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I leave for Japan on Monday but I’ve been under the weather this week. I feel like there’s a lump in my stomach that won’t go away and my entire digestive tract stiffens after eating. I’m notorious for falling ill during life transitions. A few years ago, shortly after my separation, I was about to do a job interview when I suddenly vomited all over my office floor. I’d just eaten a kiwi, maybe too fast, and felt it stuck in my esophagus. I panicked and drove to urgent care, but it had passed by the time I arrived. The interview was rescheduled and I ended up getting the job. This should pass too.

All that I ask of myself during the next two months is to be curious and open to new experiences. My birth chart says that it’s a time of new opportunity, but there are a series of dates of significance waiting to stir the emotional pot: my would be wedding anniversary was a couple of days ago, my one year divorce anniversary is at the end of the month, my ex is getting married shortly after, and then comes the doozy – at the end of November comes my one year anniversary of a mental health crisis that is still too difficult to talk about. I know now that all I can do is move forward, even when I don’t feel like I can, and I have, but I’m embarrassed to talk about how scary it still feels.

Honestly, I don’t grieve for these changes, but I grieve for the person I was before knowing that the floor could fall under me at any moment. Everything is just too fresh to be 100% excited for this trip. But it’s my time, you know? Whether I’m ready for it or not, the universe put me in this position and to exert any control over it is to play God. I’ll be okay if I swim with the current instead of against. Look at me getting spiritual.

I miss you friends!!

Hit a crisis immediately after landing in Houston. On the drive from the airport to my family’s house, I realized the date listed on my printmaking residency contract is Fall 2025, not Fall 2024… I applied for Fall 2024 but they accepted me for Fall 2025… They missed the “4” in my application, I missed the “5” in my acceptance. Thankfully they still have a spot available for next month so all should be okay… I received email confirmation but the saga won’t be over until they share an updated contract. I spent the majority of the drive scripting how I would break the news to everyone. Hopefully that’ll stay a memory.

In other news, the full moon was yesterday. Here’s what I’m manifesting:

Dump

I’m in an Airbnb in Chapel Hill affectionately described as “shabby chic” but it’s mostly shabby. In the kitchen, a stock photo of a piece of crab meat dripping with butter hangs above two culturally questionable red buddha statues. We’ve got to start bullying people again.

Now that I’m not tied to a place or schedule, I’ve been oscillating between extreme rest and random bouts of panic. So I’m doing things… audiobooks, 10k steps, revising my resume… Supplements, meditation, liters of water. Forward, forward, forward.

This is the first period of rest I’ve had since leaving my job two months ago. There’s been an overwhelming amount of change but I’m scared to stand still. A friend mentioned that it seems like I’ve been trying to “figure things out” since he’s known me and I was taken aback. Isn’t that what we’re all doing?

Dump

Hi friends. I miss you.

Summer Mood Board

Paper

I’ll be back at Penland next week for another paper workshop, this time eastern-style with bast fibers. In the meantime, Caro and I have been experimenting with ink dyeing paper and fabric. The scans are neat.

Photo Dump

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Big Feelings

I’m putting in my two weeks notice tomorrow. There wasn’t a specific trigger. Last Monday I just had this overwhelming feeling of not wanting to do the work anymore, like if I had one more meeting added to my calendar I would literally die. It’s been months of feeling like the work I’m doing is meaningless and feeling physically sick. I spent the evening thinking about how comfortable I am living in indecision limbo, making a false promise to myself that if I just wait a little bit longer, a new solution will come to me and the situation will improve, thinking that I’m being responsible by not doing anything and justifying unhappiness for some theoretical future that never comes to fruition, short term discomfort morphing a long term problem. I’m choosing to enjoy my summer.

One of the hardest things I’m working through is a recurring thought that I’m quitting because it’s the easiest path forward. My therapist would classify this as a “child feeling,” something I imagine my parents saying and need to defend because they never validated my feelings as a child and blah blah blah. It’s a real feeling driven by a false thought. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter whether it’s the easy decision or not. I’m lucky enough to live a life where I don’t need to suffer, so why suffer?

My current plan is to pack up my apartment and spend 6 months to a year deep diving into a couple of cities. I’m hoping to structure it around workshops and classes to feel productive and meet new people. I get caught up in whether I’m making the right decision a lot but I’ve been thinking about how most crafts are products of their environments, like how paper communities developed around water sources. Instead of making the right decision, maybe it’s a matter of picking an environment and letting purpose stem from what grows there. I did ask ChatGPT to put an itinerary together for some inspiration. Budget is questionable but its heart is in the right place.

