Very Important Announcement!!! Musings of an Anthropology Student Has a New Subsection called...Artist's Corner!

'Tis a side project for me to work on when I get that pesky writer's block while writing about anthropology

Hello hello, Fellow Musers! To any new Musers receiving this notice who joined after I did my first two posts, thank y’all so so much for subscribing to Musings! You will get a proper Shoutout and a hearty Huzzah! once my anthropology post comes out! Speaking of that future post…

As of this writing, I am still working on my Cultural Anthropology post that I had to start over on because I hated how it was sounding (too academic, not enough casual). That post is still being worked on, much progress has indeed been made, and it will be available sometime this month. I do apologize for not having it out yet! However, I just wanted to let y’all know about a new section to Musings that I hope y’all will enjoy! Huzzah!

Aaaaand just like our mobile ancestors before us, we are moving onward

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to the second and equally important reason for this announcement!

Something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while (in addition to sharing my passion for anthropology with y’all) is to share my artwork on the interwebs…specifically my work that deals with mental health-specifically depression. I hope that by putting my work out here it will help someone (or many someones) who also struggle with socially perceived negative mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. I will also be looking at the artwork that I post through the lens of anthropology. Sometime in the future, I will also do a post in the Anthropology section about how some feelings and emotions are believed by physical/biological anthropologists to be adaptations by looking at a few of them via the lens of evolutionary theory and medicine.

Honestly, the artwork that I’ve done concerning emotions and feelings like depression isn’t much, and the image is mainly the same same image but with added artistic mediums. I originally wanted to do this via Instagram, but I believe that Substack will be a much better fit for this specific content. I am NOT a doctor or a health professional. I will not give advice, I will only explain the art and what I remember going through mentally as I was creating the piece.

If you feel that you need to talk to someone, please please please seek out a mental health professional. There are some excellent ones out there! I myself have been going to see a counselor since 2014. I resisted at first, but it’s been one of the BEST life decisions that I have made for myself <3

Now, I do plan to include other works that have nothing to do with mental health-including unfinished works from the very first art class that I took way back in Spring 2014. Pretty sure I still have that damn syllabus somewhere…with me in my home…not over the rainbow…

My time as an art student went a little something like this:
I enrolled in a Drawing I class to get better at drawing mainly to help me with my (at-the-time) burgeoning anthropology path. I then enrolled in Drawing II and continued retaking that class up until I moved. However…somewhere along the way…after about say two or three semesters…this turned into a hobby. A hobby that gently helped me realize that I had some things that I needed to let out…work out…the things being emotions, and those emotions needed to be expressed via art.

Now, I’m already pretty emotional. I’m the kind of human who wears their emotions on their proverbial sleeve (at least when I don’t have the energy to hide what I’m feeling). I’m pretty easy to read in person, and no, I don’t give any damns or fucks about that fact (95% of the time). It doesn’t help that I have a shitton of empathy that I don’t always know what to do with (5% of the time).

I’ll be honest-I haven’t really done any art drawing since moving to be closer to the university that I’m going to. So I’m afraid that you won’t see any new art work any time soon. I am, however, selfishly hoping that sharing my artwork with you, Fellow Musers, will be the spark that gets my art-making creativity flowing again. Huzzah!

Some housekeeping: Musing’s Artist’s section will be available to both free and paid subscribers-however, depending on the subject matter for Artist’s Corner, I will probably make the comment section on some posts available to paid subscribers only. As of this writing, I’m still deciding on that, but on the majority of posts, I will make the comment section available to everyone. If I decide to make a specific posts’ comment section paid only, I will put a disclaimer at the beginning and at the end of the selected post (I guess I’m nice like that? Just kidding, I am!).

How will the rest work, you ask?
1.) The posts in this Corner will not be scheduled (mostly-depends on how late in the day I make them)
2.) They will mostly happen as is-as opposed to my anthropology posts which will have some scheduling process once I’m able to get those going on a regular basis, however that will manifest. As of this writing, that schedule is still in the manifesting process <sorry!>.

Fun fact: The image preview that I put with this post was one of the first pieces that I made for my Emotions series. It’s a depiction of the things that make me happy and is therefore appropriately called Happiness!

To everyone who has subscribed so far, I thank you again <3! I promise I will have the Cultural Anthropology post up before the end of the month. I will most likely post an art piece or two soon-they’ll just be fun pieces to get this new section going! Many thanks to you, Musers! Huzzah and Carpe Diem my friends! <3