2026 has been going pretty good so far. i started calorie counting in February and now, six months later, i've hit the weight goal that i've been struggling to reach since 2024! i've locked in on running, managing to make it a consistent habit after 2 years of on and off training. no surprise, both of these habits have been feeding into each other nicely.
unfortunately, the weight goal and running goal only check off two of the five boxes for the year, and the year is already half way over. worse: two of the remaining three goals involve making phone calls. which means, the next goal i'm going to start working on is:
Learning How to Draw Faces
ok, some dumb self-indulgent preamble because i also want to practice writing
I've loved drawing since i was a kid. imagination was the place i spent most of my childhood, so there was something compelling, even if i couldn't articulate it, about translating that realm into the real world.
The Holy Writ of this Sacrament was the 1978 classic "How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way". between the thinly veiled advertisement and glazing of marvel comics, there was an actually very good introduction to perspective, proportion, and foreshortening.
unfortunately, this scripture also offered a crutch: drawing masked superheros is great for figure drawing, but the artist doesn't have to draw spider-man's face if he doesn't want to. and lo, he did not.
i spent a lot of time in my teen years drawing, and never practiced faces. eventually, the things i wanted to draw had faces, and suddenly drawing wasn't effortless anymore. I found it increasingly embarrassing to draw a body well, and be completely stumped by the head. i also didn't want to practice, ever, so the whole enterprise was abandoned.
i've picked up some creative hobbies since then. TTRPGs have been the perfect fit for what my childhood brain was operating with, so its no surprise that i find the hobby very fulfilling. i've been running 1-2 games (somewhat) regularly for the last 5 years, and every once in a while i think "huh, it would be fun to be able to draw this character". fool that i am! that character has a face.
So something's gotta change.
TLDR: i was a kid with free time at some point
So, the problem: i suck at drawing faces. i suck at perceiving faces, describing faces, recognizing faces. when someone changes hairdo or glasses, its over for me. if i haven't been talking to you once a week for the last 5 years, you could be a stranger. Its a group of muscles that i haven't tried to exercise, ever.
I want to apply the lessons i've learned with my other goals this year, to start exercising those muscles.
lesson one: being vulnerable
this one comes with the territory when starting anything in your 30s. the people around me who are good at a thing have been practicing for years. I associate the start of a learning journey with childishness, simply because so many learned people started that journey in their childhood. If i'm going to start, i'm going to have to grapple with my pride and insecurity.
When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up
- c. s. lewis
allowing myself to be vulnerable, to be an absolute beginner, is the requisite first step. My first drawing is going to be shit. everybody's first try is. I'm not special. i'm not better than everybody else. I'm allowed to suck ass for a long time before i'm a little ok at a thing.
lesson two: iteration and progression
running has been a really positive hobby this year. the secret has been slow, steady progression. its very rewarding to see my efforts improve. i started this year struggling to complete a 5k, and now i'm running a sub 30 minute 5k three times a week.
setting a consistent challenge is important. set the starting point low, and ramp up just a tiny bit every time. demanding huge results right away is how you discourage yourself into giving up. i'm so glad that 3 years ago, i struggled to run for 60 seconds at a time. if i had tried to run for 120 seconds, i would have given up.
being able to see my progression was very helpful. tracking runs, tracking time, tracking weight, giving myself a graph with a line lets me celebrate those little achievements.
i think with this drawing goal, being intentional about saving the drawings in a way that i can scrub through them and notice my progress is going to be very important.
lesson three: intention
I'm the least sure of what this one is. on the other hand: once i figure it out, i will be unstoppable. what is the difference between wanting to do something and doing it. surely to do something, you just have to want to do it? isn't that how intention works? I don't know. maybe that part of my brain doesn't work right.
with weight loss, it was downloading an app that made it exciting to log calories, instead of boring and frustrating. It was finding a good recipe for a breakfast scramble that i could look forward at night. it was buying a bunch of freezer safe pyrex containers.
with running it was setting a reminder for bed time. it was laying out my running clothes. it was getting a fancy sunlight alarm clock.
maybe its all about removing the little barriers from the path the day before, instead of letting them all pile up at the starting line. maybe its arranging my life so that its harder procrastinate than it is to do the work.
maybe for drawing, it will be blocking out time on my calendar. maybe it will be putting reminders on my phone so that i don't only remember practice an hour after practice time is over. maybe its making a space where i can't be distracted by my phone or computer. maybe its making a playlist of music right now, instead of during drawing time. maybe its thinking about the logistics of, "wait, how do i see the reference image if i'm leaving my laptop in the other room so that it doesn't distract me?"
the plan
i'm writing this out here to force myself to actually make the plan.
- Practice is 3 days a week, 30 minutes a night
- The first 3-4 weeks of drawings i'm going to save privately, but after that i'm going to start sharing my progress. otherwise, all my talk about allowing myself to be a beginner is just talk
i'm using going to try www.sketchdaily.net for face references, but if you know a better collection, please let me know.