Posted 2/25/24.
I’ve seen art students go from stick figures to fully rendered oil painting style in less than four years of study. Most people don’t need to get that good, and you’ll start getting drawings you like a LOT sooner, and you also get loads of dopamine from the process.
AI feeds into your insecurity. So many people are like “I’m going to sit down and do this!” and then they can’t handle the fact they suck at it, so they quit. To paraphrase Adventure Time, sucking at something is the first step to being awesome at something. You just have to accept sucking a lot for a while. Don’t be a coward.
Use of AI to illustrate is cowardly and lazy. You’re going to be here in four years; the time will pass either way. Work on your shit. Take classes. Study technique broadly. Practice what you like a lot. (I mostly stick to an illustrative style and it’s REALLY SATISFYING)
…I don’t like the grumpy tone of my own thread because I want to be nurturing rather than mean, always, but I get SO FRUSTRATED. this AI shit is death by a thousand knives. I struggle to be at my kindest when it feels so awful all the time.
Posted 2/26/24.
Why Is My Decade Old C-Section Scar Bothering Me Again? And Other Reasons I Find Body Horror Relatable: A Memoir
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repeating to myself: two dogs is enough, two dogs is enough, two dogs is enough–
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9yo Sunshine told me that emoticons are better than emojis. “Do you know what emoticons are?” he asked me, like I wasn’t using them twenty years before he was born.
Apparently : ) is better at expressing emotions online than 🙂, which is cartoony and cheesy.
I birthed tech hipsters.
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My 13yo and I were watching an interview with Biden from last night (the one on Seth Meyers). I knew what Biden was talking about so I could follow him, but it was difficult; 13yo couldn’t follow him at all. Then I put on the 2008 Obama acceptance speech and blew my kid away.
I’m like, “Can you believe we ever had a president who could actually talk?” and they were like “wtf that happens?” They were born in the Obama era but don’t remember him. As far as they’re concerned, America is defined by Trump. Ain’t that depressing.
fwiw Obama had a *lot* of problems because, you know, president of an incredibly violent empire, but also, on the shallowest level possible, he was *incredibly* attractive.
I am biased toward Obama because his administration had such massively tangible helpful impacts on my life. Thanks to his admin, I had insurance through my parents until I was 26; I also *had* to be given space/time to pump at the office. I would not have been able to nurse Eldest without the ACA. I have always been Medically Complicated so I have an emotional attachment to the president spearheading the admin that spared me a lot of active fear and gave me better access to healthcare. god, his admin also passed the laws that let me buy my first house. like! they helped me so much.
Posted 2/27/24.
I was joking with my kid about naming our next dog “Jesus” and the idea is so funny to me, I can’t get it out of my head
Imagine yelling for Jesus at the dog park
Calling the vet to make an appointment for Jesus
Posted 2/28/24.
I must come to grips with the fact that I am fully a conspiracy theorist who loves random drama. For instance: I still totally believe in Fake Melania, Disney made “Frozen” so you can’t easily google about Walt being frozen,
and I am SO eyeballs-deep in Kate Middleton conspiracies.
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snuggly bedtime with my 9yo is still just the best time <33 also brushing my 13yo's hair <33333 ~ I thought I could handle doing a Dark Urge BG3 run if I skewed toward redemption, but there’s no preventing what happens when [SPOILER] joins your camp and they are one of my FAVORITES and now idk I don’t wanna I get really attached to everyone in this game ~ After being off cannabis for a bit over a month now, I think it's safe to say that I am just a silly nonsensical person in general and that's not going anywhere. 😆
Posted 2/29/24.
Another smoldering migraine day. Can I just chop my head off maybe?
Posted 3/1/24.
I had two writing sessions today. I want to reorient myself toward writing-for-publication, but it’s been hard. I had to learn a lot of new skills to write my gothic fantasy book – it was extremely intense to write, and extremely meticulous to edit so far – but it was really easy to commit myself to writing sessions because it’s all I wanted to think about. Working on ATTBTM feels like a beautiful dark dream.
The Descentverse never felt like that. It was something I wrote to cope because I didn’t have any coping abilities. You’ll recognize Rylie’s werewolf as a metaphor for mental illness run rampant and autistic meltdowns. Elise represents so much of my anger toward men (fathers in specific). My overwhelm from medical trauma, and a desire to be hurt, is all over Deirdre’s books. And so on.
