Today marks the end of 2018! I am actually really excited for this new year. I want to accomplish so much and I have some pretty clear goals in sight. I feel really lucky to be able to see 2019, I feel like every day, every months and every year is a new begging and a chance to start over or try again.
That said, I’m happy to leave my failures,  dumb mistakes, and losses in 2018!
Hello 2019!! Let’s totally crush it this year!
{Unfortunately I will not be able to post tomorrow but I’ll be back January 2nd!}
Xoxo
Margoat

I’m just going to post these random doodles from my large sketchbook because I’m at the homestretch on ep.#2 of Desserts! I really wanna get it finished today so I’ll be way ahead of my deadline and I won’t have to rush theough ep.#3.
Xoxo
Margoat

I woke up to the air

Wet and warm

the fire in my temple 

Burning steady

On flowing ether

Leaving no ashes

I heard the rain fall last night

I heard it evaporate around my

Flaming light

Not all is right 

But my fire still burns bright

I’m baaaaack! 🤪
I hope whoever is reading this had a nice holiday and if not at least we can start over in the new year!
Anyways, I am a little more than 3/4ths finished on part #2 of Desserts! This one is a bit dense but Once I have the first 3 parts complete, a cover art for each dome, and everything inked and scanned, I will be posting them here and in a few webcomic platforms I’m currently working on as well. I’m determined to make it happen before February!
I’d like to take a step back and really talk about Desserts because up until this point I haven’t really elaborated on what this webcomic is really about. This is a story that I have wanted to make known for a while now. It’s about the struggles and confusing things I faced growing up. My goal is to make it as raw and real as possible, which is pretty risky because there will most likely be parts that people close to me will not agree with, but the point is expressing how events and circumstances affected me  specifically. That said, nothings off limits in this illustrated story, and all the crazy shit that’s gone down in my life, the good, the bad, the stupid and just plain weird, will be spilled on the pages. You can see the brief of this story in the “About Me” section of this blog, but that is the extremely brief version. This webcomic intails a great deal more crazy plot twists and raw and real life experiences.
The reason I feel the need for this to Ben my first real full webcomic series is because I love making comics, but growing up I couldn’t find anyone telling a story that was even remotely close to mine. A lot of the time I doubt that anyone could ever relate to the shitshow of a life story I have carried with me, but then I think ‘but what if’. What if just one girl or guy on the internet could relate to it and feel a bit less alone living out their story. That’s why I’m doing this. And it wakes me up in the morning, I feel a purpose to put art and words on paper and tell a true story. I have a ton of other kooky comic ideas just sitting in digital and physical files. But my gut tells me that this needs to come first, this should be my first full webcomic. I thought it would be easy in a sense because the whole story was already there in my head, in my memories. But it has been quite a real challenge. Desserts is a chronicle of my life thus far. And it’s exciting to think that I’ll have a vivid illustrated version of my memories to look back on years from now. Maybe I’ll see that my life has since improved, or maybe only my artistic abilities will improve. Either way, this is a passion project that I don’t plan on giving up on.
Xoxo
Margoat

Everything is being changed in terms of my plan of action. It’s been a long week but I got more than I expected done, thankfully. Just as a warning, I won’t be posting on Tuesday & Wednesday (Christmas/Holidays). But of course I’ll be back on course come Thursday. I’ll be spending the holiday with family, doing some volunteering in the community, and getting farther ahead on my artistic work.
Xoxo
Margoat

I swear all the good ideas come at 12am in the morning when I just want to sleep and I have to stick my arm out of my warm cocoon of blankets, reach under my bed and grab my notebook and pen. I stopped reading and went to bed at 8pm last night but my mind was just racing. I think that's kind of why I night read, it's a good escape from my thoughts. Anyways, today I made accounts on 7 different web-comic hosting sites, because more exposure is better right? sigh..I really have no idea at this point. I have literally got to start writing my post ahead of time like I use to..uhg. 
Xoxo
Margoat