Slow Software

On a lighter note, I joined a listserv for book arts in the triangle and it’s reminded me how great a simple email list can be, low cognitive load yet effective. I was also happy to find the lower east side website randomly while looking up a restaurant. There’s power in software that builds micro-connections at a local level. I’m not sure humans were built to think at the scale that most social media platforms cover. That’s why sites like Craigslist are still valuable, even Reddit, though the location-specific subreddits are turning into mini NextDoors. Funny story about Reddit – someone’s claimed the “cookout_official” handle and comments on every dating advice post in central NC with something along the lines of “the hotties hang out at cookout.” Anyway, I’d put my money on a Gen Zer starting a “slow software” movement soon.

My Fav Photos from Sam & Naj’s Shitty Dating Show Themed Bday Karaoke

Photo Dump

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A random assortment of photos from Penland while I gather my thoughts:

Ugh </3

Hollander beater

Pressing water out of fresh sheets of paper before drying

The Paper studio’s manager is a stickler. We spent a day and a half of our four days cleaning. One of the rules is no paper on the floor… in a studio that makes paper… ha

We used mostly abaca, linen, and flax fibers for our papers. A small batch of denim was processed. It stained everything and was a pain in the ass to clean but very pretty.

Pulled the skull on my birthday

Thicc denim paper

This was the largest sheet size we pulled. If you dip the mold too deep into the vat, it creates a suction that’s difficult to break. The first time I tried it, the suction was so strong that I almost drowned and had to call for help. Eventually got the hang of it but could barely move the next morning. Pulling these mega sheets made me feel invincible.

My instructor Heather developed this capillary technique for staining paper. Essentially you re-wet a dried sheet of unsized paper and drip ink onto it. The ink breaks down at different distances, creating gradients of different hues. This coloration was made with black ink.

Visited some of the resident artists and their studios

Sarita Westrup

Sean O’Connell

Daniel Garver

Back to paper – Classmate’s desk

The class collab

Heather made sheets from the last dregs of pulp. Still beautiful.

My time at Penland overlapped with the Toe River Arts Studio Tour. It’s wild how many artists live in the area. This is Dan Essig’s studio.

Vicki Essig’s studio. She trains silk worms to spin silk flat!

Kit Paulson’s studio

Spruce Pine

Spruce Pine

Spruce Pine

Spruce Pine

Spruce Pine

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Some things I’ve been thinking about

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The death (again) of the internet as we know it by Noah Smith

On AI slop:

”What is the point of images of kids driving cars made of plastic bottles? What is the point of nonsense recipes? The answer is: There doesn’t have to be a point. Since the marginal cost of producing this stuff is essentially zero, and there’s at least some nonzero chance that any one of these random things will catch on and become a meme and get people to subscribe to a channel and make some ad dollars, it makes sense to spam as much of this slop into the world as you can.”

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This is what the internet looks like now by Ryan Broderick (mentioned in the previous article)

AI slop still feels too uncanny valley for me, but I do love a niche, absurd video like the one featured of a goth girl arriving at her prom in a casket. Maybe the difference between the two is that AI slop is engineered for maximum engagement whereas the rest unites people around a specific interest or brand of humor. There’s human solidarity knowing you enjoy something that someone else enjoys, especially if it’s strange. Or maybe there is no difference and I’m just fooling myself into believing that I can outsmart the algorithm. Put AI slop behind a human influencer and I’ll probably be done for it.

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“André 3000 is At Peace (For Now) by Hanif Abdurraqib

“So then, sacrifice becomes about risk assessment. Not just for the Black musician or celebrity, but, to a different degree, the Black retail worker, who knows the way they are treated by coworkers or customers isn’t right, but also knows they’ve got rent due. There’s a cost to be paid, not only to an audience, but at times, to self. And it has to be measured. Is the truth that may be revealed actually worth what might be lost in the process?”

“He mentions that he’s played New Blue Sun for Big Boi, in a series of people he’s played it for, with mixed results. Two people cried. One director friend thought it transcendent. He took it to his old hood, and one of his old friends fell asleep while listening. This same friend, he tells me – hardly able to finish the story because he’s laughing so hard – woke up and shouted, You gonna put some beats on that shit?”

I love the idea of pursuing a craft just because you feel called to it or because you feel called to evolve and surrounding yourself with people that’ll help you get there.

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Gael García Bernal’s Four Favorites w/ Letterboxd

• Memorias del Subdesarrollo
• El Discreto Encanto de la Burgesía
• Back to the Future
• Jamón Jamón

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Photo dump

Some things I’ve been thinking about

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Jia Tolentino’s article “The Hidden-Pregancy Experiment”

“My husband and I had not bought a baby monitor for our first child, a choice that satisfied his desire to not buy things and my desire to insist that certain aspects of experience are fundamentally ungovernable.”

“certain aspects of experience are fundamentally ungovernable”

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The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Almost choked when the film cuts to Ann, the main character, in a corporate meeting and she asks, “I was wondering what the 5 year plan for the company is.”

“The film's title accurately reflects the sense of floating, frustrated inertia that envelops Ann, a feeling of being suspended between phases of life without any clarity on what, if anything, is coming next.” Review

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This playlist

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Photo Dump:

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Back at work and time passes slowly.

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