the search engine to index my page.
After climbing out of my dip I discovered that I was to pessimistic. Actually I’m still gaining speed. As I predicted a while ago my drawing skills increase and with that my drawing speed and the joy of drawing.
This week I even missed a few of my favored TV shows because I was busy drawing.
As for stories to tell. I have some. Slowly I’m getting a nose for interesting stories on sites as digg and in newspapers. Something else that I though of was something we did in school. You’d get a picture and had to think of a story. I make my own pictures, lets see if I can think up a few stories.
If you like the stories I tell. Or like the art and music I show. Feel free to leave a donation.