But nowadays…I feel better. I have other ways of working on my stuff. Which means I need to find a whole other way to write books that I’m not using to cope, and which aren’t a dreamy love affair like the gothic fantasy book. I want to be able to write projects that I *choose* rationally. I don’t need to do a *lot*. I just need to be able to put out a book or two a year that has some relationship to the market.
This begins by finishing the most important outstanding projects: Fated for Firelizards and Young Swords. Neither of these scratch my happy itch. I don’t need to hide from reality in them. So how do I build a healthy working relationship with writing instead of… *gestures at the wasteland of my life*
I think it’s going to involve scheduling somehow. Schedules are hard. BUT today I managed to get myself in for two writing sessions, and that is super good. Longer sessions, or a third session, could get me back to a reasonable rate of writing, but I think it’s gonna be more important to write *daily* since I like to spend whole days crocheting/drawing now. Gotta figure out how to balance it. I’m sure I can do it now.
Once I’m done with those, I can finish my horror novel, and THEN I can start on the litfic I’ve been percolating. It’s a take on Bluebeard’s wife among the nouveau riche, it’s gonna be a real spicy one! The only other project that jumps to me is a cyberpunk-sorta thing that I’ve been percolating *even longer* (literally a decade now) but I kinda hope that publishing litfic will better position folks to understand what I’m doing with the cyberpunk thing.
(I think this will also be easier now that I quit weed, but quitting caffeine is a special added challenge lol)
Posted 3/3/24.
As a loud, energetic, imaginative youngest child, it took me a LONG time to contextualize the Annoying label. I got it a lot. I still think of myself as annoying occasionally, but it’s okay to be a little annoying.
I was just talking with my spouse about the labels we’re given in childhood and how they can really stick with us. I was also labeled Liar by my dad. Nothing I said could be believed. I was constantly told I was doing things I absolutely was not. I was an Annoying Liar. Y’all, that is a LOT for someone to come up with.
I know some of y’all have come up with even more, even worse labels, and I think sometimes those attitudes follow us into adulthood when we should have long since let them go.
Posted 3/4/24.
i’m a lil bummed that my most popular review on letterboxd is currently snark about j.lo’s documentary. all the time i’ve spent writing thoughtful review essays, and of course the one that gets any traction whatsoever (still quite minor) is when i’m just snarking about batshittery.
i remember the first time i read a sarcastic recounting of a movie. it was oooold internet, talking 2002, early livejournal. someone recounted the events of queen of the damned sarcastically. it was seismic! a major influence on how i regard *everything*. of course i also review like that sometimes.
but i don’t really wanna do that as a THING because it’s also a little bit mean and it plays into our less-favorable instincts as humans. yk? i wanna have fun without the mean bits. it makes me wanna just delete the review. don’t LOOK AT THAT ONE
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Cutting caffeine out of my system has killed me. I am dead. Nothing works. Don’t have words. Life is sleep.
Posted 3/5/24.
I wish I had a salon chair at home tbh. I do everyone’s hair and I’ve started also doing skincare for my family, and it sorta feels like tending five people is excuse enough for the setup. I like fussing over everyone. It’s very pleasant. It would be easier if I could just sit them in a chair and recline them to a sink to do the wash/rinse. facials would also be easier like that.
but salon chairs are not exactly small and it’s not like i can just…leave it in front of my kitchen sink. or any other sink. and once i start thinking about putting in a sink just for the chair, it gets into “too big/messy/expensive/complex” territory.
Posted 3/5/24.
Natalie Portman got divorced, so I’m pretty sure that means I have a chance
Posted 3/9/24.
did i ever tell y’all about the time i met a friend’s boyfriend for the first time, and he said “i don’t like man-hating feminists” and i whipped around to growl at him with demon eyes: “I AM THE MAN-HATING FEMINIST”?
i’ll take “least surprising stories about sara” for twenty, alex
Posted 3/10/24.
My grandpa visited me for my birthday. It was also just his birthday.
Me: Happy birthday!
Grandpa’s girlfriend: He’s eighty-three now.
Me: Wow, grandpa! You’re finally old enough to be president!
I just had to share that with you guys because I think it’s the funniest I’ve ever been in my life.
That said, this dude still fully does all his manual labor around the property (he has a pretty big acreage) and he’s sharp as a tack, which is why I don’t really care about any presidential candidate’s age. It’s all about policies. But that’s not the point of my story, the point of my story is that I’m hilarious.
Posted 3/12/24.
I know I’m an idiot because every time something I’ve written gets ripped off/copied, my reaction is mostly “good, you never could have made something that great on your own. Out here improving the mean quality of writing and not even trying 💅🏻”
