Inconsistency

 It’s this exact thing.

What’s happening to me right now.

Losing it.

It was consistent. For a few weeks there I was writing, it excited me. Maybe it’s all dopamine. But I really did –do-- feel passionate about this project. So why are a few weeks my breaking point? Is there a way to get back on the train?

You know, I got a bit ill, and a bit busy, and my degree started whipping my back, and the things I really love started to fall through the cracks.

I didn’t want to open this page when I felt like I couldn’t, because the last thing you want is for your personal projects to feel like chores.

So what happened to the consistency? The just doing it. The nike-tick of it all.

I was very happy with the quality of writing, that I was giving good advice, that I was coming from a place of real knowledge, in my first few posts. But its hard to always show up like that, with the max you feel capable of, pushing the ideas, putting in maximum effort, all the time.

Sometimes you have to fall back, on those years you spent writing in your bedroom, kicking your feet on your bed, paper intertwined with the duvet. 

Sometimes its just trusting whatever experience you have, and believe that, even if you don’t feel spectacular and special pushing the words out, that they’ll still sit true.

Because being consistent isn’t about reaching that same high, putting in maximum effort all the time, each week keeping exactly the same quality from the week before. That would be awesome, but its just not possible.

The glass doesn’t have to be as full every single day. You are not a machine, or at least, I hope you’re not. You cannot output, always, a magical print of just how good your last project was.

Instead, consistency can be just getting the laptop out again. Even if you’re not quite sure your advice will be as accurate, or your prose as polished. Make something that might not be as great, but is proof you have shown up. Glass a little emptier this week. Not a carbon copy. Just you, and the pen, and trying again. And you know what, maybe it’ll be alright. And next time you can feel like the next great American writer, but right now, you’re only as much of a poet as you have the time to be.

Never stop never being perfect,

H.G Lightly x

Creating in the age of AI

Was there a perfect time on the internet?

Nowadays there seems to be constant nostalgia for one period of internet history or another. The renaissance of the 2000s ‘frutiger aero’ aesthetic went massive a couple of months ago, and now it seems everyone wants to be harkening back to the days of drawn on finger moustaches and galaxy leggings. Hell, I’ve even been invited to a 2016 themed party tonight!

It seems no one can escape the desire to return to a time on the internet when it was only slime videos and cat memes. 

I, despite my churlish tone, am not exempt. 

I mean, why else, in 2026, would one start a blog? Yeah, yeah, I’ve always written a diary I’ve secretly wanted to be read aloud (because I regard my thoughts as super cool and sexy), and I’ve always wanted to be a writer in some capacity or another. But truly there is a deep desire for ‘simpler times’ (if they ever really were), that even I cannot escape. 

The internet, for a lot of people, used to feel like a community. Instagram used to show you your favourite friends recent activities, their outfits, projects, even art. And of course there were big creators that the platform pushed. But now, it seems, your friends and community get trodden on in the interest of getting a hooking reel in front of you until it’s line and sinker. The home page is just content upon content upon ads upon ads. You won’t know what's going on in your friends lives, but you’ll sure as hell be on our app for the next 7 years of your life. 

It just feels dishonest, and distasteful. 

And that seems only natural, in the face of the ugly, inhuman heads that keep rearing.

Because the truth is, a lot of what is being platformed today, isn’t even human.

Recently, one of the biggest artists on spotify, Sienna Rose, having very quickly rose to fame in the soul and RnB music scene, is having her humanity questioned. There are videos of her online promoting her music, with no confession of human or not, where she seems suspiciously to change age drastically, from post to post. 

And it’s in this age of human-vestigation and AI artists skyrocketing above hard-working and long-earned real musicians, that we are trying to create.

It’s easy to reach for the little brain in your pocket. The answer to any question, without stopping to think for yourself. I think this is debilitating for artists. Our work is becoming less and less valuable and harder and harder to make. 

I believe, the best art is made through limitation, and boredom.
When you have all the stimulation and content you need, your brain does not have space to push something out itself. And when you have a micro person, an almost human, giving you a slightly-less-good version of the idea you could have created, it's hard to put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. 

