Dysgraphia, dyspraxia and drawing
Normally this post would belong to my personal blog but I will touch my professional future, so it’s here and not there. For a long time I didn’t draw. At first because I chose ceramics class, then because of depression and lastly because I wasn’t sure I was able to make it into a career because I have dysgraphia and dyspraxia. The truth is I can’t live and think properly without drawing.
The downward spiral caused by all my beliefs hindered my skills. It hindered my relaxation techniques, drawing is quite integral part of me. Drawing helps me recover my energy after a long day, it refreshes my brain. It lets me release huge amounts of anger when I encounter useful but badly documented piece of code. We all know that this happens quite often, especially with new technology, I work with Angular2[1. To be sure that something works it needs to be less than one month old, otherwise there is non-zero probability that it won’t work] in my day job.
The first two reasons why I didn’t draw don’t make me angry. I loved ceramics and as a kid it made me happy. The depression part of my life was so dark that I had problems with my memory and I refuse to be mean to myself.
Third reason makes my blood boil. I should’ve known better. I’ve talked to parents of neurodivergent children and they would be careful about sharing the child’s diagnosis so the kid won’t use it as an excuse or a reason why they can’t be good at something. I got trapped in the hole where I convinced myself that there is no reason to pursue drawing and art. I aligned with people who have bigger problems in this area. I forgot that my interest in calligraphy helped me with my writing.
This is not their fault. It’s also not my fault. Actually it is no one’s fault it just happens from time to time when you are around people you start to mimic them and you will change your behavior a bit for both, good and bad, and neurodivergent traits get more visible if you are around neurodivergent people.
So is there an illustrator career in my future? I don’t know but I will try to draw daily. You can follow me on tumblr and instagram. But I can say for sure that I will mostly stay away from design which I thought would be a good for if I can’t be an illustrator. It’s wasn’t. I am a front-end developer who loves to make pretty picture with her own hands.
Who knows? May be, I’ll be a tattoo artist in 10 years.
