Life

Art, Life

Daily Doodle: Impressions

Today I finally dug my Wacom tablet out of my closet. Lately I’ve been feeling more and more ridiculous for owning a pricey tablet but never touching it. What can I say? I don’t draw much anymore. I go through cycles of art and craft. Drawing has always been a part of my life, but after I’d been doing comics in the school paper for a while I totally burnt out. The same thing happened to me and knitting after I worked in a yarn shop for a while. I just had to step away. Then I got into food. I cooked, ate out, then started a blog about cooking and eating. Then I burnt out. I sense a pattern here 🙂

While learning new crafts is great, the excitement and the fizzle I experience every time makes me wonder. One of my deeper insecurities is that I’ll always be a bit of a dabbler in life, good enough at quite a few things but never particularly excelling in anything. I know that this fear is far from true (I mean, I can make SOCKS, and if that isn’t success, I don’t know what is), but hey insecurities are rarely grounded in reality, right?

Anyways, back to drawing. In the past I’ve used my tablet primarily for editing and coloring hand drawn stuff, so my freehand isn’t so great. As a bit of an experiment, I thought it would be fun to do a sketch a day on my tablet. It should improve my hand eye coordination. Or is it hand-eye-laptop-tablet coordination? >_< I’ll try to post something everyday for the short term future, but no promises.

Here’s day one: I quickly scribbled myself, then went to town  with the impressionist brush feature. I need more definition around the neck and my proportions are a bit off, but besides that I think I look very peaceful! I really look like my dad, sheesh.

 

Food, Life

David Chang on Failure, Loyalty, Risk

I saw this interview mentioned in passing in a tweet by Michael Pollan. Clicking through, I was expecting something a bit fluffy and pretentiously foodie, but whoa! I was really surprised by David Chang’s depth and honesty in this interview. He covers a few of my favorite topics: failure, loyalty and risk. Oh, let’s also not forget love, truth and honesty. Wow, he’s worse than Dear Sugar 🙂

Seriously though, it’s well worth 17 minutes of your time. Watch it all!

Life

Doppelgangers

Thomas took this great picture of our doppelgangers in Vietnam. I mean, the hair, the wizard sleeves, the collarbones… that’s me in another life. And the stance, the backpack…? That is so Thomas. I wish he had taken a picture of the guy’s shoes, I know he must be wearing flip flops.

Bizarre but amusing to imagine myself as her! She’s got a different life for sure.

 

Life

Back to Basics

I’ve started meditating again. It’s time. There are several different ways that I go about it.

1)When I’m feeling ambitious I practice zazen, which I learned back in college. Basically I sit completely still and try to focus on my breathing, counting from 1-10, over and over. When thoughts come up, I acknowledge them, let them go and then get back to the counting. I’ve never really gotten much out of sitting zen, but I like how challenging it is to still both the body and mind. Try it- it’s hard to get to 10 without 3 different thoughts popping up in your head.

2) Something that I’m finding a bit more useful than zen is the process of “breathing through” my pain and emotions. I read about the idea on Dear Sugar, an online advice column that I discovered last month and have since become obsessed with. When I’m feeling overcome with emotion, I focus on the person/event/emotion, then breathe in deeply with intention, hold it for a second, and then actively blow the feeling out. Over and over and over.

Blow out rejection. Breathe in understanding. Blow out fear. Breathe in hope. Blow out loneliness, pain, confusion, anxiety, what if’s?, anger, regret, longing, etc. My feelings aren’t gone by a long shot, but I know that I’m making progress with each breath. It’s hard to explain how it works. I feel like through the breathing I’m getting a handle on overwhelming things in my life and applying time and effort into accepting them.

3)I’ve never tried mantra meditation before. However, I have stumbled across a mantra for myself.

I was listening to some list on Spotify, maybe it was top albums or something like that, and the Quiet Company album came up. I started listening to it randomly, and I came across the song “Are you a mirror?” It’s a song about a father expressing hope and love for his new baby. Of course it took me about three takes to realize it was about a CHILD, because I was so walloped by the chorus: ” I look inside you and I see myself.” The first time I heard it I instantly thought “that’s how I feel love.” When I feel real compassion, deep understanding and connection with a person, I guess I call it love. Romantic love/friendship/familial love- it all boils down to this same feeling.

I could stand to cultivate more of this feeling in my life, so throughout the day as I interact with all things living I think my mantra silently to myself.

  • I’m eating a Super Duper burger outside the BART stop, keeping pigeons from getting at the crumbs: I look inside you, and I see myself.
  • I’m buying coffee from the barista I try to avoid at Starbucks, the real catty one who labeled my breakfast sandwich “Crazy”: I look inside you, and I see myself.
  • I’m on the phone with an elderly lady in Connecticut, haggling over the bill for my knee: I look inside you, and I see myself.

Baby steps, baby steps.

 

Life

October in Photos

October was a month of disconnect for me. It was hot- in the 70s- for most of the month, which clashed with the whole “fall is here” feeling. I was barely in the house for about 2 weeks. First off, Jill’s little sister visited San Francisco, and needed a place to stay, so I shipped off to Ryan’s for a week or so. Then Ryan left town for another week and a half, so I was over there again just to dogsit. Throughout it all I shuffled back and forth to my house for clean clothes and sanity.

During this time I worked longer hours than usual and even though it’s nothing in the realm of what’s normal for a lawyer or an ibanker, for me, the stress was miserable. I spent my free time seeing shows (Jens Lekman, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Anthony Bourdain, Architecture in Helsinki), eating extravagant meals with an equally depressed friend, and then there was Halloween. Boom. ON TO NOVEMBER.

November is crazy too. Or rather, other people are telling me that it’s crazy and if I agree with them, I guess that’s how it will be. I’m trying to take it easy, but honestly, the “Holiday Season” doesn’t want you to calm down.

A few stress-coping skills I learned from October:

  • Spend time with friends and family everyday. They will knock some sense into you when things get tough. They will present options to you when you cannot see straight any more.
  • Go to yoga/a bike ride/running/the gym- whatever your “thing” is, do it. You need it, terribly. If you’re lucky, you just might have an epiphany during your exercise. The only caveat is don’t go work out if you’re totally fried and depressed and crying in bed. Probably won’t help. Just go back to sleep.
  • Eat well. Drink water. Eat straight up vegetables and whole grains. You will feel better.
  • Go drinking when you need to. It helps.
  • Sleep. I guess this one should be number one. Wonderful things happen when your body gets sleep, and if you don’t get it, everything goes downhill exponentially.
  • Take a full lunch hour at work. Like sleep, it will work wonders. I like to spend my lunch hours shopping or walking to the library. I’m always glad when I take my government mandated lunch hour!
  • Make time for things that are important to you- whatever it is- knitting, a friend’s birthday party, grocery shopping, getting a haircut… make time for it. Stay up late and do it, whatever. If you don’t do the things that you enjoy, you’ll start to become incredibly spiteful toward everyone and you’ll lose a bit of yourself.
  • Go easy on friends and loved ones. I let my feelings get out of control and I became very mean and irrational during October. Avoid it if you can!
  • Say no if you have to- I quit French :(. I really hated that I had to, but work was taking over, and I just didn’t have the time for it. Once I stopped taking French, a good 8 hours/week opened up for me.
  • Breathe, meditate, stretch. Blah blah blah. You know it’s true.
  • Remember that everything that you’re doing is a choice, and that you are in control. Even if things are bad, you can control how you’re responding.
  • When things are really bad, laugh. It will probably be all right.

Oh, of course I’m laughing. Here’s goes November!