weekly retro: are there brokers in the ocean?
i'm just coming down now from a heightened state of agitation, caused by only just realizing at 5pm that daylight saving time ended while we were asleep. imagine the clock saying 5pm and your cat is not screaming for food and treats, it's terrifying lol! fortunately, pumagreg is fine and, as far as he's concerned, getting an early dinner.
i feel like this week flew by quite unproductively but as i look back, i actually did a lot. a few of you responded to my latest newsletter saying you would like to get blog posts sent to your inbox, so i set that up for you.
to be 100% dramatic, i recently had to change my entire morning coffee routine because my grocery store stopped carrying the vanilla almond milk i love. at the same time, though, they started carrying this oatmilk creamer that's, thank god, better than the other ones i've tried. anyway this isn't sponsored, it's just a resolution to weeks of personal coffee drama and i'm sharing it in case you too like your sugar with coffee and (vegan) cream.
i'm officially launching my online shop in a couple weeks, so i've been coding that up and doing more product testing. i'm very excited about how the candles are turning out, i have been doing a lot of work and i am proud of the outcomes.
business stuff has finally got me getting lost in flow states, which is great and not a feeling i've felt in quite some time off the treadmill. you can take the girl out of the tech job, but the girl will code a rainbow cursor trail until 2am while still in her workout clothes from 12 hours prior.
we got the news this week that our rent will be going up a percentage i've never experieced before, which means we're probably going to have to make some big decisions come next year. it's too expensive to go back to where i "came from" (10 miles away) and it's becoming too expensive to stay where i've been for over a decade. what a fucking bummer, but at least this time i have a partner in andy and we'll figure it out like we always had before independently.
perhaps it's for the best. there are little things that made me fall in love with jersey city when i got here that faded away over time due to rising rents - restaurants like litm (rip) where i used to be able to show my art. barcade is closing in june, where i had hosted the 2nd iteration of jerseyscript. and the art school stopped its weekly figure drawing sessions since covid, so i have to do it off a screen which is fine but definitely not the same.
there used to be an art supply store a short walk away, but that got torn down and replaced with luxury housing. i needed to buy paper online and threw in a box of crayons for $2.50 to hit free shipping and office max put it all in a polymailer instead of a box. anyone with 2 brain cells could guess how that went. it's hard not to think of how nicer things were 10 years ago.
i don't have many friends who still live here. lots of folks even left nyc during the pandemic and never came back. it's getting harder to find a reason - except the fact that moving is expensive and a pain in the ass - to not explore other places to call home. but then we'll go on a walk and find a birdhouse covered in googly eyes, and i am re-charmed.
how much do you think the rent is in the roku™ ocean? are the coral reefs rent stabilized? do the anemone have to write notes on the appliances to keep the clownfish from hanging things on and breaking them? i once met a roku devrel engineer at a devrel conference and i asked them how climate change will impact the roku ocean and they didn't get it.
brian, who took the above photo of me, gets it. also, he and i have been talking a lot about where we'll end up living in the future. this week we got matching tattoos together, now officially a tradition after our first matching one nearly a decade ago. shouts out to clara, who did a great job. that was a long but invigorating day; i had to rush to her spot in crown heights after doing an energizing virtual q&a with the codedex community, which i'll talk about more very soon - they're turning the conversation into a podcast episode!
it's been a few days since the tattoo so the second skin's off and i'm ready to go back to the gym, start a fresh new week, and let pumagreg near my freshly inked arm again. i asked clara if she'd clip the ear of one of them in honor of pumagreg and she loved the idea. sometimes when i play with his ear i feel bad thinking about how scary the experience of being trapped and released must have been for him, but comfort in knowing he was probably asleep for the ear clipping part and that he's clearly the most comfortable cat in the united states today. i mean, look at him, he's not worried about a thing. he doesn't give a fuck where we end up as long as there are treats.
treats i liked this week
- those familiar with my work know i really enjoy p5.js and creative coding in general. on saturday, 3/15 is ccfest which is a free, virtual event bringing together lots of folks in the creative coding community.
- wehaverights.us has rich video content in multiple languages to help us all know and understand our rights when we see or are approached by ICE.
- this vocal tract simulator/synth is so funny, but also a helpful diagram for a part of our body we use so much
- i have been waiting very patiently ever since descartes a kant said they did a kexp performance last year, and it finally went up. i love their look and sound!
- speaking of cool music, spellling has a new video and record coming out later in the month!
this coming week is going to be a busy one. robot karaoke is in brooklyn on monday, jerseyscript is in jersey city on tuesday, and my therapist is finally back after being out a couple weeks. we have a lot to catch up on!
xoxo jenn