And on another level, the result the computer gives you is hard to disregard. Is it not deemed perfect? And, furthermore, does it not alleviate the fear spoken of, and felt, in the last update? That, really, your version wouldn't be perfect anyway. 

That’s one of the most insidious things about the AI age, in my opinion. You don't have to fail anymore. You can simply ask chat GPT to make your album, or paint your picture or sew your… clothes…

Aaaaand now we have hit my favourite part of me talking. The good bit. The bit where we spark hope into the generation again.

Because you can prevail. 

You are the process and the creator. Whether or not large language models are going to replace human art, they CANNOT replace human experience. Maybe to everyone else the art might look the same (although to even that I am still doubtful), but nothing will make YOU feel like you are making the damn thing, except making the damn thing. 

And what is art except the human experience becoming manifest? Making physical the thing you feel, see, hear, touch, taste. There is communication in that emotional vulnerability. And other humans feel the story, and the emotion, and the experience. 

That is what is so beautiful about it. 

And that relatableness is only INCREASED with mistakes!

More people might like your art, that they can see themselves in the way you haven't quite crossed your t’s, or dotted your i’s. Maybe they'll think: ‘I also put hearts next to my name when I sign something’, ‘I know how it feels to leave half the canvas a streaky mess having been burnt out by the greatness of the first half’.

Furthermore, even ‘perfect’ art is made imperfect. Film grain is added to photos, people are up in arms about the pervasive  ‘Netflix lighting’ that seems to have pulled all artistic beauty out of films in the modern age. We prefer when the art is made imperfectly. 

Perhaps AI might be exactly what us perfectionists need. Already, anti-AI trendsetters are showing that people watch the dirty, messy, rotten version of things in the wake of AI ‘perfection’. Consumers of content seem to like the low poly animations, and half rendered builds, the inside of the behind of the thing that's polished on its surface. There is a stream of new, decidedly human, and decidedly imperfect, content, art, makeup, and style. This might be the incoming storm of protesting AI art, a new age of imperfections highlighted, and  mistakes praised for their proof, of growth and of passion. 

All that to say, I have my doubts about an averaging software being able to truly replace real, human art. But I am not an expert in large language models, and can only write with my hope for the importance of the human experience at the forefront. 

Be completely human, let the experience speak through you, and whatever you do, don’t let AI stop you from creating whatever it is you create!

Never stop never being perfect.

H.G.Lightly  x

Inspiration Nation

This week I’ve spent a lot of time on the sofa in front of the tv. 

That's okay! I still felt the inspiration claw its way out of the tv and worm incessantly into my brain. I’ve been finding it easier and easier to scrape inspiration out of my activities lately, since I’ve taken to noting them down. Like the more I try and find inspiration, the more I find. 

I was watching Girls, and was overcome with the deire to write a TV show. Of course I didn't quite have the skills to simply sit down and write award winning television. But I started something. 

It’s called ‘Let it Echo into Infinity’, which, I agree, is an incredibly silly name, but I wrote the whole thing in one. And also, y’know, I will stick by my work. I liked the name. No attempt to make you know that I know that it's silly. It's worthwhile to me! That's why it goes here, even if I don’t feel ready to show anyone else yet.

It was a lovechild of this blog, too, as it’s about inspiration, and working through difficult times and burnout, and the importance of art to people's lives. 

I think writing this blog has been a very forward productive force for my inspiration.

I was also inspired by my writing group that meets on a Wednesday. I wrote a small article for my University magazine about it. 

Creation Station

I have no pictorial art for you this week. I haven't gotten any images onto paper. Not every week can you make every type of art though! And when I feel the pull of the brush I’m sure this section will come alive with colours again!

For now, I will post the small writing projects from this week on a new page, entitled ‘The Blog Age’, for all my work made while this page is up and running.

The Beginning of Spring

The sun came out last week. First time in what feels like a million years. And upon wandering the sweet, snowdrop spangled streets of Leeds, I was reminded of something. 

