No, the title doesn’t come from the game. (I actually stopped following gaming stuff years ago.) The title comes from that old Joy Division song.

I’ve recently felt that there’s certain things that keep calling out to me. I always end up circling back to them. The biggest thing is “filling sketchbooks.” All over TikTok, Instagram, etc you see these artists creating and curating these amazing sketchbooks. Each one a work of art in it’s own right. I am so envious. I’ve never been one of those artists. My thoughts during the creation process are often unfiltered, raw, conceptual and unorganized. Artists out there who choose sketchbooks as their main media source really intrigue me.

If I look back on my sketchbooks, they are a reflection of my state of mind. I actually have a sketchbook that I keep going back to. I have committed to filling it and finishing it, often pasting in scraps of doodles and pictures I’ve drawn separately, in an attempt to complete it and close that off and give myself some closure. The amazing thing… it is well over 20 years old. Still in great shape, still with many other pages to fill. Some days it feels like a daunting task – I prefer the quickness and ease of the digital space. Command-Z to delete mistakes and redraw – with pencils, pen and paper – there are little to no “undo-s”. You’re often stuck having to work out problems, or just abandon ideas that just aren’t working.

Maybe that’s what I need to do with that old sketchbook. But I can’t – it keeps calling me… like the song.

I watch my daughter fly through her sketchbooks – snippets of her imagination, tastes, skills, all there ready for review. She is a natural. Springing into action. Drawing. Painting. She documents it all in her stack of sketchbooks. She has flown through them at a gallop – and I love it. But I’m also extremely envious of her ability to freely go in and create. I’ve always had this blank page paralysis, or this need to make things noticeably perfect. It kills creativity and motivation. It deadens my creative soul, thinking that I WANT to create something in that book, get one step closer to finishing it from end to end, so I can look back at that white whale and smile.

Right now, I’m just not feeling it. But I know it will call out to me again…