How are my 2023 Goals?
I took a weeklong break from daily drawing for my mental health and so that I could work on some passion projects - i.e. putting together a costume for Comicon. On the drawing front - apparently drawing portraits inspires people to request portraits, and I’ve been art catfished enough that I don’t have the energy to respond at the moment. Also a few of the requests were…questionable. Now that I have a week to wait for custom fabric to arrive, I’ll be back to drawing - this month is all hands and feet which will probably also result in questionable art requests.
On the cosplay front - I never thought about making a purse by hand before, but here we are, and I’ve made a purse, which is just a black velvet cube, from scratch.
Gym going is going better than not going, but still working towards goals - but time. As far as daily coding practice, also time constraints, but TA-ing for the class is at least providing consistent exposure. As with all things in life, I’d have so much more time if I was unemployed.
What I’m Reading and What I’ve Read :
I am waist deep in two different books and I’ve already started a third.
Kant: A Very Short Introduction - this is good and deep and over my head. Andrew said to me once that Kant was not the place to start in philosophy, that apparently also applies to the abbreviated version. My entire reason for attempting to read Kant was a snippet of his philosophy of aesthetics I read in another book that I found interesting, and most of what I’ve gleaned, painful, from this short volume is that Kant didn’t even consider aesthetics to be important - and it’s quite likely I’m misinterpreting that as well.
How High We Go In The Dark - This may be the best book I read all year. I’m reading it in a very paced out sections, which works because each chapter is more or less a complete story, but all stories take place in the same world centered on the same sequence of events, with eventual cross pollination of characters and character families in a beautiful tapestry that starts out dark and gets less dark the further on you get.
A Forest of Kings - I picked this up following a visit to the Maya exhibit on Union Station - which was great, but really just gave enough information that I wanted to learn more, and also kind of upset that PreColumbian history wasn’t covered more in my public school education. Was the history of Europe really that necessary? Not that it was unnecessary, but it’s an ocean away, and I know so little comparatively about the history of my own continent, and my neighboring continent, because some yahoo decided European history (aka white history) was more important despite the fact that we (Americans) had a whole war to liberate ourselves from British colonial control.
I’ve also mainlined Pandora, and Son of a Trickster. That last I’m really looking forward to finishing the series of.
What I’m Listening To:
I’m just finishing the third book in Adrien Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time series. I’ve seen a lot of mediocre feedback on this third novel - Children of Memory - but I love it. Additionally I’m falling back into podcasts, Buried Bones, Trust Me, and the MLK Tapes.
What I’m Watching:
Like everyone else in the world, I’m watching The Last of Us.
Something That Made Me Laugh:
The last month I’ve been a little stressed out and mentally crunchy. Laughter has been at a minimum. It’s something I need to keep better track up for my mental health.