Tutus: The 20th day of the 2nd month of 2022

If I was really going to try to maximize my twos I would have waited two more days to write, but there’s no time like the present. Especially when the present is a long weekend with few plans and a sink of dishes already done. Is there another whole sink? You bet. Did I get us groceries to get back on the cooking wagon after a hard week? Yup. Do I have another day and a half of the weekend to play catchup? Yes yes.

”Everything is good for you, if it doesn’t kill you,” according to Crowded House (on in the background while Jason and I write at the kitchen table across from each other) and while I don’t subscribe to that message that broadly, I am going to chase the essence of the lyrics of more. I hear the spirit behind the rest of the song, which seems to really be about taking more in stride. I hold onto hurt a little too hard and struggle with hyper vigilance about risk even more. It’s a tiring way to be. It makes being an artist, visual or written, challenging. What is creating if not a risk?

I’ve shared out a number of aspirations online in the past, and thanks to a whole rack of emotional luggage, I’ve had real start-stop habits of sharing the things I start making. Even when there is no audience besides myself, I get too hung up on reaction, even my own criticism, before there’s something there to evaluate. I don’t like using the word evaluate even, cause it brings a clinical quality, a critique automatically. I want to free myself up to enjoy making things for their own sake, and there’ll be a little more practice of that here. I’ll have a record for myself, whether or not anyone sees this, which is what I want to practice anyway.