Dolly Market Forum

What an awesome looking orchid! If some of our plants didn’t thrive on benign neglect we wouldn’t have any.

It’s beautiful. And Holly is the perfect colour-coordinated doll to show it off.

Thank you very much, everyone!!!


Day 310

It's the Love Your Red Hair Day! Which I, not having red hair of my own, extended to Love Anyone's And Everyone's Red Hair Day!

If I had any money at the moment, this lovely photo could easily send me off on a buying spree! What an irresistible trio!

I have to agree, these are a hard to resist trio of stunners

Glorious trio of redheads.

Lovely girls. And their hair always looks so neat.

Thanks guys!


Day 311

I love the contrast in the hair here. They both look so cool

So fluffy!

I don't know if I adore these two figs more because of the beautiful way you style them in your photos, or because of the creative aeronautical backstories you've created for them. The combination is irresistible, and each time I see them I want to live in their world! I want to fly away with your airship crew!

With the way things are going, I am going to need ADAD more than ever in this coming year! Escape is the only option, creatively and imaginatively if not physically.

I never knew Eos had so much hair.

Thank you very much, guys!


Day 312



Why I won't be doing ADAD or ADAW next year...
With our recent talk about whether or not we'll be doing ADAD, I feel the need to ex³plain my current mindset.

There's a TL;DR version at the bottom of this whine-a-ton, feel free to skip right to it.

Finishing the first year felt awesome and I wanted to jump right into the next round. During second year, I've hit more 'I want to drop this' patches, but it was still fun. However, I kinda felt like I'd prefer a weekly challenge next time. Then this idea of finishing three times in a row and on a leap year crept into my mind (I made it Her Majesty's thing, but really, it's my head that is to blame for this), so I decided to go for it.

This year, it's not as much fun anymore, and more importantly, it's not rewarding. At all. I'm not excited at the idea of finishing the challenge like I was the first two rounds, it's not an achievement for me anymore, it's an annoying chore. I'm less and less motivated to fight my constant migraines to take and upload umpteenth same black-background portrait or shelfie. I don't feel good for defeating my migraine and taking the daily photo despite of it, I feel like I'm worsening it by doing something I don't even enjoy, and then I have no energy left for other things I want to do. I kinda made that worse by creating additional pressure on myself with the weekly doodles. I like doodling, but having deadlines for a hobby sucks.
Right now, I have way more fun with my dolls outside of photography, when I'm just playing with them, writing Oddwickshire stuff, planning sewing, etc.

Aside from being tired of the challenge itself, the outside world also wears me down, and I find myself growing sick of news, social media and the internet in general and wanting to escape and spend more time offline, and the daily photochallenge gets in the way and keeps me online, where I don't feel good.

I already mentioned other things I want to do. I'd like to dedicate more of my precious painless time to sewing, and other hobbies I've been abandoning for years now and want to get back into.

At first I wanted to wait 'til I'm done with this challenge and then decide what to do next year, but once I allowed myself to even just think about not doing another round, the freedom I'll have once I'm done became the most exciting thing about this year's round, and now I'm positive that I won't be doing any sort of photochallenge next year.

That doesn't mean I won't be posting any photos at all, I still enjoy doll photography, I just want to do it when I feel like it, and not dilute the joy it brings me by forcing myself to do it on a set schedule.

TL;DR:

• it's not rewarding anymore
  
• going against my migraines gets more and more tiresome
  
• I want to spend less time online
  
• I want to do other things
  
• I'll still post a pic now and then
  

Sorry for the rant and thank you for reading!

The photo looks great.

Your reasons make all the sense, and honestly, if it's just not that much fun to you anymore, then you shouldn't be forcing yourself to do it. However, I do hope we still see you around the forum because it would be a shame if you dispeared on us - it would be so much fun to hear more of Oddwickshire if that so entertained you.

The headstone featuring the mourning jellyfish makes me want to cry!

As long as you don't go away forever, or completely... please!