Here’s what happened this week.
Wins
I’ve made nearly a dozen 4" x 5" watercolor sketches and I’m happy about that. I had piles of unused watercolor paper here and there, so I decided to cut them into quarters and see what I could do with them. Between that and my new dip pen, it’s been a lot of fun to sketch, both at home and around town. You can find a few examples on my Instagram, and I’ll add a page to my site when I feel this “project” is done.
Frustrations
Some of you know that I have three jobs and they’re really killing me this summer. There’s SO much work and being on-call 24/7 genuinely sucks. Don’t I deserve to have one, well-paying job and live like a normal person? I think so.
Additionally there are health issues in my family now, about 1,400 miles away and I feel stuck and unable to help out. It’s not a good feeling.
Consuming
I finished reading The Book of Love by Kelly Link. Kelly has written some tremendous short stories, and Book of Love is her first novel. She really went for it, as it’s 640 pages. Briefly, the story features a few recently-dead teens who are unwitting pawns in a pissing match between magical beings. The kids must figure out what’s going on while navigating adolescence and their own wants and needs, which they may or may not have control over. The story features magical realism, which I love, as well as multiple perspectives. My only complaint is the length. There is a lot of teen drama, and at a point I was ready for it to end. But when the story gets going, it’s very good. I give it a B.
My kids and I have been watching the Korean competition show The Influencer, which features 77 South Korean influencers vying to be the best one. It’s like Bryce Dallas Howard’s episode of Black Mirror come to life.
The lengthy introduction segment (the first episode is nearly 90 minutes long) was welcome, as I didn’t know any of the contestants, including makeup artists, models, rappers, gamers and fitness gurus. There’s also a guy who “cooks meat,” as well as “an actual shaman," which we gathered meant fortune teller.
The first challenge had contestants staring at their phones and dolling out “likes” and “dislikes” to each other. The show’s most dystopian feature is the collars participants wear around their necks at all times, which initially displayed their follower counts, which was then used to calculate each person’s worth as a proportion of the 300M won ($219,000) prize pot. “They’re not even people, they’re reduced to a financial figure” my daughter said. Yes. We can’t wait for episode two.
Misc.
- I’m cautiously optimistic about the momentum Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are experiencing.
- I’m working on a painting to submit for entry into a juried show. Wish me luck.
- My kids return to college in a few weeks and I’m going to miss them dearly.
- I’ll briefly visit a dear friend in Burlington, Vermont in 2.5 weeks. Can’t wait for that.
- I abandoned Facebook by permanently deleting my account. I hope that was the right decision.
- I’m grateful to have you as a reader. Welcome, friend. :)