News and Notes

Art, writing, productivity, and happiness

Fire is the hot topic (sorry!) of the moment, but I’m not going to talk about that just yet.

I started a major Nine Lives essay in December titled “How to Survive 2025”; I’d hoped to post it in January, but it’s research-intensive and it’s looking like it might slip to February. Alternatively, I might turn it into a mini-series, since it’s gotten pretty sprawling; there are a lot of different threats and disasters to potentially contend with.

In the meantime, this is more of a brief personal update.


Jak and I began a long, ongoing conversation last year about what kind of traditions we’d like to deliberately orchestrate in our lives. This came about because I’d recognized that traditions can have emotional value, and yet we have almost none remaining to speak of: some we deliberately rejected for various reasons from morality to practicality, while others we were forced to abandon due to living in Mexico or other circumstances.

Anyway, at one point in our discussions, Jak floated the idea of us doing some kind of winter-holiday-adjacent art project together, which — since neither of us are trained artists — eventually morphed into “hanging out together doing a couple of paint-by-number kits”.

Previous to this conversation I had exactly zero interest in paint-by-numbers, but as usual when I latch on to one of Jak’s ideas, I wind up taking it to extremes he never imagined. Not only did I research the hell out of paint-by-numbers supplies and techniques, I found a piece that (assuming I manage to execute it well) I would actually like to hang in our soon-to-be-remodeled bedroom.

This unexpected artistic interest from him also rekindled my banked desire in other forms of art. I have a set of 72 near-pristine Prismacolor drawing pencils that I’ve been carrying around unused since the early nineties, in hopes of returning to that medium at some point. Also, ever since buying an iPad in 2023, I have wanted to learn to draw in Procreate.

Pencil coloring had to wait for additional supplies from the States, but I did begin learning Procreate. At first I just used it for hand-lettering labels and drawing custom icons for Tashi’s word buttons (an extremely large and unfinished project, given his 100+ word vocabulary), but then I started testing out coloring and shading techniques. And I got frustrated by how impossible it is to buy coloring pages that are not AI-generated messes, until finally in December I just said fuck it, I’ll draw my own, and started working on an original piece of art from the sketch up.

Which is a complete “waste of time” in one sense — it’s not producing anything useful. I won’t even have the option to hang it up as decoration when it’s done. But sketching digitally helps me get over the perfectionist paralysis that has long kept me from traditional sketching. (The two-finger Procreate “undo” tap has already become automatic.) And it’s something I occasionally enjoy, and I’m trying to live like I believe my own enjoyment is an occasionally acceptable goal.


“You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.”
— Hank Green


Near the end of December Jak and Tashi and I took a long road trip up to Austin, to visit family and also collect packages representing a year’s worth of shopping, which I proceeded to magically ensmallen so that everything would fit inside our little car. (Jak had spent the last six weeks radiating so much certainty that I had overbought and it wouldn’t all fit that I had second-guessed myself and joined him in distress, but my first instinct turned out to be correct — most of what we were buying could be stripped of packaging and nested, so that the total volume was manageable.)

During the week in Austin — with a much smaller number of responsibilities on my plate — my creativity woke up, and I spontaneously imagined a new short story. Or more accurately, I spontaneously came up with a character and a main scenario, and then I spent two days mulling it over, deliberately working out the necessary additions to make it a full story. And then I actually wrote a chunk of it, before it was time to get back on the road.

(True Fans subscribers can look forward to this story as bonus content, when it’s finished.)

And now we are home again with a thousand spinning plates and juggling balls, and all such creative endeavors — painting, drawing, writing — are on hold.

We are barreling directly into our last big renovation push, to start next month — at which point we will lose access to half of our house. Jak and I will cram our king bed into the spare bedroom/my office, and I will be working on my iPad keyboard in the living/dining room, amongst stacks of bins and bags and boxes, throughout the loud, dusty chaos. Between now and then, I am eyebrow-deep in work, both to catch up from our trip and to prep for the remodel.

When I have a little breathing space again, I will — in addition to the aforementioned Nine Lives — pick up the short story and the painting (on which we made only minor progress in December). The novel is likely to remain on hold until after I have my office, desk, chair, desktop computer, and some semblance of calm back in my life … maybe April?

The other big news is that Jak is officially retiring from his day job at the end of January. Doing this now means — depending upon the vagaries of the stock market — that we may never be able to afford to move back to the States … but honestly after this last election I can no longer say that is something we will definitely want to do, all things considered.

What I do know is that getting those twenty-five hours a week back will make Jak very happy, and we are at the point in our lives (Jak just turned sixty! which doesn’t seem real to me) where indefinitely postponing happiness for an uncertain future seems like a bad bet. And the subsequent transition into a fully equal distribution of household responsibilities will free up some of my time as well, which will help in all of the above pursuits, from the novel on down.

And soon — just a handful of months! — we will have a fully remodeled house, with life-changing upgrades in storage options and organizational systems, which will also free up time for both of us. I am so excited about that prospect; it’s been a long time coming.

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