Drawing progress has been slow, quite slow. It's good to remember to be the tortoise instead of the hare–in the past, as has been noted before, I've tried to run like the hare but I always fall asleep. As an aside, that parable never resonated with me as a child: perhaps I never conceived how long the races would last. There was a period in adolescence when I constantly remembered wisdom like that as I realized it's relevancy. "I guess I'd already been told how to do things properly. Why didn't I just do them?" But after realizing the import of these phrases, I'd quickly lose that understanding and come out more confused then I started. In the end I came away with the impression that wisdom is like a Rorschach test of the mind and anyone, even me, can throw out words to others. It's connecting reality with meaning and understanding the forms of your life that is important and difficult. Vague phrases have no place in it, and all writing can be read ten different ways anyhow. As Thomas Hardy wrote, or wrote something like it "God prescribes a better path than he allows for." If you can find a key it's not a door!

While I'm counting my turtles (drawing and, less consentingly, adolescent maturation being the count so far) I should mention an aspect to the pursuit of this rusty dream hitherto unnoted: to animate at Kyoto Animation one needs to know Japanese. There's no trouble in generating interest in language learning on my part, a bright interest like the speed of the hare, and even maintaining progress like the turtle is manageable so far. No, the Japanese aspect will plod along quietly and resurface sometime in the future.

There are other turtles that haven't began their races yet, but for now the two key turtles of the rusty dream have been counted.

It's frustrating I haven't found more time.