Today’s post is a little late and, I’m just gonna be honest here, I slept in very late. 😅
But I was reading Fire&Blood very late into the night and I completed my “Dreamline”, a concept I got from Timothy Ferriss’ book ‘The 4-Hour Workweek’. Btw it’s a good read! That one I don’t have a physical copy of but I read it on my E-Reader on my phone. I forgot to mention that even though I usually say I’m reading one fiction book from my local library, in reality I’m almost always in the process of reading two other books on my E-Reader as well! I’m a mess, but I have a bad habit of binge reading late into the night. Night reading is really addictive for me but it’s been causing me to wake up super late. I’ve finished all these books in a less than 3 1/2 months (except for “The Artist Way”, I’m still working on that one) , so yea... I might need to delete my E-Reader app and stop checking out library books so I can get some sleep.

Anyways, I wanted to share my dreamline here but I decided that it’s too personal. So that’s it for today, I am so sorry that these blog posts are really lacking. :(

Xoxo

Margoat 

Margoat Channel

Some notes from late last night:

It’s hard to escape yourself, and to escape the way you feel being you.  

No one is a bottomless well of giving.

Draw up Channel Icon, channel art (put channel schedule banner)

Write up structure of channel trailer 

Search “homeless” on YouTube “depression, motivation,art”

Channel trailer structure:

In the begging the word homeless used to evoke fear in me.

It’s funny looking back on it because at least in the beginning I wasn’t homeless and alone. 

The moment when everything in my life came down to just the clothes on my back and a book bag is when my outlook on life changed for the better. 

And I’m on this platform to spill it all, for anyone who is going through dark times right now. 

My goal is to help you see that whatever turmoil your going through right now has meaning. This is all I have to give you, and I’m going to give it my all. 

Basically just some general ideas/concepts for the story I’m working on. I’m really trying to make sure that even in the first few snippets of the story I put out there is a lot of meaning laced in. My biggest fear is that I will put out this very personal story, in the hopes that I can touch and relate with others, and it ends up being meaningless or misunderstood. So I’m trying to really think about the importance of every scene, every word said, and every character. Ep.#2 is no where near done but I want it to been much more dinamic than the first. Kind of like the first was a intro to evoke emotion and interest, and this second part is like taking a dive into the real meat of the story. 

But in other new, I’m tired. Very tired. And I think I will be taking a nap for the remainder of the evening after 4pm. 

Xoxo

Margoat 

I really have to get into the habit of making a blog post before doing anything else. Because I'll get so distracted then it hits me that I have to put something on the blog and I'll be all lazy. I know my posts have been quite lack luster...this is why^.

Anyways, I went through some of my old sketchbooks looking for stuff that I could use to keep the blog fresh. I draw mostly girls but lately (especially after being awe struck by Doug Wheatley's illustrations in Fire&Blood) I want to get batter at drawing other things. It is a dream of mine to get to a point where I can draw anything well. I've realized that my style is pretty gothic and I like to mix darkness with beauty a lot. But I've been thinking about how other things, besides ladies, can express those two traits in surprising ways. For example, the dragons in Fire&Blood! So yea I'm trying to integrate some practice time drawing things like motor vehicles, animals, buildings and landscapes into my free time. I know I'm never going to be able to draw these things in a super realistic style so I'm also trying to find a balance of drawing them in a way that looks best in my own style. 

Xoxo

Margoat

On Friday I got envited to a super fun New Year party that one of our neighbors set up. So Saturday night I went and I had so much fun! We talked about out goals for the new year, drank eggnog and ate some really yummy food, listened to music and made vision boards! I’m so pissed off at myself for forgetting to take a picture of my finished vision board yesterday—uuhg! I wanted to post a picture of it here on the blog but I left it at home. I will update this post with the picture tomorrow though.
Anyways it was cool to get out of the house and be able to express myself around people my age. And it was kind of a wake up call, it’s almost 2019! The last few years I’ve just let the new year fall upon me by surprise, but the party and this blog have really made me think about being a bit more prepared and aware! I have a few steady goals for the coming new year and I think this has made things more exciting for me because it’s not “just another year” this time.

