a failed francophile and finite human

I started this update over on my biweekly monthly newsletter. While I've deviated form the list format over the past couple of summer updates, the more I wrote, the more I felt this slightly more cohesive rambling needed to live here on my blog. I'll round out the sporadic summer updates there as well, maybe later today, maybe next week. And what a busy summer it's been! Working on the podcast (season 2!) has completely filled in all the little nooks and crannies of free time this summer. I’ve also recently moved into a new/manager role at work. Perhaps I’ll say more about it in a future post when the transition is official and further underway (I just accepted the role less than two weeks ago). I’ve written about my current day gig in a few different posts over the past nearly six years, but most recently here. 

Last summer was a bit of a turning point for me. Maybe because I was also reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, I started to realize how much of my life I’ve spent working toward some future thing that, in the end, doesn’t always pan out. On the one hand, as Burkeman touches on, as someone who majored in art, I can definitely relate to “the feeling of frustration at having to work a day job in order to buy slivers of time for the work you love.” This is, after all, the story of my professional life (I’ve written about almost all of my 20+ day jobs here). And, I'd add, the impetus behind the podcast! 

On the other hand, I realized I’ve been erring on the side of indecision (my former manager’s feedback staying with me all last summer into the 2024-25 school year): “We invariably prefer indecision over committing ourselves to a single path…because ‘the future, which we dispose of to our liking, appears to us at the same time under a multitude of forms, equally attractive and equally possible.’” I mean, just look at my ridiculous to do list when I quit my last job! What that two-year experience between jobs taught me is I was basically throwing spaghetti at the wall, so to speak, seeing which noodle would stick (the noodles being all the different creative endeavors I thought I’d accomplish with just a little more time) without bothering to define what sticking to the wall, to continue the metaphor, would even mean. Other than failing to monetize any of those creative projects, how was I measuring the "success" of any of those pursuits? I wasn’t.

Instead, I’ve tried to embrace this: “The most effective way to sap distraction of its power is just to stop expecting things to be otherwise—to accept that this unpleasantness is simply what it feels like for finite humans to commit ourselves to the kinds of demanding and valuable tasks that force us to confront our limited control over how our lives unfold.” Put a little differently a little later in the book: “Living more fully in the present may be simply a matter of finally realizing that you never had any other option but to be here now.”

A recent example of living fully in the present in central Oregon

So that’s what I’ve tried to do. And the truth is, what I really want to do at the end of the day, when my day job is done, is not necessarily "produce" art. Like the industrial worker that Burkeman references, this is "what they actually longed to do with more free time: To 'look around to see what is going on.' They yearned for true leisure, not a different kind of productivity." In a weird way, too, this has helped me find peace with where I am creatively. I started the MFA program at SMFA in Boston almost exactly 20 years ago (lots of 20-year anniversaries in 2025!). Life after grad school did not go as planned, creatively and professionally speaking, and I've been agonizing over this and driving myself a little crazy ever since, trying to prove to myself and the world that I majored in art, pursued the terminal degree in it, even, for a reason and that reason would be validated by external sources. But that hasn't really happened. Does that make me any less of an artist? Why doesn't my unused French degree gnaw at me in the same way (wouldn't it be funny, though, if it did?). At the end of the day, lots of folks make perfectly acceptable careers out of a series of jobs that have little to do with what they studied when they were in their early 20s.

Instead, I'm slowly but surely finding peace after art school. Peace, and patience. Burkeman again: "as you dive into life as it really is, in clear-eyed awareness of your limitations, you begin to acquire what has become the least fashionable but perhaps most consequential of superpowers: patience." It's also one of the most consistent and satisfying takeaways from podcast interviews thus far, with 10 down and just one left to record. Speaking with a variety of creative folks at different stages of life, art, and parenthood has me returning to this idea of patience, something that's I think just really hard to embrace when you're young (which is ironic, if you think about it, given you potentially, theoretically, if all goes well, god willing and all that, have so much life ahead of you at that point): "patience becomes a form of power. In a world geared for hurry, the capacity to resist the urge to hurry—to allow things to take the time they take—is a way to gain purchase on the world, to do the work that counts, and to derive satisfaction from the doing itself, instead of deferring all your fulfillment to the future."

