What's in a Pencil?

For as long as I can remember, I have loved to draw.

I still have drawings from when I was in the 1st grade. They include my dream-house on the beach. Dogs. People with abnormally large heads. As far as I can tell, they look thoroughly 1st grade.

Drawing is something that I've never really been able to stop. I go through spurts of intense sketching, but even when I am not in the midst of one of those times, I can't help but doodle. My class notes are heavily graffitied, and I often keep them around simply for those doodles.

I don't know what it is about tracing that perfectly sharpened pencil along the slightly rough paper that makes me so happy. Why should it calm, satisfy, and bring me joy to apply and relieve pressure on said pencil to create shading in a sketch?

Why do I enjoy something that really brings me a great deal of frustration? Why can't I get the eyes or the nose right? Why are teeth impossible? Why do I feel that I always get stuck with the same technique? Why, oh why, is painting soo difficult?

Why do I sit and stare at a piece of paper, holding my pencil at the ready, and find no inspiration? Why do I always look for the perfect photograph to transfer into work of my own hand?

Most of these drawings belong in the "I'll finish someday" category. I usually start out really excited about a project, and then I reach some sort of obstacle. One of those frustrations. And then I stop. And my picture stays in the book waiting to be complete.

I suppose I love drawing because whatever moment, whatever emotion is conveyed in a photograph, I feel I am able to experience in a new way. A deeper way. For example, when I sketched this picture of Jered and me, I got to relive the beautiful moment when he held my face in his hands and told me he loved me.

Or in this one, I was able to see the smile and imagine the laugh that I love so much. I was able to reflect on the joyful heart of my friend, Bek.

The emotion goes through me head the entire time I'm sketching. And then, in some fantastic way, it's as though it travels through my arm and my hand, somehow travels through the pencil, and comes out the end of my pencil. Maybe others can see that. Maybe not. I guess that's why sometimes I'm shy about my work...


So what is it about this whole drawing thing that I love, no matter how angry I get because of it? Drawing takes me to a different place. A place where I can escape the now, relive precious moments, focus on someone, wonder at my blessings, express frustrations and other emotions, and create a new way to appreciate memories and people.

Kate

This is Katie. Or Kathryn Anne if she's in trouble. Her face in this picture certainly suggests that hardly ever happens.

Katie is my sister. We will have been sisters and best friends for 20 years in about a month. Our early friendship was made up of playing with Barbies, pretending to be mermaids at the pool, watching Disney movies, playing with Beanie Babies, My Little Ponies, and Littlest Petshop, playing dress-up and "house," and playing with American Girl dolls. We knew how to have some serious fun.

Then we started going to school. We were three years apart, so we were in different circles at school until we reached high school. Katie was the main reason I remained sane my senior year. That year was her freshmen year, and we always spent time together whenever we had the chance. We were both over the high school scene, and ready for something bigger and better. Thank goodness we had each other.

When Kate and I are together, we feel like nothing could stop us from doing whatever we want, which is usually having fun and laughing. We are quite a force of nature together. Look out world!

Did I mention she's beautiful?
Inside and out. She has the most precious heart. Mercy is definitely one of her strongest spiritual gifts. She has such a heart for people. But let me warn you, she has some snap in her too. Some major snap. If it's a wake up call you need, Katie will give it to you. With gusto.

She has the most amazing eyes. They sometimes look brown. Sometimes, even a little green. But more often than not, they are this stunning amber color. I've never seen anything like them. They are the warmest you'll ever find, I'm certain. And they are huge. The best puppy dog eyes ever. She could get anything with them. Let me tell you, if Tyra needs help teaching those models how to smile with their eyes, she should call up Kate. She'll show them how it's done. She's fierce!


How can I explain all that is Kate in words? I was hoping to give a spectacular depiction of her, but I'm finding that is impossible. I'll try anyway. Katie is...sunlight. Her personality and her soul exude light. If I painted her, I would have soft, brilliant rays of light coming from the tips of her fingers, lips, hair, eyes, and hair.

Katie gives me a smile when I've misplaced mine. She cries when I cry. She makes me laugh. Oh my, she makes me laugh. And I'm not talking giggle. I mean side-splitting, tear-producing, blood-pumping, literally rolling on the floor laughing. And she can make it happen in so many ways. The way she talks, walks, runs on Black Friday, sings, dresses, quotes, tells stories, or takes five minutes to get a joke. She has a sense of humor that sometimes only I can appreciate. She has the best laugh. Listening to her laugh makes me laugh. It is so heartfelt, you can't help but smile. She trips up our stairs. Often. And then she laughs at herself until she cries. She did it this morning as a matter of fact. And goodness she has some attitude. I'm talking 'snap yo fingers and pout yo lips' attitude.

I guess the best way to see what Katie's like is to take a long car ride with her. You wouldn't regret it. Don't bother packing any kind of entertainment. She's allllll you'll need. She will sing at the top of her lungs for you, try to make friends with neighboring cars, make faces at said cars wearing tanning goggles, have a dance party in her seat, and whatever else happens to occur to her.

I decided to write about Kate because she is a large part of who I am. I just can't get enough of her. I'm disappointed already with what I wrote because I don't think it really captures all that Katie is... but... it will have to do for now.

Love ya Kate.

Explanation: Aimee, A History

Well, I am a new blogger. Who know's how long this will last... but we'll test it out anyway.

I had been pondering starting a blog for a few months, but then I continued to put it off. Who wants to read what goes through my mind, right?

I was inspired to follow through with it after reading the blogs of a young woman I really look up to. She is very much like me in many ways, although more mature, level-headed, eloquent in her thoughts, and much wiser. By simply reading her blog, I learned a great deal. My hope is that keeping a blog will allow my thought process to develop and become a bit more like this godly woman.

So where to begin? Maybe with the title I chose for my blog: Confessions of an Aimless Aim. Let's start with the most obvious part: Aim. That's me. Easy enough. Next: Confessions. I'm hoping that my blog will be a starting point for me to be more open and vocal. I'm not that open in "real life," so maybe this will help. Finally: Aimless. I've just graduated from college. If you count kindergarten, which I do, I have successfully completed 18 years of school. So far, the majority of my life has been spent sitting at a desk listening to varieties of teachers try to teach me something. Now I'm entering the "real world" with no idea of what I really want to do. That is my aimlessness in a very brief nutshell.

As I sit here in my room, thinking about what I could possibly write about that would contribute to my first entry, I am surrounded by unfinished projects. My sketchbook is next to me. It is one of many. Along with the rest of them, it contains pages and pages of half-drawn pictures. Pictures of my friends, Jered, dancers, strangers, etc.

Propped against the wall is a large frame my sister gave me. I mean, it's huge. I planned on making a collage to hang in my room. It is completely empty. She gave me the frame earlier this year.

My sister and I switched bedrooms when I left for Trinity three years ago. It seemed fair that she have the larger room since I wasn't going to be home. My new room is pink. Very pink. I've wanted to paint it since I moved into it. Like I said... it's been three years... and it's still quite pink.

In my closet, I have at least three scrapbooks. One for a specific trip, one for various things since high school, and one that I haven't even started yet. None of them have been touched in a couple years.

On my chair is my Ukraine journal/letter. I really wanted to be diligent about writing down everything, even the tiniest details so that I could remember as much as possible about the trip. I stopped two days before the trip ended, and I haven't spent the half an hour it would take to finish it.

My point is this: I have left so many things unfinished in my life. Some minor. Some not so minor. This is not a habit I care to continue. Hopefully, the motivation spurred on by the woman who inspired me to write this little bit about myself will carry through into other aspects of my life.