Xoxo
Margoat

And once again we have made it to Saturday! There were a few bumps in the road but of course I still killed it! I’m going steady with ep.#2 of Desserts, perfected the design of my main character, and learned a few things on the way. I’d say it’s been a good and fruitful week. BTW I finished Neil Gaiman’s book “American Gods”. It was a strange read, it never really grasped what was the whole point of the story but I forced myself to finish it. Now I’m reading “Fire & Blood” by George R. R. Martin. It’s pretty good so far, very discriptive with very little dialogue though. I like that it has amazing illustrations throughout!

This book is very thick so I feel like it’s a nice treat that will last me a while. I like to have a bit of fiction to read at night before bed time. 

Anyways, I’m going to enjoy my Sunday break then come back to this blog 10x stronger on Monday! 

Xoxo

Margoat 

Ok so yesterday I noticed that in some of the scenes I’ve drawn the main character (me, lol) looks inconsistent appearance wise. I let it go for the younger version because that version would only be needed for a short time in the story. But the teen version looks crazy and like a different person in almost every scene and at different angles. I said to myself “What was I thinking?! I need to dedicate a few sketch book pages to figuring out how this character is gonna look!” So that’s what I’m working on now. I guess my excitement made me rush into things too fast, but ended up making things take longer because I had to take a step back and fix things. I’m looking at pictures of my face and really trying to figure out those key features that make my face my face, lol. I don’t want to have to draw some realism type self portrait every time I have a scene with my character in it, so I’m trying to find the few main key features and simplify them. So yea, fun stuff.

Here is one attempt that came out of a ton of sketches I did last night. I really like this one and asked my sister and mom if this looks like me. They said yes but my birthmark is just on the wrong side, so I’ll have to fix that. I like this because when I drew it I wasn’t really trying to be truthful, my other sketches were too skinny so it seemed like I was just creating a version of myself that I wish I could be. 

Anyways, I’m in the process of getting comfortable drawing this version in different angles and perspectives. Once I’ve got that down pact it’s back to drawing up the stories. And for now on I’ll prepare ahead of time for any important characters, and hopefully save myself from wasting time.

Ok, first and foremost: I’m so so so sorry for not posting yesterday. It’s not that I didn’t want to, I literally look forward to posting on my blog at this point. I simply forgot, mainly because I was honestly and truly breaking my back over drawing up episode #2 of Desserts. But I really want to hold myself accountable for missing a day because this means so much to me. My daily blogging was supposed to officially start on Nee Years day but I thought it’d be smart to get myself into the habit early. So I’m really trying to push myself in this, and I feel really lame for forgetting to post yesterday. No more! I’m gonna be super on point for now on and post before I do anything else.
Now that that’s out of the way, back to your regularly scheduled programming! I’m super proud of how ep.#1 of Desserts has turned out! It literally all I’m living for right now. So I’m super determined to make ep.#2 even better. Understand that these stories, this blog, the YouTube channel—these are my babies! I’ve wanted to dive into these creative endeavors for a long time. But like I’ve said before, fear kept me from actually doing it.
Here is a quote that I love and continues to inspire me:
“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance at what you love.”
I wish I could site who’s quote this is but I’ve long forgotten. Still, it’s something nice to remember.

