What a Humdrum Life…

 It’s funny that while most people are afraid of change, I beg for it.

The summer after my freshman year at college, I was so excited coming home. 

The summer after my sophomore year at college, I was dreading coming home.

So now here I am stuck in a rut feeling like I’m just wasting my time in this drab, lifeless town.  I have so many mundane and routine things that need to get done that I can’t bring myself to do.

All I know is that I don’t want to get stuck living this same pattern over and over.  I want to feel alive again so my life can look like this:

 I know I’m not the only one.  Have you ever felt so bored with life?  What do you do to get out of the “blandness of everyday routine” rut?  Let me know!

Tags: Art, College, Journal, Life, Painting, Personal, Summer

Oh so You’re…What Again?

When people ask me what I believe in (in terms of God), I don’t know what to say to them.  Not because I don’t know what I believe in but because there is no word for what I believe in.

There are so many names for different beliefs: Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, Agnosticism, Atheism, and so on. 

I don’t fall into any of those categories so when I try to explain with a few sentences what I believe, people don’t get it.  People just don’t understand which baffles me because I don’t think it is that hard of a concept. 

I remember once a friend asked what I believed in and I explained to him.  A few months later, he said something to the effect of “It would be funny to discover you could walk on water like Jesus, since you’re atheist and all.”  It made me so mad but I didn’t correct him, thinking ‘If he couldn’t understand what I had said to him before, I don’t want to waste my time explaining it again.’

You’re probably thinking ‘Get on with it woman – tell me your beliefs already.’

Simply put, my beliefs are that I believe in God, but I am not religious.

So no, not atheist.  Not agnostic, because I am not unsure about God – I believe in Him.  I don’t follow any religion not because I think religion is corrupt (though I don’t entirely disagree with that), but because I honestly don’t know which religion is right or if any of them are right. 

Let me explain.  I am Indian (like from the continent India – not Native American) and my family considers themselves Hindu, whether or not they personally believe in it.  That is, while my family is considered Hindu Indian – meaning our ancestors practiced Hinduism as opposed to other religions – my parents’ real beliefs are agnostic.

Coming from an agnostic family, I was never tied down to any particular religion growing up.  I was never taught that one religion was the right religion and the only way to God.  (There were times growing up when I considered myself religious and tried to follow Christianity or Hinduism, but I always left.)

Though I’m not saying that I don’t disagree with aspects of certain religion, I can’t judge each religion as a whole and decide whether it’s right or wrong.  Therefore, I do not follow any religions or consider myself religious.

So why, if I wasn’t taught to follow any particular religion, am I not atheist?  Or agnostic?  

That would be because I believe in souls.

I honestly cannot understand how there could be nothing after death.  I cannot understand how people can only consist of physical matter and nothing else.  People have life, people have a spirit to them that make them who they are (sorry for how cheesy this sounds).  When that life goes out of a physical body when he or she dies, I only wonder ‘where does that go?’  Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred, right?  Well, then where does someone’s energy, someone’s life, go after death?  It can’t be towards nothing.

I’m not saying my views should make sense to you.  What I believe in comes from sentimentality – definitely not science or logic – but to me, that’s enough.  I just hope people understand that while, no, I don’t believe in the Holy Ghost or Muhammad or Rama, I am also not atheist or agnostic. 

There isn’t really a word for what I believe in (not that I know of anyway), but I am sure when there are more people like me, there’ll be a name to box us in to.

Comments are always welcome!  Thanks for reading!

Note: The artwork at the top of the page is mine!  If I put others’ artwork on my blog, I will always give credit to them!

Tags: Art, God, Life, Personal, Religion, Spirituality

To Paint or Not To Paint

I realized in high school that I was good at art. 

In my high school painting class, one of our assignments was to pick an item and paint it in five different compositions (symmetrical, asymmetrical, chaotic, etc.).  We could paint the entirety of the item, a part of it, or many versions of it – we pretty much had free rein to use our imagination.  After looking at my one-dimensional umbrellas painted in five different (and unoriginal) ways, I realized taking this art class might not be such an easy A+ like I originally intended. 

Then, our next project was to make a collage of any topic and paint it.  I chose faces (which my art teacher warned me against saying it would be hard).  So I cut out pretty faces from fashion magazines.  Those (plus two other unrelated cutouts of a flower and the sky for the background) made up my collage that I then started painting.  The painting took over two weeks to complete but I learned so much from it that you can actually see how much I had grown in just that one painting.  You can tell which parts I started painting first, just from the bad blending and one-dimensional colors, and which I finished last.

Can you tell when I started which parts? 

Ever since then, art became such a big part of my life.

 

 

 

 

I thought art would be something I would always do, even if it’s just as a hobby.

Wrong.  It’s been two years now since I’ve done any art.  I’d lost inspiration for it but now, after looking back, I really want it back.  The excitement from coming up with an idea for a piece.  The intensely serious feeling of needing to paint everything just right.  And of course, the burst of proudness and giddiness from finishing a piece.  

I had already tried so hard to come up with something, anything, in the last two years.  Without inspiration, however, my efforts always ended with only a lonely paper wracked with unidentifiable scribbles to show for.  Maybe this summer, I can regain some of my passion for art back. 

Now that I’ve shown you some of my old art pieces, I’m hoping I can come with some new pieces to show.  Fingers crossed!

Tags: Art, Drawing, Inspiration, Paint, Painting