exiting overwhelmedness at last / watchin shows / spiral cuffs & energy flow / fractal productivity
icon: "necklace (gif flipping through photos of me wearing necklaces I made over the years)"
I finally broke through! I finally feel like I am getting better after the heavy weight of stress in February with ALL the biofamily stuff and ALL the conflict and ALL the travel stress. Yesterday I just watched like... 6 hours of episodes of 4400 (which I deem a 4-star, worth watching twice but not worth owning) while making spiral cuff bracelets. Part of me still feels really frustrated at not getting enough done yesterday but overall, I have learned that watching a bunch of creative-but-not-informative media is really helpful for self-care. I kinda hate that that is the most effective thing, but oh well. I hope to do more crafting during it so I can feel more productive and good about it. My hands still are a little numb from 6 hours of crafting yesterday! I'm not sure if I should list the spiral cuffs on etsy or give them away. They look so simple and easy to make but they each took THREE HOURS. I hate that combination, especially with regards to pricing. The choice becomes, underpay myself or look like I'm being an overcharging shithead. I think I'll make them for donation sales (where I pay the fees for selling and then give all the rest to a non-profit). And if I make more I won't pattern the seed beads because GOOD GOD.
I can't remember if I have ever made bracelets before -- I can't wear most of them because I can't bear a closed circuit on my wrists. That has been true for probably... 7 years? and more recently I can't wear a closed circuit on my neck. (that hasn't always been true as you can see from the images of me wearing necklaces I made in this icon) I think it just fucks with my energy in some negative way, but it feels bad. I recently made a closed-circuit ritual necklace, thinking that if I made it really long it wouldn't have the same effect. I was right that it didn't feel bad, but it broke within two wearings and I took the hint and re-made it as one long strand, which I will wear by looping the ends together. So all this to say, I recently got memory wire (which is like a piece of slinky but thin round wire rather than thick flat wire) and tried working with it. I like the look of it, though the kind I got is too small for my wrists anyway. I'm going to try making one for myself when I get larger-coil memory wire. I like that the lack of closure means that it doesn't feel like it blocks or clogs my energy flow, and I think I could actually make spiral cuffs that felt energetically positive for me to wear.
Today I managed to follow up with my sole and beloved patreon donor, update my fractal gallery (forgive the ugly design: webs now forces me to use templates or pay), and follow up with someone who did a partial trade with me at the art swap. Speaking of which, my friend Jezza hosted an art swap last Saturday which I nervously attended with my freshly-framed prints. I didn't know anyone except Jezza and it was full of burners, so it felt like going to someone else's family gathering. I felt soooo awkward but in that peculiar way I do around burners, where I feel like an outsider but like I actually know the culture of interaction and can follow along (which is a fucking relief from most socializing and I just realized why Kylei loves burners so much despite the problematic stuff). I was really delighted that at least four people wanted to trade with me (and one person expressed strong desire to buy but then disappeared, I think they miiiight have been intoxicated), and especially excited that Jezza traded me one of their canvas-printed fractals for two of my smaller framed fractals! I really like their work but I would never have felt like I could justify the expense of buying one (much less on canvas), so this was just perfect, and I was so flattered that they were willing to trade for my work. I don't remember if I wrote about meeting Jezza -- they're a local person who friended me after finding me on OKC, and we met up for coffee once last month I think. I felt weirdly super awkward, I'm really not sure why, it may have been because it was so cold and we were outside, which feels both intimate and like we should be going somewhere. But despite feeling awkward we had a really cool conversation. I asked if they were okay with prying questions and they said yes and seemed to enjoy reflecting on the questions I asked (and I liked their answers, which tells me a lot). I like that kind of reaction. I feel like we could be good friends but I also feel this big culture gap that makes me nervous about making a mistake, extra-so because it is really fun to have a friend who also does fractal art! Still, so far it's just happy.
[my new renderer is not as happy...]I got a used computer with a better CPU than mine to use as a dedicated fractal renderer, but it keeps crashing every time I try to use multithreading. I'm gonna delete and copy the programs and plugins directly from my main computer, and if that doesn't fix it I am going to try chaotica, a rendering program (which has a freeware version but for high-res I'd need to buy the full version). According to the internet, that computer should be able to run multithreading up to 4 (and my main can, so I can't imagine that the issue is the specs), so hopefully my free plan will be good enough.
ALSO! for a solid week in February I posted on my art fb page Vivid Magic Arts every day. And I'm getting better at writing image descriptions. Weird to know that there is an aspect of art and writing that I just had ZERO skill at, but the practice is helping. Hopefully I will improve rapidly until it is easy for me to write an evocative image description. Also, if you are a fiction writer or visual artist, I feel like this would be a really good exercise to do just to develop more skill in noticing -- and if you want to do that exercise as well as provide an important service, here's a good place to do it.