Xoxo
Margoat

Memories Haunt Me 

By Margoat 

Can’t remember the last time my mind was peaceful 

Before I lay to sleep

Why do I lose every thing 

Except these memories 

These memories 

They haunt me 

These memories 

They haunt me 

Recently I thought

Just for a second 

Maybe if I embrace it 

I can face it 

Replace it

Erase it 

I didn’t make it

These memories 

They got a strong hold on me 

They come drifting back just when I feel like

I could be happy 

Just for a second 

But it’s not gonna happen 

No body knows that I being held captive 

I really can’t remember the last time 

the last time 

I felt some peace of mind 

Why do I lose everything 

Except these memories 

These memories 

They haunt me 

These memories 

They haunt me

I’m bleeding out 

Begging please 

For every regret to be diseased 

The end of my failures 

Coming back to lynch me

Before I lay to sleep 

Episode 1 of Desserts is complete! This calls for celebration 🎉! Last night I created this little video on my phone. I was thinking of using this as an intro for my YouTube videos but I feel like it’s too boring. I am considering changing the name of the channel too. A few people have confronted me about the name “X Margo X”. They’re usually like “ it’s kinda awkward to say X Margo X” but I tell them that it’s mead to be read as just ‘Margo’, the X’s are supposed to be kinda like decoration. But alas, most people don’t read it that way. So yea I’m really thinking of changing the name of this blog and the YouTube channel. BTW for anyone reading this who didn’t get here via my YouTube channel, here is a link to said channel👇 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvvjfMyZ8IcSw9tB0cQJzAw?app=desktop&persist_app=1
Anyways, February 15th is the deadline! So I must get back to drawing!
xoxo
-Margo

Once again I don’t have a lot of time to write but I’m determined to stick to the promise I made with myself: to post 6 days out of every week!
It’s been a pretty good week honestly, it’s bright and sunny and crisp outside today. I am mostly going to be drawing and only taking breaks to eat today. It’s one of those kind of days. But that’s not a bad thing at all in my opinion. I am determined to get at least 3 episodes finished for the YouTube channel by February 15. It’s fun having a goals. LOL. That kinda makes me sound like I’ve spent my entire life up to this point goal-less. Anyways, staying focused, I know this is a lame post but some days I don’t have a lot I want to talk about. There will be better ones in the future, but for now at least I can say I stuck to my promise! :)
Monday we do it all over again.

I slept a bit better last night, but at around 11pm I woke up and started fiddling with the app I use to make my YouTube thumbnails. I don’t even know what cosmic forces caused me to wake up and do that but something really awesome came from it! I am even more excited to release these first few episodes of Desserts on the channel come February! Episode 1 is very close to being complete and it’s been a pretty emotional project for me. It’s crazy that all of my content is shot and edited on my iPhone 6. I type up all the story structures and scenes in the Pages app, record voice overs and sounds with the Voice Memos app, edit and put everything together in iMovie, and create custom thumbnails with a humble little painting app my brother recommended to me. I am so grateful for all that this little hand held device does for me—it’s truly amazing! But on the flip side it’s pretty scary for me also. This phone is like my creative life line, if I lose it or it got stolen...I’d have nothing. I definitely wouldn’t be able to buy a new one right now. It’s a possibility that kinda haunts me. But I try my best to just be on point and not stress about it so much. I love making art, I love blogging and making videos. I love sharing stories with others and hearing other people’s stories. So I’m gonna keep pushing forward! And one day I will be able to buy a nice laptop, nicer editing software, a professional camera. But for now I’m not gonna let not having those things stop me from putting my all into the projects I care about. 💜

It’s so cold that pipes are freezing in the house, there is slippery ice on the ground outside. My mom pointed out to me that there were flurries of snow this morning. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night. I was so damn uncomfortable and now I’m thinking maybe it was because the temperature dropped. Every time I seemed to get in the right position and thought I’d finally tucked in every side of me that needed tucking I would settle in awaiting sleep to fall upon me. Then all of a sudden I’d feel a annoying little breeze creeping into my cocoon of blankets, whispering little indescrepencies to some part of my skin. And it would be so unsettling and agitating I would have to re-position and re-tuck myself all over again. But it kept happening and I just gave up! I couldn’t sleep and I was up all night being tired and stuck in my head.
My mom is a hero. She wakes up so early for the day no matter how cold it way be. She always wearing warm layers and a fuzzy robe around the house, so I imagine she puts it all on first thing in the morning like a suit of armor. She cooks everyone breakfast and turns on the carasene heater so we can be a bit more warm and comfortable when we wake up. This morning she made me a hot cup of apple cider to go with my breakfast, and it was really good. All this and she still has so much energy and funny stories to tell me while I eat the breakfast. As I was writing this in my journal this morning, she was on the phone moving around dentist and doctors appointments for my brothers. I think about how every morning I have this lazy debate with myself to get up and just go pee, no it’s too cold or getting up is so much work is usually how my brain and body respond. Then when/if I finally do go pee I end up half way falling back to sleep on the toilet. When I think about that it makes me wonder “how does my mom do it? Wake up and do all this stuff every morning?”
I remember a moment when the dad  said to me: “you’re mom would do anything for you guys.”
This morning she was telling me a funny story of when one of my older sisters was a baby and mom used to put pretty hair ties on her even though she had only like two strands of hair. At one point she said “I usually didn’t realize how happy I was back then because I would be so focused on what I didn’t have.” In my head I was like wow that sounds just like me. It got me thinking and then I went to write in my journal.
Anyway, I want to talk about fear today. I want to address some of my biggest fears when it comes to this ‘creative endeavor’ I’m on, what is it that I’m afraid of?

