August

It’s August, and the summer has been so unseasonably cool that in a way it feels as if summer never really started - and here we are tumbling in Autumn. The Fall Semester of JCCC is starting soon and I’m not enrolled in any classes due to a Winter trip to Canada which takes place right in the middle of finals - and truthfully I could use some more time off, as much as I’ll have any time off while working a full time job that has overtime and a busy season from October through November.

I’ve made less art than I would have liked over the last month, but very industrious when it comes to embroidery, my dollhouse and research for a writing project that’s been percolating in my brain for well over two years. There was a visit to the new aquarium in KC (good, but not as good as Baltimore, except for the otters), and a trip to the Kitsap peninsula to scout areas to live when we move in a year or so.

With that planned move there is a list of a hundred things I need to do to make a house ready to sell, assuming the housing market hasn’t completely crashed by the time we’re ready - which is another great reason to not be enrolled in classes this fall: clean the house, empty the house, fix the house. I did just have the back deck rebuilt, and the front porch screened it which mostly helps with the rampant mosquitos… mostly.

I used to be better at conclusions, but the air is trying to kill me and my head hurts too much to care too much.

And then it was December... also I got married.

It’s been over six months since I last posted anything here (so much for goals). A lot has happened, and also very little has happened - as is the way things feel sometimes.

To start, a chain of events:

• Last year I completed a Data Analytics Bootcamp hosted through KU. It was great, it was overwhelming. I learned a lot, and “graduated” with 103%, despite coming out of it without a final project I could show anyone. But it was so much in so short a time, I felt like I needed to do more to flesh out and reinforce what I learned.

• I started 100 Days of Python, while I considered what to do next. This was also great, and was reinforcing a lot of key fundamentals in my programming knowledge that had been glossed over a bit during the bootcamp.

• A quarter of the way into my pythoning, EdX - the company that runs the bootcamps - contacted me about being a TA for the program. This sounded like an excellent way to do some of that reinforcement I’d been wanting to get around to. I applied, I was hired.

• It was not the reinforcement I’d been looking for. Mostly I spent my time helping students install things on their computers.

• Talking with my partner about my experiences with the bootcamps, he brought up his own trepidation about working with anyone who’d learned in one for the same reason I hadn’t applied to any jobs yet - too much too fast with no reinforcement. I took a beat, and started looking at local college programs with Analytics degree programs. I found one at a community college that looked good, applied, registered, and I’m just completing my first semester this week.

• A month ago I finally declared my “major” - Computer Science and chasing another Data Analytics Certificate. I will quite likely not finish the former, but I really only declared a major so I could sign up for classes three days earlier than I would be able to do otherwise.

• Also I got married two weeks ago. 

TLDR: Did school. Did more school. Did more more school. Got married. 

School has got me to finally update this site though, as it’s a requirement of the Data Analytics program to have an online portfolio (how convenient for me that one already existed). I still need to finish my Bigfoot project, which might get a complete overhaul for very important reasons. I also find myself wanting to do an exploration of Kansas City crime over the last 10 years because True Crime, and also convincing my mom that Seattle would actually be a safe place to live.

Art has been more of a private affair. AI and advancements and AI internet drama is provoking thoughts about the commodification of our attention that I can’t quite put into words yet. The next (insert number here) months/years are going to be interesting to say the least. I have mostly been working on my dollhouse, learning basic electrical to light it up, and lots of faux-everything techniques. Wanting to share it, that will probably be here in this blog. It doesn’t fit in with anything else and it’s not something I want to market, just share. Though truthfully I’m feeling very over marketing myself. I don’t want to be a commodity, and to keep people’s attention everything about you has to be a commodity.

I much prefer the quiet.