We wait. Like a winter bear hibernating, we wait for inspiration. We expect it to twinkle cheekily through the branches of a busy day, with a sunny smirk, and we can roll our eyes, ‘you know what Mr. Inspiration can be like’, and grab at the gods rays before they inevitably slink back behind the clouds again.

I don't like that wait. I have wasted so many days waiting for the sun in winter, sometimes, I think you have to start making the light yourself.

Inspiration is not a passive act, but an active one. 

Last year, for a creative writing assignment, we were asked go out into the city, and observe three things. Write them down, write about them, that sort of thing.  

It stuck with me a long time. People, lifting heavy bags from Lidl into the boot of their car, birdsong that makes you think of your childhood home, clouds passing behind the winter blanched trees. 

It was like something was being replenished, as I walked around, or sat on a cold bench, or mused upon a frozen lake. Peace was filling up slowly inside me.

Noticing the world, consciously, conscientiously, that’s the inspiration. Or it's one part of a two part system, the second part is just doing. 

You can't always be putting-out-there, sometimes you need to take in. 

This world can make you feel like a bad person for stopping and smelling the flowers. 

I find a constant catholic guilt that likes to follow, like the wafted scent of dog behind a wet hound, in capitalism’s wake. We see it everywhere. In podcast bro’s insistence that they wake up at 3am and live double the life we do, after a 9-6 you need a dropshipping side hustle, always getting your ‘money up’ on the perpetual ‘grindset’. Constantly increasing your yield, as a person, compensating for the time you take to breathe. It's everywhere, and it eviscerates any concept of peace, or breaks, or a moment for breath.

But that leaves you really down trodden, beaten up by your own mentality. And it can leave you totally and exhaustively empty. 

It is human nature to pause for a moment, at the top of a mountain, sit on a crag and stretch your legs. And for the people that do have the ability to take a deep breath and observe, it could fuel you.

Constantly numb to your surroundings, busy with this and that, vaguely dissociated in the humdrum of daily life, it can feel like you are waiting indefinitely for inspiration to strike. 

It can feel uncomfortable, and shameful, you might not even realise you’re avoiding taking breaks. But to outpour you need to have a full tank of fuel. And while a lot of that in the rest of your life can be friends, that refill your social battery, or watching a comfort show for emotional refreshment, I believe that creative replenishment comes from your surroundings.

That's what blossoms into creativity. The sun glinting through the blades of grass when spring is on the turn, remembering your childhood in the stretch of grass between here and there. Let yourself watch, not to consume, just to be. The world goes by. The bird sound becomes song in your chest, the gravel underfoot a beat of the drum, and the wind in the trees is the orchestra arrangement, you start hearing in your dreams. Art comes out of you as infinitely as if you are the sun.

Never stop never being perfect,

I was ill last weekend, so I didn't manage to get a post out. Like really ill. Like in bed for 3 days, moaning from pain ill. But I’m feeling smashing now! So, sorry for unreliability. Hopefully I won't be too ill to write again!

H.G. Lightly. x.

Inspiration Nation

Talking to my housemate and friend has led to a lot of inspiration this week.
Outside in the sun, on a picnic bench, I was told about her grandad, and how he lived life: ‘side quest to side quest’. Apparently, he opened a pub with his friend of ten years on a whim, and would plan each fifth, milestone, birthday, for five years. Never not planning a party sounds like a good way to live i think.

Another source of inspiration, from a slightly unconventional source. When watching Louis and the Brothel, 2003, I found a distinct kinship with one the prostitutes: a woman named Hayey. Struggling with alcoholism and running from the memory of an attempted murder suicide by her late husband, she managed to come across as uncomfortably quick and witty, and full of a destructive, but beautiful, fire. Like she had come out of ashes winged in fire. Come out of death full of life.

Creation Station

This was a little doodle I did because my freind was so cute she just had to be put in Moomin Valley. 

