weekly retro #34: clawing myself back into a routine-hole
happy monday. i come to you all $23.46 richer, one click away from spending it all entirely on shipping for a 10-lb bag of wax - better than spending it on some dumb shit, right? here's the weekly retro.
last week i put a bunch of original watercolor paintings in the shop for sale. i've not sold paintings before, but i really didn't like the shop having nothing to buy in it. once i get the halloween candles out and wrap up some consulting work i'm doing, i have some ideas for larger pixel art paintings i'd like to make.
i am also taking this drop as a fire under my ass to airbrush more, so i'm including a free surprise airbrush sketch for each painting sold. i'm starting to realize what style of airbrushing feels fun and natural to me, and also being intentional about warming up (see the newsprint above) so i can get better at precision and managing the air flow for the paints i like to use - most of the time, i'm using liquid watercolor.
beside going over october plans and goals, i plan to launch my limited edition halloween candles later this week. it's a niche collection, so it's not a large amount of inventory, but the creation process is kind of labor intensive. i leveled up in a lot of my techniques, despite the constant interruptions of Life Happening.
:3
my dad is still in-patient but making progress in literal small steps. i feel like my brother and i are getting into a groove of better communication, scheduling and making visits. it's becoming part of my routine now after a couple of weeks of flailing - i actually went to yoga and the gym, and i managed to see friends. it warrants repeating that last month i pretty much didn't talk to anyone in my family except for monthly calls or texts with my brother, and now i'm visiting our dad and talking on the phone for hours with our dad's sister...every day is truly a winding freaking road.
ever since my dad's heart attack, i feel like the days have been getting slower. i'm used to looking at the clock and being like "oh it's 4pm already" but now when i look up it's only 1pm. it's around 80 F degrees out, so perhaps time is moving slower until it makes sense for the clock to strike october o'clock. this week is a time for establishing new goals, trying new things, and removing a ton of cotton from a new bottle of pills - a monthly event i call "build a bear workshop".
things i enjoyed this week
- i've talked about one of my favorite cooking content creators before, big vegan flavor author nisha vora. this week i made baingan bharta which came out great. we have an electric stove (derogatory) so i couldn't grill the eggplant but she includes notes on how to get around that.
- shouts out to my pal mike pennisi who not only talked on the phone with me for like an hour while i waxed on and off about the radical concept of indefinite hiatus vs. no-contact with people, but he then sent me cookies he baked in the mail along with an umbrella i had left during my last visit.
- i really enjoyed this video from field notes about their new "the chicago look" edition along with the actual cover design.
it's time for me to go find where my attention span is hiding because there's a lot of shit to do!!
xoxo jenn