Speaking with artist David Burke for the upcoming season of Artists in Offices (parent edition!)

What I love about Burkeman's book is that it's not prescriptive, per se, but it does provide a sort of set of instructions in various ways that I'm finding are echoed in these podcast interviews I'm recording with working parent artists. For example, he shares "three rules of thumb...especially useful for harnessing the power of patience as a creative force in daily life." Considering the second rule in particular—"embrace radical incrementalism"—when the podcast episodes are published and you begin listening to them (which you will, right?), you'll see that pretty much every artist that I speak with talks about how, after becoming a parent, they learn to "chip away" at their creative projects: "They cultivated the patience to tolerate the fact that they probably wouldn’t be producing very much on any individual day, with the result that they produced much more over the long term."

It's taken me six years to get back to the podcast. That was not my plan. But in those six years, four of the artists I spoke with during season one became parents. Had I gotten around to season two more quickly, I wouldn't have been able to include two of those artists in this round of interviews. Indeed, I'm learning, with the podcast as just one example, "to allow things to take the time they take." And there's a really profound sense of peace with that, like letting out a big sigh of relief (try it when you're sitting in traffic running late to something...at that point it's almost completely out of your control and will take the time it's going to take!).

All that said, I am excited to be approaching the home stretch of podcast production so I can share these conversations with anyone willing to listen, hopefully by late September. Stay tuned (here, here, and/or here).

the hunker down years

When I was a kid, not sure how old, I think the summer between 3rd and 4th grades before we moved overseas, I was visiting my great grandparents’ house in Wells, Nevada. I loved that house and still have dreams that take place there from time to time. I remember the eat-in kitchen so well (the nerve center of any home, right?), and how the main bedroom had doors to both it and the living area (or maybe it was another room...my memory is fuzzy all these decades later). The house was sort of circular in that way. During this one particular visit, with my brother and some of my maternal cousins there as well, I took a break on the couch in the living room. At one point, my face turned toward the back of the couch, I could hear someone at the doorway wondering out loud if I was asleep. I stayed quiet and still for some reason, pretending to be asleep, I’m not really sure why. Did I want them to try to wake me up? Did I really want to be left alone? Either way, the end result was that I missed out on dessert and, insatiable sweet tooth that I was and still am, this experience/memory haunted me for years. Why didn’t they at least check to see if I was truly asleep, whispering in my ear that dessert was ready. Just in case.

I’d kind of forgotten about this memory until recently because it just seems like such a perfect metaphor for middle age reflection, looking back on the potential of your younger self. I've spent most of my adult life mostly happily moving from one opportunity to another, embracing the hummingbird analogy before Liz Gilbert described it as such. Somewhere along the way, I think it was probably during grad school, I felt like I was finally finding my focus. I wanted to make more and better art. I wanted to show and maybe even sell my art. I wanted to help others develop their own creative practice. I wanted to teach. And I've already written on this blog about all the things other than teaching that I've done over the past 15+ years since grad school and my postgrad teaching fellowship ended.

I've been at my current day job nearly five years, the longest I've ever stayed in one role. The past year has been pretty stressful for various reasons. Concurrent with all this, I started contemplating just what was it I wanted to be when I grew up, and that lead me back to teaching. My goal out of grad school was to teach at the college level (hence pursuing the MFA, terminal degree for studio art), a dream I mostly abandoned after two years of applying to full-time gigs (I turned down a couple of adjunct opportunities because the pay was less than the cost of the part-time childcare needed to make the schedule work, which is a topic for a whole 'nother blog post). I started to wonder, now that I’ve been around elementary, middle, and high school kids because of my own growing children, if maybe teaching at the middle or high school level was what I wanted to do, after all.