• I’m afraid of putting my life story, my failures, and fuck ups out in the open. I afraid that doing that will only result in me being made fun of, looked down on, and putting my hard work and honesty to waist. 
• I’m afraid my family will judge me—and honestly I hate myself for that, because why should I really care what they think of me at this age and that kinda makes me feel like a sad case became I really haven’t reached the level of independence I should be on. 
• I’m afraid I possess a genuinely good story but my artistic ability and resources aren’t substantial enough for me to tell it in a exciting and compelling way. 
• I’m sometimes have doubts that the story I want to tell really has any meaning at all. I mean it’s not like my problems (new or old) are special or unique, they’re not. But isn’t that what gives them the potential to resignate with someone who’s going through similar problems (now or in the future)?? 

Fear and doubt haunt me even as I try to use my medium for something good, something that I hope with all my heart can reach someone who needs to see someone else in the media experienceing struggles similar to theirs but is able to get up again still. It’s always been this sort of battle for me in my head, and despite my hard work sometimes things still turn out shitty. But I survived, life goes on, there’s always another way, a next step. Remembering this essentially makes me do what I want anyway. Despite fear of failure, despite doubt, do it anyway. 

And despite the cold and flurries, this morning  I forced myself to go to the library (albeit it was mostly thanks to my mom!) and make a blog post. So here I am. And it feels good. 

Oldie but goodie, I took this picture in Astoria, Queens. A time when I was going crazy with my new toy, a Canon digital camera. 

My Goals: 

• For YouTube: 3 Episodes of Desserts finished and edited by February 15th, 2019. 
• For This Blog: Post every day (except Sundays) for a whole year. Yes, Margo, that means until December 30th, 2019.
• For Myself: STOP wasting time, energy, and fucks on stupid trivial stuff that isn’t gonna contribute to my creative goals. 

Been drawing all day! A 9x6 sketchbook is great but, let me tell you, a 4x6 scratch pad is even better. I don’t think it’s just about the portability anymore, I think I just enjoy drawing on a small canvas for some trance reason. I think it may be because it’s easier to fill up the page and that gives me a sense of completion.

I don’t have a lot of time to write right now but I just want to get this off my chest:

This blog and my YouTube channels are both a big part of this sort of artistic endeavor, if you will, I’ve been trying to sort out and just get out of me. There is this story that I’ve wanted to tell for a long time now. So I’ve been working on this story, writing out all the pieces, digging into it and figuring out it’s purpose, breaking it up into little scenes I can turn into art. It’s been hard and frustrating and scary AF! 

But what I want to write about here is my biggest problem: perfectionism. Omg it gets in the way. It’s gotten to the point where it’s become obvious that my need for perfection has become poison to my creativity. I have set such a unattainable standard of quality for my projects that I get frustrated and give up half way on them. This pattern has stopped me from putting out a lot of the things I do because their not perfect enough in my eyes or because they are only half done anyways. So now I’m trying to implement a new habit of simplifying things for myself. And it’s been working out kinda well. Breaking my projects up into chewable pieces and notlimiting how I see the tools and resources I do have is improving my work flow. 