I'd like to redo this one with more time, and creative liberty, trying to deconstruct how the Moomin creators decided on what animals to make people, and use that to inform it. 

These are a pair of portraits I drew trying to test out different drawing software on my ipad.  They came completely just free from my hand, whatever I was feeling I drew. I think its cool how they kind of mirror each other's colours. I also think there is perhaps an obvious superior software?

The Re-Read.

Why are we so attached to it all?

Convince ourselves it’s a reflection of our virtue and merit. Proof of our prominence and imperishability. 

Words on a page. 

Maybe we were kids, told we were going to be great by someone much taller, with spittle in their teeth, knuckles curled around a crumpled piece of junior writing. ‘You read years ahead of your age’. ‘You’re prolific.’ ‘You could be great.’ Said, always, with that deep golden appreciation you spend the first ten years of your life chasing. What do you hear, with little kids ears? ‘I love you,’ I think, is how it sounds. 

Black on white is all. 

They say old habits die hard. And those are the oldest habits of them all. The stuff you learned in your spongiest and most absorbent years. When the art gets wrung out of you that's the dirt that comes out with the soap suds. 

How can we make bad art (and thus any art at all) if we convince ourselves the continuation of our legacy, and our worthiness as humans hangs in the balance?

This reminds me of how I felt, just a week ago, looking at my first post on this blog. When I’d woken up that morning, a blog had been just a twinkle in my eye, a dream caught by the side of my bed, but I was looking at the whole page come to sparkling life before me. Why was I so unsatisfied?

‘But it doesn't sound like insert-the-greatest-american-novelier-here.’

It truly is just ink on paper. 

I sometimes think kids' ears are still tucked into the adult ones that grow. You run your tongue along baby teeth when you least expect to. I read my article with little kids eyes, and all that little girl could hear were the ‘I love you’s’. Except they sounded a lot more like: ‘Why have we never read any of your stuff?’ ‘When can we hear what you’ve been working on?’

I saw all my failings. 

I saw the difference between where I was, and where I should be.

The gap between what I read like and what I wish it read like was glaringly apparent. ‘Why are you not there yet?’ (and it’s Shakespeare or Donna Tartt or Ocean Vuong).

This project is not about managing anyone else’s expectations. It was supposed to be, truly, the antithesis of expectation. A blank canvas is too scary, so to facilitate the first wiggle it’s washed with ochre across the whole sheet. And yet, now I’ve been sitting on this posted piece of unsatisfactory nonsense, feeling the familiar pinpricks of self doubt. I’m left wondering if the colour wash helped at all.

There is no should be, but that should is baked into those baby teeth. 

It’s just me, talking to the void. There are no listeners. Posting this, despite all reservations,  will be proof of that. A working colour wash. You have to make your work exist first. You can make it better later. The truth is, although it might feel like you have to make something to make your lineage proud, or shock the entire generation into awe and adoration, your worth is in no way mitigated by what you put out. It’s just if you have something stuck in your head, and you hear it all the time. The silence might appreciate the company of noise. 

It’s just you and the words. 

It’s only the words.

Never stop never being perfect,

H.G. Lightly x

Inspiration Nation

This week I have been inspired by some brilliant animators on tiktok. I'm unsure about putting any of their work up on here, even though I dont think it goes against copyright or anything. If anyone knows anything about that let me know. 

Each persons personal style makes me feel better about my work not looking or sounding like anyone else's.

Creation Station

Welcome to the creation station! This is were i share some of my work, if any, that I have made this week.

Already, before the first piece of work I’ve made has EVER come out, I’m worried it’s unacceptable! Despite my belief that no one will read these pages - not at least already, with only one article out thus far - I still have that fear.

But here it is, anyway.

I was lucky enough to get an ipad over the weekend last week, and so drew my own background for it, above.

The other thing I made, another background, was for this very page you're reading. I'm sure I'll change it to something else soon, but I like it enough for now.

I also have been trying my hand at t-shirt printing, I'm excited to make some super cool designs soon.