At the beginning of the last school year I started volunteering every Monday morning in my daughter's 5th grade art class. I explored local single subject credential programs as well with an eye on teaching high or middle school art, in that order. To be honest, I wasn't super confident I'd still have a job after February, but when my role survived three rounds of layoffs, the April deadline for application materials, which would have required volunteer hours at a middle or high school, something I didn't have already, were simply too much for me to squeeze in on top of a full-time job and everything else. I decided to shelve the idea until this summer and hunker down a bit longer, counting my blessings that I still had a job that I've enjoyed enough to hang around this long.

But then my daughter's art teacher told me about a program to increase the number of art teachers in the county, teaching while pursuing the Career Technical Education credential. At last, I thought, I'm about to benefit from this thing I've heard about before: serendipity! I was accepted into the program, with a couple of weeks of professional development this summer and the program beginning in the fall, with the one significant caveat that in order to actually enroll in the program, you have to have a CTE gig lined up by the end of summer. If it sounds tricky to find a teaching job before you have the necessary credential, it is! I found ONE qualifying position in Alameda County. I applied, interviewed, and visited the school site to give a demo lesson over the span of just three business days. I then waited to hear back. And then I waited a week longer than I was originally told. And during this time, I started to secretly wish for rejection. Sure, part of this was fear—it would be a big transition and a big paycut and I was nervous about both—but part of this was legitimate hesitation that, while potentially a way to get back to teaching, this particular role wasn't really what I wanted to teach, and probably not worth such a significant life change. And I'll never know if I would have been offered the position since I withdrew my application at that time. Because what I've only recently come to understand about myself, and perhaps this is the downside of the lovely hummingbird analogy described above, is that I have a really hard time saying no when personally asked to do something, even if that thing isn't quite what I want, because I'm either seduced by the potential that opportunity represents (I'll do this thing I don't really want to do because maybe it'll lead to something I do want to do!) and/or I don't want to let someone down. (I missed out on dessert once, I'm not going to miss out on it again!) I also had to honestly reckon with the fact that part of what was seductive about pursuing this opportunity was, wow, what a great story it would be to find my way back to teaching after 15 years! I was so excited to finally prove to all my doubters that I wasn't actually a lost pigeon after all, to prove to them as much as to myself that the hummingbird approach works, that there is a pot of success at the end of the rainbow of failures.

Alas.

So here I am, early summer break, recommitting to my day job. I was honest with my manager at the time when I felt the transition was something I might actually pursue since there was a lot of potential movement internally as well and I was having a hard time faking it. But to be honest, I'm not sure I’d do that again. I thought they might fight to keep me; they did not. I felt rushed to make a decision because, frankly, they seemed eager to develop a transition plan. And I get it. In my performance review a few weeks later, which I wish was more than a 30-minute Zoom meeting that I could reference because now I’ve forgotten the exact language used, the sort of “if I can be honest with you” feedback, after otherwise mostly positive feedback, was that I should really think about what I want from this role in the near and not so near future because at times I seem a bit noncommittal, a bit wishy-washy about projects and potential opportunities that have come my way over the past few months. I should probably consider being a little more like a jackhammer (those were not the words/analogy used, of course, but in keeping with the typically rambling themes of this blog post).

This feedback had me shook for weeks. On the one hand, I feel like I’ve been working so hard for so much of my life, getting my first real job the summer between junior and senior years of high school, working three jobs my first year after high school, while attending community college full-time, barely able to pay my minimal expenses, and continuing to work 20-32 hours a week during the 5 ½ years it took me to finish my bachelor's degree. I worked throughout grad school, first in retail until I was eligible for more creatively aligned, campus-based roles like teaching assistant, studio monitor, and other opportunities more tied to my longer term goals post-MFA. I worked for two non-profit arts organizations simultaneously between college and grad school and took a really similar job to these after grad school, after my micro biz that I’d worked so hard to start and grow fizzled after I took a break with the arrival of baby #2. I accepted my current day job after failing to monetize any of the projects, podcast included, that I worked on between my former day job and this one. It was initially part-time and delightfully unrelated to anything I’d done before, allowing me time and mental energy to continue to push creative projects forward (until the pandemic started just six months later and I transitioned to full-time about a year after that). In short, I thought I'd made it pretty clear that yes, I'd like dessert, even if it means waking me up...if you get my meaning.