It been difficult to work on videos and still make time to learn a language. But learning Russian has been really exciting whenever I do get time to sit and absorb a lesson. So I want to share some of the books and resources I use when I'm studying.  

I'm only useing one notebook for my lessons and notes. It is this red one subject college ruled notebook and its been lasting me a really long time. As shown I have little stickers of numbers and colors on the inside flap for reffernce. I got these stickers from the Russian In 10 Minutes A Day book. The book said to stick them on a clock that you look at often for practice but the main clock I look at is on my phone (lol) so I just stuck them here.

I use most of the stickers from that book in my notebook anyway because it would be pretty dumb to put stickers all over the objects in my parents house, especially things that get touched alot and the stickers would just get worn and faded. :P

So one thing that came to mind to solve this was to go into magazines (my mom + the local library have a ton of old ones they didn't want) and find nice pictures of the things I had labels for and made kind of my own picture dictionary. It was good prectice to say the word in Russian as I looked for it in the magazines, and I think the words have stuck to my memory as well if not better than they would have if I had stuck them around the house.

I picked up the Everything Essential Russian Book because this is more of a full structured lessons type of book that has a lot of great information and question sheets for you to complete at the end of each lesson/chapter. I look to this book A LOT and its actually getting pretty worn and crowded with sticky notes so yea I didnt even bother taking a picture of the inside because its a mess. But a useful mess! I found this DK Visual Russian/English Bilingual Dictionary in a Barnes & Noble in New York and it is super useful but I've found some of incorrect translations in it! I don't know why there are a few clear errors in this copy but its whatever its still really usefull and fun to just flip through and look and learn from sometimes.

They have a bunch of other languages in this series of dictionaries and since I'm planning to learn Arabic after I have a solid grasp on Russian I'm thinking I might get the Arabic DK Visual Bilingual Dictionary.

 I also got this Barron's book from Barnes & Noble as well. It's really useful for when I need fun worksheets for a particular thing I'm leaning, for example numbers, counting roubles, telling time, saying mesurements in russian, etc. I recently found out that this book even covers a bit of information on cases! This was such a pleasant surprise for me to discover int his book because it's something I've really been looking for as much help as I can find on. I scan and print copies of the pages to do the worksheets from this book becuase honestly it's such a nice book and the pages are glossy so I don't even dream of writeing in it but...I'm weird like that about books. It came with a tear out mini bilingual dictionary with a food and drink guide in the back. It also has a genourouse section with cut out flash cards in the back of the book for you to cut out. But I doubt I'll cut them out, besides the Russian In 10 Minutes A Day also has a ton of useful flash cards in the back that I already cut out and use. And I like the ones in 10 Minutes A Day better because they are made of a thick cardstock, so yea, more sturdy than the beautiful, clossy, thin pages of the Barron's Russian book.

 The flash cards I cut out and handy glossary in the back of this book. I don't mind writng in this book and the activites are pretty similar to my Barron's book but I would consider them breif simplified versions.

There are a ton of lables in here that I haven't even got to using yet, which is exciting! Also, to spice things up in my studies I watch the  YouTube channel Be Fluent In Russian. Fedor makes great content that I always enjoy watching because he has a way of teaching that I think fits my learning style. I tell my mom and sublings (becuase they are currently trying to learn spanish and french) that when your looking for a youtuber/channel that teaches the language you want it's good to make sure you kinda click with them and thew way they teach. It sounds silly but I really thing that helps you learn better because I've checked out other channels that teach Russian but they're content and lessons just didn't click for me and never helped me much so I had to shop around on YouTube to find the ones for me. My little sisters and I joke that I watch Be Fluent In Russian because it's like having a personal guy tutor

who's kinda hot but I actually watch it becuase it's good content that I find easy to learn from.

So yea and the way I usually watch them is on my phone while I study from my books as kind of a supliment to my lessons. It's really great to hear how a native speaker pronounces words and phrases. Super handy!