i saw some ducklings
my first bitsy game & learning to draw loosely again
the studio
hey — fun two weeks! for the end of may, I spend an inordinate amount of time (like two hours) trying to figure out this open source alternative to language reactor, which is a browser extension that lets you instantly look up the definition to words of foreign language subtitles. they recently have started putting their services behind a paywall, which I can kind of understand, but which also annoys me, so I vow to stop using language reactor and find asb subtitles instead, which works like a charm with my existing extensions that let me look up the definition of words on webpages and save them to my flashcards. several days later language reactor graciously responds to my curious email about their services and gifts me 3 months of their pro service, so I begrudgingly retract my vow to stop using their services for three months and send them a gushy thank you email.
I've been reading a ton of comics lately and I still think it's such a beautiful, dynamic medium for books.
I have this kind of insane tendency to gather way too many resources when I decide I want to learn something. having a solid structure makes me feel like I'm not wasting time. I find it hard to resist chasing efficiency with creative work still.
earlier this week I sit at my desk and feel this wriggling existential malaise and also incredible peace. lots of time means lots of idleness means I need to confront this impatience I have towards wanting to get good at things now so I can enjoy them for longer…but then I think that maybe instead of confronting it I should just sit with it for a bit. I note to myself that I should do things for the sake of doing them instead of for some kind of unachievable ideal, and then I listen to a horror podcast while drawing a bunch of ellipses which is actually really hard.
then I move onto drawing boxes, which is what the whole drawabox site is named after, and at first with a ruler it is kind of meditative and rewarding to see the boxes materialize, but then the next exercise rips the training wheels off and I marvel at how wobbly my lines are.
I also made my first game in bitsy! notes from bubble tea shop is a little pixel vignette where you walk around a bubble tea shop and overthink. I actually tried to make this like 7 times in the last few days and kept giving up because I kept running into snags with figuring out a new program. having a deadline definitely helped me to sit down and just focus for a couple of hours to get it finished, even if it didn’t live up to exactly what I had imagined. better than being nothing at all. it was actually really fun and absorbing and makes me think about yumi sakugawa's idea of being a disciplined creative and how you shouldn't punish yourself if you don't create within a certain ideal you imagine for yourself.
also I recorded another episode of my poetry podcast, but take a lot of liberties in the recording, which makes the editing process actually turn out slower than before, then sit in this realization while editing the audio feeling kind of good about my mistake because it means I have a good idea of how to make it better the next time I make a recording.
I finish up reading oliver burkeman's four thousand weeks, which took me a while but was a kindly written little book. I think it might have turned me off of self-help books forever. here's a quote I liked:
We’ll never get the upper hand in our relationship with the moments of our lives because we are nothing but those moments. To “master” them would first entail getting outside of them, splitting off from them. But where would we go? “Time is the substance I am made of,” writes Jorge Luis Borges. “Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire.”
then I think about our bodies being time and that feels more right than thinking about time as this gooey thing that surrounds us that we are supposed to figure out how to float in, to swim in. speaking of bodies — I finally caved and bought a month long membership to steezy studio and find out that their dance classes are really fun. I really forgot how joyful it feels to just be in your body and aware of it in the sense that you can feel music through it, but you're not aware of it in all the ways its failing you. at least not while you're just vibing.
the gallery
may 2022 in music, now at 79 songs:
3 notable faves:
in celly after togashi announced hxh was coming back… a panel from the hxh manga I thought was particularly beautiful
and finally, the books I read in the last two weeks:
a reason life is beautiful
because our city had no power for several days but most people made it out okay. because under the guise of coming over to charge his devices my friend brought a bunch of fried chicken for us to share. because doing silly things with your friends will never get old. I watched two okay movies with a friend I wasn’t sure I’d see again. apparently she’s taken up cooking and is very good at it. because on a walk yesterday I saw a ton of ducklings and suddenly felt very right, like the dust and sparks around me had worked hard to put me in that moment.