Hints on how A.E. Graves spends her imaginary spare time
Driving (or in my case, riding) in a car on a sunny day on a country road has basically been ruined for me, thanks to this UCSF comparison.
No, I am NOT GOING TO SHARE THE ILLUSTRATIONS that went with this analogy.
I’m posting with the hesitation of someone who realizes that dumb and indifferent AI programs will steal and then vomit up my (incompletely digested) content in no coherent order. (What a world.)
I’m relaxing, playing with ink, buying paper, and eating delicious (vegan Vietnamese) food with a friend I haven’t seen since the Before Times. These are good days.
The forecast this week suggests it will be over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7+ degrees Celsius) for a few days out where my family lives, yet it is still (technically) spring. That hot weather pulls a blanket of fog across me, and… I’m okay with that.
Plus: it is still allergy season. But all of us sniffling, coughing people have known that for a month.
Oh, and: wildfire season. An 11,000 acre fire is burning in an area east of the City, and evacuations are in effect for the nearest town. With high winds yesterday, it spread very quickly. I was growing fond of NOT reading about fires in my state…
Wherever you are while reading this, I hope you are safe, not crying/sneezing, have no need to evacuate, and are dressed appropriately for whatever the weather delivers to you.
Hello! I HAVE INTERNET AT HOME AGAIN! (I’d like to thank post-scheduling for hiding the fact that I didn’t for several of those days.) It is a good thing. It makes so many other things possible!
*
It is a three day holiday weekend here in the U.S., and I’m being too productive. I’ve had multiple scheduled appointments, I’ve been to a post office, I’ve reset faulty breakers six times, I’ve ordered excessive numbers of notebooks (because I fill excessive numbers of notebooks), I’ve washed laundry, I’ve attended a fantastic parade (and am awash with images from it to manage), I missed a chance to purchase a limited edition fountain pen that I didn’t know I was interested in until it sold out (oh, well – I’ll forget it ever existed shortly), I’ve performed maintenance on a Roomba which appears to have become senile, I’ve treated my hair and scalp with multiple products, I’ve criticized myself for not being more creatively productive (even though I’m always working, commuting, or performing chores), I’ve enjoyed tapas and white sangria (which I hadn’t realized exists, but of course it does), I wrote a letter with a pretty fountain pen and equally pretty ink…
The problem with holidays feeling rare is that they become so precious I feel I must USE THEM TO THEIR FULL POTENTIAL, which likely isn’t the best choice. That makes them feel like a different type of work. Goal-oriented work. The wrong kind of activity needed to recover from all the other kinds of work.
There are some cultural elements of this. My mother is still wrestling with her upbringing, which included a rather fanatical insistence on not being able to sleep late into the morning, even if you worked nights (!!), and pressure to always be doing SOMETHING. ANYTHING. A sort of haywire protestant work ethic. I may have absorbed some of that, but also live in a culture where being “busy” is proof of importance / worth in itself.
*
Speaking of work, here is some context for all of those manhwa I’ve been reading from South Korea whose stories are premised on people dying from working too much:
South Korea is known for its punishing work culture, with some of the longest hours in the developed world. Despite the introduction of the 52-hour weekly work limit in 2018, overwork and exhaustion are still not uncommon. In 2023, the government proposed to increase the maximum weekly working time to 69 hours, sparking a severe backlash and eventual backdown.
–from https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/27/seoul-international-space-out-competition-south-korea.
(Yikes!)
Wish me luck as I attempt to… relax in a goal-oriented way??
I have been tired. So tired. How tired? I have been able to achieve REM sleep on public transit.
This is… worrisome.
That’s a thing I should do… regularly. I am now vaguely familiar with what it means to be rested. It’s so… novel! So strange!
I posted a list of restaurants I like (despite being a gluten-free vegetarian) in Waikiki on my phone photo blog: you can find details by following the link.
So, it turns out four months is too long to go without a vacation. Who knew?
What? [conversational sounds] Oh. Oh, really? Everyone knew? [conversational sounds] I see. [takes notes, breaks pencil lead from pressing into notebook too hard, tosses notebook across desk.]
I used this weekend to rest. Read, eat, and rest. I am still wearing the very soft clothes I slept in, and I am not ashamed.
I’m reading more [written things] than I write about here. Also, I’m intentionally not writing about much of what I read, because I write to share / endorse / celebrate / promote things I enjoy, and if I’m not that enthused, I don’t want to waste my energy.
I’m not writing about webcomics that spend too much time discussing agriculture. It sounds like a weird bias, but if someone was tortured in a dungeon by their family and uses magic to time travel to avenge themselves, only to spend their days giving expositions about strategic crops, I feel like they are avenging themselves on me, somehow. Another webcomic with a hotly drawn villain somehow led to the lovely heroine making dramatic statements about the berry industry, and I nearly threw my phone. (I’m enjoying one now that involves a secret mission to secure a port, but it is just a side thing, not something I have to pay attention to! The world and characters are well established, and the story doesn’t require this – it’s just a footnote. World-building such details by footnote is FINE!)
I’m not writing about webcomics centered on rivalries between two female-led religious institutions. One of the women is a fraud whose powers are being faked by manipulative men (yes, in more than one comic), and it is getting predictable.
I’m not writing about religious instructional texts I’m dipping into, because those are only interesting if you are in the same sect, and any subjective criticism of such texts is unlikely to be welcome.
I’m not writing about the audiobooks I can’t hear properly in the train or the eBooks on my phone that are in progress.
I’m not writing about current event news, because such news is uniformly awful at the moment, and might encourage you to live under a rock. You might upset a sweet octopus or eel living under that rock, so just leave them and their hidden home alone, deal with humans as much as the rest of us must, and whip a few humans into shape, please.
I do love the magic of scheduling posts in advance, and will try to use this magic more often to spread my infrequent-yet-enthusiastic output more evenly.
If there is a medical condition whose primary symptom is listening to Massive Attack in excessive amounts, and the treatment is something OTHER THAN buying the 2018 remastered version of Mezzanine, please contact me with details.
Does this bridge make me look fat?
-while gesturing toward the eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Brige
I’ve invited some long-time friends to dine with me, but don’t want to pressure them to attend. Long time friends can always decline – we’ve known each other forever, after all – and I’ve invited them to say they aren’t in the mood if that is true. Historically, some of them won’t decline, but then bounce during the event, or agree to attend, but cancel at the last moment, which is less fun.
To prevent bouncing and bailing, I’ve invented a list of excuses they may use at any time with me, which I will accept without challenge. This list includes:
I hope to update this list seasonally, so none of the excuses become worn out.