Anyway it’s just weird to feel like Sisphyus pushing that boulder up the hill for nearly three decades (it's a tired but apt metaphor), albeit in an at times haphazard way, only to be told you seem a little like a tumbleweed leaving your fate up to chance and circumstance. Not even a hummingbird, an actually super focused and incredibly hard working bird that eats WHILE FLAPPING ITS WINGS for crying out loud, who honestly isn’t that much different than a jackhammer if you really think about it (and a jackhammer isn’t even a bird so maybe not the greatest analogy after all, Liz!). 

On the other hand, she (my manager...and maybe Liz, too) was not entirely wrong, either. Has nothing changed since that time I pretended to be asleep on the couch? Am I just waiting for someone to notice me and care enough to nudge me awake, to present me with some delectable opportunity to devour? Did I not learn my lesson that if you wait for someone to tell you dessert is ready, to nudge you awake, you might miss out? Or is it just hard to talk about future interests and goals—where do you see yourself in 3, 5, 10 years—when you'd rather just be making stuff. 

In my newsletter update from late June I briefly wondered, if you remove the idea of passion central to Gilbert's hummingbird/jackhammer thesis, are folks like me more like tumbleweeds. And maybe the tumbleweed has gotten a bad rap as an essentially dead plant rolling around wherever the wind takes it. Maybe there is some beauty in the way that, unafraid of change, it lacks roots, frees itself from attachments, and opens itself up to opportunities to move and keep moving, slowly breaking down so that its seeds can be released as it moves. Maybe, if I’m a tumbleweed, I just haven’t yet come to rest so that my spores may germinate. Maybe I’m taking this tumbleweed metaphor too far (just be grateful I didn't use the word moist).

All metaphors aside, the events of the past couple of months jarred another memory, this one of Another Mother Runner’s Dimity McDowell’s post from September 2013, which I read when my own kids were just 5 and 7 months, when I reopened my Etsy shop thinking business would slowly pick back up just in time for baby #2 to start part-time daycare in February of the next year (that did not happen…I ended up being a full-time stay-at-home parent for longer than I’d planned and eventually got a “real job” I was never very satisfied with right around when baby #2 turned 2...it was not an easy time). That line that Dimity’s mother says to her has stuck with me all these years as it had stuck with her then: This is not the easiest time of your life. Put another way, these are perhaps, for many of us working parent (creative?) types, the hunker down years.

Many days I find success in focusing on the positive aspects of my current role: decent pay, autonomy and flexibility, the ability to work from home in my backyard office/studio surrounded by foliage and critters, working with truly great people, occasional travel, and, while in tech, for a company that I do believe in, especially, not surprisingly, the more niche creative things folks are doing with our products. But some days, I'm not gonna lie, I feel like Katy Caboose, defiantly striving for greater creative fulfillment and ready to fling myself off my rails and high into the trees at any moment. "Head in the sky," indeed.

the blogger in me

as seen in the Color Factory shop, an experience I wrote about here

On Sunday this blog turned 18. Leading up to October 2005 (a year that included marriage, a cross-country move, and the start of grad school), I'd been manually updating my website at the time with some regularity, but sadly, I didn't think then to archive that material in any way (it may be saved somewhere but that was several laptops ago). It was the earlyish, more ephemeral days of the world wide web. Here are my top 18 posts of all time:

1. pay for it: The first time my family encountered lice, not long after the Hamilton craze began, I wrote a parody of Wait For It. It is my most-viewed blog post of all time.

2. & 3. Up next, two posts about the making of my podcast, here and here. I wonder how much of the information in the second post is already obsolete? I guess I'll find out if and when I revive the podcast for season 2!

4. Fresh from the Makery: Eli's Bedtime, in which I wrote about the felt bedtime chart I made for my then ~3yo son. I still have it although I've since repurposed the stretcher bars (the chart is rolled up and stored in my studio).

5. book deal dreams, in which I recap the first of two years of "unemployment-by-choice" between August 2017 to September 2019. Still no book deal.

