Quote - snickers about what you said about fear, odf. There's something true about it (not completely - I found that fear leads to lonliness, not to hate in many cases) but when I think about people being afraid about other (different looking or thinking) people: Definitly yes.

@Shante: It may sound strange to you but as soon as I left school and did not HAVE TO learn anymore I suddenly found that learning is the best way for me to relax. As long as I can learn and think about what I want - the relaxing part is the distraction from everything that worries me. Isn't it strange how different people are?

ODF is right. All is connected...one ugly sentiment feeding the other and in turn feeding off the other. Fear and pain and anger and hate, depression and frustration, loss and death of the soul while the body lives or the death of others around you while you stand by helplessly, impotent to the flow and ebb of life theirs or yours, all lead to anger and fear and hate. It is all a result of having NO CONTROL.

For the past five years or so I have been caring for two other older people. Last year   I lost the both of them with 7 months. My dad within 3 days in November of 09 and my mother in July 2 of '10. I was her primary care giver for her for 7 months 24/7 and had no time to think or plan or play let alone learn. I had to focus all I could manage for her care. I gave up my job, I gave up my creativity,(no time for dreams and chimeras or feding my MUSE when there is someone dying who needs your love and decisions and full care). Their death after that took a big piece of me I am still trying futiley to reckon with.

A week after my mother died my father's younger brother died almost exactly to the day and hour as my mother on week before.

Unless one passes that way one can never really understand why I am so RIGID. Why I am so ANGRY. Why I have given up on anything so "valuless" as Poser or artwork or even learning....anything. I am healing and trying desperately to get my broken "self" back into the LIFE stream.

This is why I have difficulty wrapping my brain, whatever I have left of it, around these concepts. I was never the sharpest nail in the bag but I always managed to bring my own rasp and in so doing got by fairly well in life. Learning what was needed and sometimes surprinsing evenmyself as to what I did managet to learn.

I have two degrees and speak three languages. I am well traveled and well read. But it amounts to nothing if your heart breaks.

I have always been a struggling starving artist. Then I got older and didn't want to starve anymore, so I worked for someone else. For 20 years I ate crow working for less thatn what I felt I was giving back. Then I lost my job.

For 5 years I strufgled to find another without success, that whole time my family backed me up with love and support and money.

Then lost my muse whrn my parents started to get sick.

Then lost three people in my family who played an important role in my life.

I am now here, on this thread, supplying an Off Topic diatribe, trying to make you understand why some people are so diametrically different in how they handle the learning process and what they use to heal.

I have been a student of sorts all my life but some things enter and register and some things don't.

3D didn't.....except you are including Poser and even that, only the basics. I still don't have a clue how to set up and use magnets so go figure!  ;)

 

Sorry all for this!