Starting

Surprise, surprise, I have been waiting to start this.  Waiting for the best way to begin. Waiting for inspiration to hit, flow state to arrive.

But this is what we must learn together, 

IF YOU DO NOT START YOU DO NOT START.

There is no point wishing you life away thinking about all the amazing things you know you could do. 

Now, obviously, you know that. You’ve probably sat in front of a hundred different projects with a tool in your hand, thinking about the opportunities you’ll miss, the satisfaction you can't get elsewhere, the marks you might lose if you keep leaving work till last second. You’re thinking, ‘perfectionist, of course you have to start the thing to finish it’. And to that I say, of course, you’re right. 

But how.

It can feel like an insurmountable mountain, when you are staring at the project due, or thinking about the end result. 

You’re standing at the foot of the matterhorn, watching the clouds float past its jagged tip. 

But, what I’ve found, is that you need to do the absolute EASIEST thing, first. This way, instead of climbing an Alpine mountain, or starting the hike, or even taking a step, all you are doing… is wiggling your toes.

I know, I know it sounds miniscule, but the point is (and you have to forget this when you are starting, so as not to put any pressure on the second and tertiary steps) it grows as you go. First it's the wiggle of the toe, then the whole foot, then the leg, and eventually you’ve gotten to the first step. And everyone knows how it goes from there, one food in front of the other. The walk you are currently not doing. So, heed my words. For now, just a wiggle. Only the wiggle. Let the wiggle be.

Now, what does this translate to? In my life, there's a lot of writing, or studying, so my main objective is just to open the laptop. When things feel impossible, or you know you are putting off beginning something because you are scared it will be too difficult, but you have to get that first foot off the ground, I wiggle my toes by just opening the damn laptop. I don't have to do anything on it. Just open it. 

Often this, in and of itself, is enough to get some juices flowing. Because that's what the wiggle does. It gets the blood flow of the project started, even if it's a slow, clotted sludge on day 1. 

And maybe I’ll open the laptop, remind myself of the task at hand, maybe it won't go any further than that, I’ll think, ahh it's still too much, I have to do this and this and that, I will have to just move on tomorrow.
But sometimes, sometimes, the black metal cracks open, and the screen lets out its soft glow, and I can hear the low hum of sims trying to start in the background, the pads of my fingers find purchase on the letters, the project blossoms before me, opening almost by itself. And sometimes, the blank page stares at and sweet talks me, till I'm moved, and the mountain is forgotten, and a few little black words spill themselves like seeds across the screen. 

Eventually the little spill of words is a whole paragraph, and after that an article, or somesuch. 

But, it doesn't have to be. 9 times out of 10, the whole thing gets to be too much, and I have to close it down, tell myself I’ll open it tomorrow. 

The beautiful thing about this mindset, if you can ride out past the first wave, is that after you’ve wiggled a couple times, its easy. It's almost boring. And you're reading to move the whole foot, ankle joint turning, sometimes even a knee kick. You want the next steps because you’re comfortable with the first.

It kind of all snowballs, especially if you can get to wiggling once a day, or even a couple times a week. It’s just a softer blow each time, because you’ve made a little progress, you see the first few words and you write the next few, you’ve gotten to grips with the fact that starting this project is not the same as being chased by a bear, and does not require the same nervous system meltdown. You want the next steps because you feel safe with the first. 

So today, I started. I wiggled my toes, and wrote the first post.

And you are all witness to its possibleness.

It exists, despite its imperfectness, and that’s all I’m trying to do. 

Never stop never being perfect,

Holly G. Lightly x

P.S.

I think for the following weeks, I will have sections in the blog, subject to change, and my whimsy, of course:

Based on the name:

Introductory writing (perhaps as seen above).

Inspiration nation

Some of my favourite inspiration/obsessions of the moment. 

Creation station

Something I've made based on that inspiration

What have I done this week? 

A section about what I'm currently working on.

What have you done this week?

A conclusionary sentence or two asking for you guys to comment and add your art!

Okay, go be terrible artists, I’m right behind you!