6. Another "fresh from the Makery" post, this one about the Mothers Cookies inspired felt ornaments I made.

7. Always surprised to see how many views this Makery project has: recycled denim coffee cozy.

8. This was a fun project: embroidered summer constellation flashcards. Want to make some of your own? Click on and save/download the images (4 total) at the end of this post (it may take some trial and error to print them correctly front and back so apologies in advance that I can't help you there).

9. I wouldn't be the first one to liken running an Etsy shop circa early 2010s to having your own personal sweat shop but here I bemoan the downsides of the paper punches I used in a lot of my wedding invitation designs at the time, with a totally unrelated Britney reference thrown in for good measure.

10. On a similar note, in this popular (relatively speaking) post I describe the steep learning curve that was the Yudu (I still have it although I haven't used it in years). So insane to look back at those pictures and recall that I started my micro-biz in a 2-bedroom apartment I shared with my husband, toddler son, and two cats.

11. The felt Android phone cozy (version 2.0)!

12. Tie-dye crayons, another project from the Makery. This project is such an easy crowd-pleaser and a great way to use up all those little crayon pieces.

13. Faux swirl lollipops using pipe cleaners for one of the fussier invitation designs I dreamed up during my Etsy days. I mocked up this design for my son's 3rd birthday party.

14. If I ever go back to school to get my PhD my dissertation will be about The Last Unicorn. This post is really just a plot synopsis but the older I get the more I think I understand why I thought about that movie so often while working on my MFA thesis. It's on a long list of possible blog topics I keep so perhaps I'll write more about it here one day (and yes, another Britney reference in that title).

15. That time I opted to quit after years of grit and spent a lot less time on my Etsy shop/micro-biz in favor of a "real job." 

16. During my Etsy years I trained for and ran the Oakland marathon and as part of my fundraising efforts I raffled off various items that were donated to me by fellow, mostly local, Etsy shops. Why the item I raffled off on the 9th of 12 days is my 16th most viewed post is beyond me but here it is.

17. I never did sell or get these items back from the store I'd sent them to on consignment, the first and last time I tried out that arrangement.

18. Finally, not unlike #16, a random post from the pandemic diaries: week 12, during which we broke quarantine to go hang out in the desert.

Now for those constellation flashcards I promised you - enjoy!

pandemic diaries: Twitter as public record

This is it, y'all. This is, at the risk of jinxing it, my final pandemic diaries blog post. As the frequency of posts has dwindled, I've relied on my tweets to recall what happened over the past weeks or months. But I'm not posting on Twitter much these days and I'd like to spend more time here writing about specific topics, not just making lists of things I did or articles that caught my attention. Before I do, here are some random things I found interesting since my last pandemic diaries update (not including the 3-year recap here) in November 2022:

I will likely delete my personal Twitter account (I typically only use it to complain lately, later deleting those tweets), but I'm torn about my podcast account. I'm also really itchin' to get back in the studio to record interviews for season 2! I should just do it, right?!? In related news, The Blanton Museum has a show up right now all about artists and day jobs, including work by Lenka Clayton (because caregiving is most definitely work). I was hoping I could finagle a work trip to Austin in time to see it but, alas, I'm feeling less and less confident about that happening before the show closes in late July. It's refreshing to see the reality of life as an artist getting more attention (see also Kelly Reichardt's latest film Showing Up).

This is me after recent trips to Brighton and Copenhagen for work, Seattle for fun, and every trip to visit family in southern California and central Oregon. On the other hand, however, as Austin Kleon recently reminded me, as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are.

In anticipation of the publication of Jenny Odell's ‘Saving Time,’ I reviewed my notes from ‘How To Do Nothing.’ I love this quote about David Hockney’s view of painting with respect to time & perception.

I'm reminded that I bought this book months ago, but haven't read it yet. Adding it to the summer reading list now. Speaking of, I recently finished Susan Orlean's The Library Book, which was amazing, started Jenny Odell's Saving Time (so far even better than How To Do Nothing), and picked up a used copy of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (referenced in The Library Book and found in the banned books section of a used bookstore in Bend, Oregon). Earlier this spring I read Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own and thought a lot about my MFA thesis while reading it. I've been thinking about the book again now as we have recently embarked on a pretty ambitious home renovation project (redoing some stuff on the first floor and adding a second floor).

