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It's belated-by-tattooing-adventures Shop Day! Skulls are back! There's a tiny fish! Green and orange! Quartz!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DorkaelSkunkworks
It's belated-by-tattooing-adventures Shop Day! Skulls are back! There's a tiny fish! Green and orange! Quartz!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DorkaelSkunkworks
thinking about looking down
Dec. 12th, 2018 06:26 pmI make about one trip a year that requires an airplane. I fly from one of three cities in Missouri -- Kansas City, Columbia, or St. Louis -- to Los Angeles, where I spend about a week, and then I fly home.
A few times, I've had the good luck of having the window seat at night.
Watching a city from the air, especially during decent, has always felt like one of the nearest things to visual poetry. They're these living, crystalline organisms, twinkling, and always full of movement that looks almost like dancing, or the flow of some kind of blood that lights from within.
Every so often, driving at night during the winter, I'll catch sight of some other road through the trees. I'll see other cars dancing, and I'll feel suddenly that I'm part of one of those delicate, living lattices that I've seen from the air.
It's overwhelming. It's wonderful.
A few times, I've had the good luck of having the window seat at night.
Watching a city from the air, especially during decent, has always felt like one of the nearest things to visual poetry. They're these living, crystalline organisms, twinkling, and always full of movement that looks almost like dancing, or the flow of some kind of blood that lights from within.
Every so often, driving at night during the winter, I'll catch sight of some other road through the trees. I'll see other cars dancing, and I'll feel suddenly that I'm part of one of those delicate, living lattices that I've seen from the air.
It's overwhelming. It's wonderful.
*waves at new people*
Dec. 12th, 2018 06:19 pmOne thing about switching platforms is that I don't recognize everyone, and that there are new people that maybe I'm meeting for the first time.
I don't always follow people I don't recognize back, but:
- If we know each other from Tumblr or Twitter (or somewhere else), drop me a line! I'll feel silly and do the thing!
- New folks: please interact! That way I'll have an opportunity to get to know you.
- You're welcome to lurk. Lurking is totally allowed.
I don't always follow people I don't recognize back, but:
- If we know each other from Tumblr or Twitter (or somewhere else), drop me a line! I'll feel silly and do the thing!
- New folks: please interact! That way I'll have an opportunity to get to know you.
- You're welcome to lurk. Lurking is totally allowed.
December is hard.
Dec. 8th, 2018 04:53 amSo a few years ago I quit my day job.
This was a fiscally suicidal thing to do, or would have been if I hadn't had supportive roommates. At the time, I said it was about the art -- it was -- but one thing that I discovered as a side note was that hey, my mental health starts breaking down when I have to work at an outside job more than about 24-32 hours a week. My depression kicks in, I start to lose cohesion, etc.
Which, okay, is not ideal.
And it isn't a laziness thing. During most of the year I spend about 2-6 hours a day doing creative work. Writing is best in blocks of 2+ hours, visual art is best done with podcasts or audiobooks, crafting with Netflix. When I'm really cranking, I average around a 70 hour week: 32-ish at the sustaining gig, 30+ on my own recognizance.
(Not that my own recognizance pays even close to the sustaining gig's wage yet; it's probably going to be about a tenth of my income, and I'm not 100% sure I'll turn a profit this year. But it's still work, and it's still meaningful.)
That's background, because it explains why this time of year is particularly hard. My sustaining gig kicks into full-time (or more) around early November, and my hours get weirder. In order to write consistently, I've been getting up at 3:30 in the morning so I can be in at the Other Place by 8 every day, which is what I did when I was working at the office job. This week, that bumped back to 7:30 AM. Next week, that's going to bump back to 7, at which point I'm 99% certain I'm just going to start setting the alarm for 5:30, and write/work after because my day will end at 3 PM.
(The alternative is that I could start getting up at 2:30, but the extent to which that plan can go fuck itself should be apparent.)
It's constant, ambient stress at a stressful time of year. The general public is super needy and super tense right now. The workload associated with serving them has at least tripled, which makes for a super demoralizing cycle of never quite getting done (or worse, consistently missing by a mile).
There is a part of my brain that wants to point out that I'm being ungrateful, and that the 40+ hour week I put in Thanksgiving week is the thing that enabled me to purchase a flight to Los Angeles for the Doctor Who convention where I get to spend about a week with friends I almost only ever see that time of year.
But it's empty scolding. The rest of me is more or less unmoved by it.
I don't know where I'm going with this except to say that I'm tired, and freaked out a lot, and that I'd say January can't come soon enough, except I always dread falling below that 30 hour/week mark in terms of income, and...
Well. Nobody said this would be easy. But December is fucking hard, y'all.
This was a fiscally suicidal thing to do, or would have been if I hadn't had supportive roommates. At the time, I said it was about the art -- it was -- but one thing that I discovered as a side note was that hey, my mental health starts breaking down when I have to work at an outside job more than about 24-32 hours a week. My depression kicks in, I start to lose cohesion, etc.
Which, okay, is not ideal.
And it isn't a laziness thing. During most of the year I spend about 2-6 hours a day doing creative work. Writing is best in blocks of 2+ hours, visual art is best done with podcasts or audiobooks, crafting with Netflix. When I'm really cranking, I average around a 70 hour week: 32-ish at the sustaining gig, 30+ on my own recognizance.
(Not that my own recognizance pays even close to the sustaining gig's wage yet; it's probably going to be about a tenth of my income, and I'm not 100% sure I'll turn a profit this year. But it's still work, and it's still meaningful.)
That's background, because it explains why this time of year is particularly hard. My sustaining gig kicks into full-time (or more) around early November, and my hours get weirder. In order to write consistently, I've been getting up at 3:30 in the morning so I can be in at the Other Place by 8 every day, which is what I did when I was working at the office job. This week, that bumped back to 7:30 AM. Next week, that's going to bump back to 7, at which point I'm 99% certain I'm just going to start setting the alarm for 5:30, and write/work after because my day will end at 3 PM.
(The alternative is that I could start getting up at 2:30, but the extent to which that plan can go fuck itself should be apparent.)
It's constant, ambient stress at a stressful time of year. The general public is super needy and super tense right now. The workload associated with serving them has at least tripled, which makes for a super demoralizing cycle of never quite getting done (or worse, consistently missing by a mile).
There is a part of my brain that wants to point out that I'm being ungrateful, and that the 40+ hour week I put in Thanksgiving week is the thing that enabled me to purchase a flight to Los Angeles for the Doctor Who convention where I get to spend about a week with friends I almost only ever see that time of year.
But it's empty scolding. The rest of me is more or less unmoved by it.
I don't know where I'm going with this except to say that I'm tired, and freaked out a lot, and that I'd say January can't come soon enough, except I always dread falling below that 30 hour/week mark in terms of income, and...
Well. Nobody said this would be easy. But December is fucking hard, y'all.
So hey, I guess my first real post over here is going to be me showing off this week's new items in my Etsy shop! That feels a little weird, but given I've decided to roll in my creative work into my personal journal over here, it was probably inevitable.
This weeks' goodies include custom sigil commissions, a new grooved pearl ring, the return of the red rose rings, and a mini-Samulet necklace for my Supernatural peeps. Check 'em out!
https://www.etsy.com/shop/DorkaelSkunkworks
Placeholderlicious
Dec. 5th, 2018 07:06 pmReal bloggery coming eventually. Until then, please enjoy this charming placeholder.
