I am almost done with a new drawing in which I employ cross-hatching in ink, but with a subtle delicacy I can only achieve in a meditative headspace where ego and any sense of time temporarily suspend in the eternal moment of now. The whole reason I stumbled across drawing as a child was to escape the noise of my overactive echo chamber of a mind, which is still loud to this day. Even when there is no immediate crisis to actually worry about, my brain synthesizes panic like an involuntary spasm, leaving me in a fight or flight state and unable to filter out strange, abstract thoughts in otherwise calm surroundings. This heightened state is the fuel for expression in the form of art, be it painting, drawing, or animation.