What was my 14yo's room for nearly 13 years will provide an extended living area and stairs to a future second floor.

Anne Helen Peterson wrote about a thing she calls "layoff brain" shortly after a January RIF at my day job. There's since been another, the third in less than a year and the largest so far. My job still seemingly safe. For now.

I wrote about books about creativity here. Perhaps, instead of more books about cultivating creativity, what we need is more writing about what I think of as creativity-adjacent topics, such as paying attention and handling criticism, as Maria Popova writes here about "Walt Whitman and the Discipline of Creative Confidence."

I've also since written a thing about visual artists who use Unity software (where I work) as a creative medium, collaborating with developers/programmers to make work that doesn't quite fit into any of our existing categories (the role of the artist, after all, is to imagine what doesn't yet exist; see here and here). Not surprisingly, while I've received positive feedback and general enthusiasm about what I've written, the folks in charge of things like the blog are having a hard time figuring out where it should live. If nothing else, I'll plop it here. It's also very much about the intersection of art and technology and touches on the history of corporate support for creative work since the 1960s and 70s. If you're into that sort of thing, you might enjoy the writing of Lucy Hunter (see here). More to follow (hopefully). 

I write a bit about past day jobs I've had in this ongoing series (nearly 20 if you count gigs like TAships and paid summer internships) but here I recently compiled a list of 25 jobs I applied to but didn't get. Fun! In the event I delete my Twitter account, here's the list:

• Graphic Artist for Alameda County
• Museum Program Coordinator at Art.com
• Undergrad Design Program Manager at CCA (I eventually did get a job at CCA but not that one)
• Special Projects Coordinator at OMCA (I think I at least got an interview for this one)
• Program Manager at PRO ARTS
• Grad Center Manager at SFAI
• Exec Assistant to the Director of YBCA
• Entertainment Designer at Chronicle Books
• PT Print & Craft Maker at Dandelion Chocolate (dream job??)
• Associate Curator at Depict Inc. (yeah, OK, so some of these were a stretch)
• Education Program Manager at Kala (I was super stoked about this one)
• Learning and Development Specialist at Playworks
• UCB Extension Open Call for Faculty (I think I proposed my mail art course)
• Education Community Program Manager at Adobe
• Podcast Operations Manager at KQED (hey, man, I created my own podcast from scratch...)
• Education & Public Engagement Officer at SFMOMA (yeah, OK, another stretch)
• Climate Change Arts Contractor for Culture Strike
• Adjunct Faculty in Visual Communication at USF (I actually got this one but had to turn it down because the commute and childcare costs were more than I'd make from one class)
• I applied to a TON of other teaching gigs, too, incl places like Art Center in Pasadena and PNCA in OR
• Exec Assistant to the CEO at Minted
• two more OMCA roles (Design Assistant + Membership Manager)
• Community Engagement Manager at AXIS
• Regional Coordinator for calmuseums.org
• Print Production Coordinator at Williams Sonoma
• Program Manager at Create CA

Anywho...can't wait to see the Barbie movie (big Greta Gerwig fan here). And in other Indigo Girls news, we have tickets to see them and Neko Case at Stern Grove Festival! So excited.

call me Fred

It's been almost six months since I last updated the pandemic diaries. And as fitting a note as that would have been to end on, the diaries, like the pandemic, haven't exactly ended, but they've definitely slowed in frequency of entries. On the heels of this article in the New York Times by Claire Cain Miller, I'd planned to write a little more about how the last school year was surprisingly challenging given most kids, both of mine included, returned to in-person school with little or no interruption all year, as I described to Claire when she interviewed me for the article in April in response to this Twitter thread. A few weeks later, she had the data to back up what seemed initially like an atypical experience (compared to stories about the many working moms, in particular, who felt they had no choice but to quit their jobs during the pandemic in order to care for children, facilitate distance learning, etc.). Turns out I was not alone in feeling more drained after kids returned to school than when they were home doing remote schooling the year before, nor was my experience of not only continuing to work but actually taking on added hours and responsibility, all that unusual, after all. 

