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problem solving steps

my name is rumi. i am poor, and i am in massive amounts of credit card debt.

many of you already know about what’s going on with my life (lost my full time job in march 2025 and just now got a new one that i have yet to start, mom has terminal cancer, etc), and on top of all that, i’m planning to move in april. moving to a new place and having a new job will do wonders for my finances, but right now, i owe thousands of dollars to american express and i need help.

my credit card has been my fallback for necessities over the past several months. i haven’t been able to keep up with it. i’m ashamed and embarrassed. besides that, i desperately need my credit score to be in a good place for this move. if this move falls through, i’m genuinely fucked.

i have set a ko-fi goal in order to visualize my progress toward getting my card paid off. i cannot guarantee being able to keep up with commissions, as i already have a backlog that i need to catch up on, but i will do my absolute best to repay everyone who helps in whatever way they want.

if you can’t assist financially, a reblog helps too. this is a goal i am hoping to meet by the end of october if at all possible. i will make this post unrebloggable once my goal is met.

thank you all so much. my life is yours.

As a former music teacher, I can also say that "learn the fundamentals first" is the death knell for a vast percentage of beginners, especially adult learners.

I've run into this with drawing several times, where some well-meaning artist has lectured me on needing to study anatomy properly or not use shortcuts like CSP brushes. And oh, believe me, I know. I know exactly how to learn an artistic discipline in a structured way. I just...don't want to!

The thing is, I'm not aiming to be a professional artist. I want to draw my gay little anime guys. I would undoubtedly improve at art much faster if I approached every gay little anime guy drawing as a study exercise. But I would also have quit drawing a decade ago if I couldn't just let myself enjoy drawing imperfect fucked-up little guys with whatever shortcuts I needed to body myself across the finish line.

With my adult piano students, my approach was always "What's your goal?" If their goal was to learn exactly one Elton John songbook to play at parties, then...that's what we did. We'd put tape on the keys to label the notes, and just fuckin go for it. Learning exactly one Elton John songbook is a good and noble musical goal, full stop.

Some of my students needed and enjoyed a more structured approach to learning; if they wanted to be able to play classical music, then yes, scales were going to have to enter the equation at some point. And yet others would learn the Elton John songbook, catch their white whale, and realize they wanted to explore more of the ocean. The scales were still there for them to learn!

Often the choice isn't between "learn art well" and "learn art imperfectly" - the choice is between "learn art imperfectly" and "don't do art at all." To which I say, learn imperfectly! Or, what the hell, don't 'learn' art. Just do, and enjoy the doing of it.

Martano's gaze was level and unmoving, and it was not on Curufinwë’s face.