you know, i've been thinking about how easily it is for me to champion other people. now it's time for me to champion myself. i have championing tendencies. i've grown confident of my abilities and who i am as a person, but that's always come with some sort of smokescreen. which leads me to think, for what? and the only answer i can come up with is that there was once a time where i wasn't able to be everything that i was outright. i could be loud, if others weren't louder. i could be funny, if people were in the mood for it. i observed my environment and pivoted. poise and control was the name of the game. i learned how to read a room before i even learned how to read. isn't that a funny thing? so that led me to a sort of fortified onion-like persona. just when i'm certain that it's safe, absolutely safe, can my layers be peeled back. and it makes me almost mad at myself for doing that because i know i have the strength to deal with things, but i don't think that my inner child has ever gotten rid of that primal fear. while raised by good and kind people, they were suffering of things that i didn't even have a name for, but now i do. alcoholism, bravado, suicidality and attempts. so i became a parent to my parents, and once out of their house, i became a crutch for people. it's what i did because i didn't know anything different. it was easy. until it's not. and of course, there will always be residual anger that i ever needed to do that in the first place. but the stunning and shimmering thing is that it doesn't need to be anymore. i've always given freely and without qualms, but it's like, you can still give while keeping rations for yourself. i've always had an inherent softness that is mine to keep, but to give it away exhaustively to people who don't deserve it is not selfless. it's martyring yourself. and i don't, at the present, have the words to articulate this to the degree that i mean to, but it makes sense in my head. i won't stop giving. never that. i'll just be smarter about it. anyway, i got really inspired by the color phthalo green for this spread. it always has a way of reminding me of bob ross (even though i'm pretty sure he used phthalo blue). there was a time when i'd use his show to fall asleep. it somehow appears cold at first, but warm too at the same time, and i find myself enjoying things like that.