But then the school year ended and some of those emotions diminished as I transitioned into summer mode. Now that another school year has started, some of those feelings have returned. I think what happened for me shortly after winter break is that kids returning to school freed up some mental bandwidth to look around and realize that while kids being back in school in person was great for so many reasons, things had not, in fact, gone back to any kind of pre-pandemic "normal." After-school options were minimal while expectations around productivity at work, like traffic, were pretty much back to pre-pandemic levels. It's kind of like how the brain can only really focus on one major pain source at a time. If you have, say, chronic lower back pain due to mild arthritis and then suddenly experience a flare-up of sciatica (I'm old, okay?), while dealing with the latter the former will seem to go away. But as you get the sciatica under control, the mild back pain will inevitably return. Likewise, once the daily demands of distance learning were gone, I had time to look around and see that a lot of other stuff in my life was falling apart, all while the infrastructure to support working parents, shabby as it was pre-pandemic, was still almost nonexistent (kids were back in school but there were very few after-school options, so good luck with work after about 2:45 pm every day).

We're now 8 weeks into the 2022-23 school year (Oakland starts and ends early). My son is, somehow, in high school(!!). My daughter finally got a spot in the after-school program. I am no longer, as the article states, "a training coordinator at a gaming company." I'm now a Global Operations Lead for Professional Training, which is...basically a training coordinator. Over the summer I studied for and passed PMI's Project Management Professional (PMP) certification exam. I moved from independent contributor to manager and, for a week or so, I was a people manager with no direct reports. Best of both worlds, I joked! Then my manager left the company and suddenly I have a couple of people reporting to me, I'm actively hiring, and oversee an entire program of about 100 third-party trainers with no support staff, all on top of what I typically do every day for the past three years. Welp. It's been kinda nuts, but, not unlike how I felt when presented with the opportunity to transition from part-time to full-time during a global pandemic and halfway through a full year of distance learning, scarred perhaps by my hummingbird approach to "career" and the challenges of looking for a job after any kind of break or deviation from an otherwise linear path, I feel like I have to take full advantage of these professional opportunities even at the expense of my creative goals and, some days, general physical health and mental well-being. 

I've been thinking about work-family balance a lot over the past week since I attended CCA's "Rooted" ceremony on the Oakland campus. I worked at CCA (California College of the Arts and, formerly, Crafts) from January 2015 through August 2017. Working alongside folks who'd been there for literal decades, it probably seems like a blip. But for me it was a really significant chapter in my work history in both positive and not so positive ways. Prior to CCA I ran my design micro-biz on Etsy. Prior to that, MFA in hand while the great recession unfolded, I had every intention of teaching art at the college level. Ha! The job I eventually landed at CCA was very similar to work I did before going to grad school: administrative in nature and specifically supporting upper level management and board members. It wasn't my first choice. But I was perfectly qualified and it was at an institution I still greatly admire. Not a bad runner-up, right? Well, long story short, it was really hard for me to feel satisfied with such a behind-the-scenes role at an art/design college where I would have much rather been teaching or managing programs or doing really anything more directly related to students and the kind of teaching and learning going on there.

I quit five years ago with nothing else lined up to spend a year (one year eventually turned into two) resetting as both a parent, spending more time with my youngest before she started Kindergarten, and as an artist, spending more time in the studio we'd built in our back yard the year before. I spent most of the second year thinking about how artists support themselves financially in the making of this podcast. When season one was done and I still hadn't figured out how to monetize anything I was doing creatively, I started looking for work yet again. I eased, with some luck and a little nepotism, into the job I have now. It's not any more creatively satisfying than the work I was doing at CCA. But unlike all the arts jobs I've had, at my current gig, I have no problem being the person behind the scenes making sense of the chaos. I'll never be a programmer and I'm totally okay with that. If anything, I'm further removed from the "art world." And perhaps that's why I really enjoyed but ultimately felt a bit out of place at the ceremony last weekend. It was a little like seeing an ex-lover or friend out in the world after a breakup or a falling out. I feel like I've grown so much as a worker over the past three years at my current gig and thanks to two years of working really hard for free, frankly, before that (more time with the kids, podcast production, and lots of volunteering). But being on the Oakland campus brought back feelings of inadequacy while simultaneously longing for a sense of belonging that only those who went to school there or had worked there longer than me and/or who were still working there could legitimately claim (these are my feelings; I'm not necessarily speaking for other participants).

