Passing Nadir Point

 April has been a Nadir Month in our household's present trajectory. The good thing about elliptical orbits is that we have to eventually come back.

This titan project in particular was bound to hit a rough patch right around here. Leg #1 was fun. It was difficult-going, but everything was new, exciting.

That was March though. April was Leg #2. No craziness, just repetition. Lots of repetition. Often my camera fails to capture the day's progress. Words leave me. Things aren't fun anymore. Basic Nadir Stuff.

However. We are almost through all that. We're getting to the point where any day now I can say "Look, it's half a titan." Very soon.

So checklist of things that need to happen before we move on to the upper body:

• Titan toes
• More insulation foam to cover bald spots on the base.
• Glue and construction sand all over the base.
• A knee cap for leg #2.
• Spikes on upper leg #2.
• Plasticard detail work on same.
• Pelvis needs several layers of detail treatment.
• Rivets on upper legs and pelvis
• Final installation of hidden tripod support system inside lower leg #2
• Final detail inspection and resolving any areas that ended up being too bare.
• Decide whether to glue everything together or keep sections modular.

Things are looking up. Thanks for the support!

Get Happy!

What's my purpose here again? To inform you that progress proceeds? Mostly to exorcise the mental refuse that disrupts the purity of manufacture. I am disconnected from proper happiness and contentment until I can upload these pictures and type some stuff. Then it all clicks and I am filled with enough contentment to accept the present circumstances.

So I've been working on this for a little over a month now. Feeling pretty good overall about the direction. Finding outlets for feedback has been a chore. All my old internet watering holes for projects like this seem to have mostly dried up, and I'm not really interested in posting on places like FB.

Who needs feedback anyway. Ah, I do. But what's the cost those so-inclined have to pay for community? Well, depending on the community you are opening yourself up to all manner of problems. The internet's broken. There's too much aggression and bile. You open yourself up to ridicule and willful misrepresentation any time you choose to transmit an idea here.

So for now I post here in the old quiet places, devoid of life. For my sanity. Something I can go back and check on in the future maybe.

Backside view.

Much work on the base.

Get happy!

New/Old Signal Detected

Something I'm working on. More on this in a minute.

Truth be told, I remember very little of 2013 through 2017. Some parts of it blaze bright in my memory's eye, but as I look through my last series of posts I feel like I'm looking at someone else's life. There's a sense of alarm now, like I've misplaced house keys. The root of this confusion is chronic physical pain from a work accident, and a sluice of medications that helped me get through each day.

I have survived. I'm back to work for over a year now, restored to the point where I can function and contribute to my family's well-being. Moving forward, it's not merely enough to survive. I am back to looking for that struggle for purpose that drives us all.

I make stuff. I don't know if you can call it art. I used to do that. You can trace the chimeric history of this blog and see there was a point where I used to do Art with a capital A. Fine art for art galleries that people could buy and hang on their walls. There were realities associated with that as a career that I was not really equipped to handle, then or now. I'm not sure I was ever really wired for that life.

So now the lion's share of my day goes to working at a job that pays (some?) of the bills, raising kids, and being a husband. There are particles of free time that fall through these various nets. 15 minutes here or there, an hour after the kids go to bed, or blissful Saturday mornings, where I get to reconnect with the core of my being and make things.

None of this is new. Writing about my adventures was an old thing. Trying to be honest with myself, accountable. Sometimes lying to myself. I think it's all been done. I keep forgetting though. So right now this is new! Join me for what comes. Or don't.

I'm better now. Self-actualized, which is a term I made up and will happily apply to myself on good days. I want to be even better than this though.

Project update.... Well, right now there's too much to sift. It's a moving stream. I lack the aptitude to lay it all out at this time. Maybe later I'll do a retrospective to get us all caught up. This project is new. Or sort of old when you get down to the foundation. It's a model based off my buddy's model. We can be cool and call them sculptures. It's just a label.

Here:

Lower half so far

Two lower halves meet up for a walk