Aug.03 - Blaugust Day 3

Loving this new posting environment!

My second time making a post with Eleventy. I love it! The markdown file is so clean, there's just the header info, and then below that, a vast empty blank space. No HTML to bump into and tip over, Eleventy adds all that in for me at the end. Lovely!

Oh, and NOVA, how I love this app! You can find it at nova.app. I figued out how to run a terminal inside the app, which means my Eleventy project is running all the time and I can just make a page, edit, and immediately upload. I don't have to stop the process and start again, I don't need to run Terminal app in another window.

And then I figured out how to preview this window in one right next to it, which means every time I click Command-S, the window next to me updates with a live version of this post.

I love Nova. Nova forever.

There now exists another friend I can tease about being ancient

We went to our friend's 50th birthday brunch today. How is everyone turning 50? (I just turned 51). I know, I know: time, it passes. I see that in the face of every kid to whom I say, "Wow, you've gotten so tall!" Yes, the most obvious thing in the world, and yet.

We met some new folks who were visiting from Seattle, our old locale. They live in West Seattle, and we chatted about the beautiful water and mountains, among other things. I still really miss Puget Sound, but not enough to take on that traffic again! Still, I can't believe it's been six years since we were back there. I'm hoping we can visit next year. I'd really like to go to Sketcher Fest in Edmonds if I can get myself strong enough.

No real site updates for today.

I'm so busy with school and other things that I haven't gotten all of the old blog moved over, but hopefully that will come with time. If I can keep up this pace I should be able to graduate in November, and then I'll have a blissful few months of quiet before some graduate programs I'm interested in start up, and I have to make some decisions.

My body would like me to take the three years off to live in the woods, with a pantry full of canned goods, a ham radio, a room full of books and art supplies, and a canoe. I'm considering it.

Art class

I'm taking an art class as a last minute elective. I initially thought it would be fun because I enjoy messing about with watercolors and extremely permanent and staining black pigment ink which I get absolutely everywhere.

But within a couple weeks I was tired of critiquing and being critiqued. No one had been unkind, but just the act of submitting my stuff for review and having to tell other people what I thought of their stuff, it has felt...vulnerable and a bit awkward. I love and value community, and believe that making art in community is wonderful, but this isn't that.

Anyway, tonight I had to turn in my abstract, which I'm sharing here, because I had so much fun making it. You don't have to be good at art to enjoy it! I love encouraging people to just have fun with color.

I've never worked with oil pastels before, and it was SO FUN, it BEGS to become a big mess, my fingers were covered. Cal the cat kept trying to walk over it and I had to keep shooing him off. The drawing is an actual thing (you'll have to guess). We had to do a close-up of something in our home, fill the whole page with no negative space. I held this in my hand. Abstracts are such unexpected fun! I plan on doing more.

Audiobooks

While I drew, I listened to the audiobook version of The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mundanna, which I'm enjoying very much. I'm quite particular about audiobook narration, I have feelings about audiobooks, and this narrator is doing such a great job, I can imagine listening to it again.

I just finished Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie N. Holmberg, and I had to keep ditching the audio and drifting back to the text because the woman narrator was so unappealing. The character she was voicing was a woman described as a school marm, rather prim and proper. You can probably hear a caricature of that sort of voice in your mind? It's not too hard to conjure. The narrator dove into it and never let up.

Even as the character unfolded, opened up, revealed her softer side, as she grew, her voice remained a stereotype. No one sounds like that all the time, or even anytime, unless they're doing a bit. I found myself feeling bad for the fictional character she was portraying, and I specifically read the last chapter (it's a cozy read so it had a cozy ending) in the text rather than listen to the audio, so I could "hear" the character's voice in a more accurate way.

See? I told you. Feelings.

The flower in my shadow was supposed to line up with my heart, but it ended up landing more in my spleen

Thinking of an email newsletter for recovery stuff

Pondering the idea of a Buttondown newsletter type of thing for writing more detailed updates about recovery, that might be useful for folks who have similar issues as myself. Will update as this takes shape.