I suppose it's an extension of how I've always felt with respect to anything art-related. Desperate for validation as an "artist," while keeping the "art world" at a distance, using defense mechanisms to cope with relentless rejection, dramatically swearing off the whole thing every few weeks. Toward the end of the ceremony, during which the bell that CCA founder Frederick Meyer would ring to bring the community together 100 years ago would be rung for the last time on the Oakland campus, a white bird (was it a dove or a pigeon?) started flying around the redwoods outside Macky Hall. It criss-crossed the lawn as it flew from tree to tree and as Lisa Jonas (an artist I interviewed for my podcast) concluded her closing remarks it landed on the wooden arch built from wood reclaimed from redwoods lost to disease over the last couple of years. It was a too-perfect ending, the white dove everyone believed it to be symbolizing peace, at once acknowledging our mourning for the Oakland campus while releasing us of our ties to this legacy in order to make room for new and future opportunities in San Francisco. But, Oakland Animal Services volunteer that I am, I couldn't help but think that "dove" looks an awful lot like the white pigeons we've had at the shelter lately. And if that bird was a lost pet trying to find its way home, well, that is a whole vibe that is, you have to admit, also kind of accurate. 

But maybe I'm projecting. Maybe I'll always feel like an outsider who doesn't fully belong, incapable of appreciating a magical moment for what it is, skeptical that what I'm seeing is "real" and not, in the words of magician Schmendrick, from The Last Unicorn, a "disguise...for those eager to believe whatever comes easiest." Maybe there's simply more symbolism for me personally in the fact that my first job out of high school was at Fred Meyer, Pacific Northwest grocery chain, and CCA was started by Frederick Meyer, a connection I only recently made when my husband pointed it out after hearing me describe the ceremony, the bell, and the dove. Maybe, when it really comes down to art and work, in a world of doves, I'll always feel like a lost pigeon.

putting in the work

Today is the one-year anniversary of the day I transitioned from part-time vendor to full-time employee at my current day job. When the possibility of going full-time came up in the fall of 2020, right around the one-year anniversary of when I took on the then part-time role, I already felt like I was working full-time because of the pandemic (working 24-30 hours a week stretched out to 8, 9, or even 10 hour days when interrupted so often by kids not in school or summer camp). The transition was gradual, but even so, when my supervisor at the time encouraged me to complete a growth map or sign up for a "reach your potential" workshop, all I could do was respond honestly that I was barely staying afloat.

Now that the kids have been back at school since August, and my days are more focused on work, at least until about 3 pm, when it gets a little choppy, I will say I'm starting to feel just a tad restless. I eventually did sign up for that reach your potential workshop (I mention it briefly in my latest pandemic diaries update) and finally completed the first phase of a growth map. I find myself looking at things like program management certification and, who knows, maybe even data visualization. I do feel like where I work is the kind of place where day jobs can turn into careers. It's pretty swell in many ways. I remember after my second kid was born and I was debating whether or not to revive my Etsy business, continue to be a default stay-at-home parent or, y'know, get a "real" job, my husband mentioned something about feedback. Being a parent is really hard from a feedback perspective. When it's rewarding it's amazingly so, but there are days—weeks, months, entire phases!—when you're not really getting a lot of constructive or positive feedback, if you will. Or the feedback you get makes you feel, well, like a shitty parent. Couple that with the relentless rejection one faces as a creative person and it can really wreak havoc on your mental health. I've encountered this more than once in my thirteen plus years as a parent. I dare say I'm always dealing with this on some level.

The job I got at that juncture in my life didn't ever really provide me with the kind of feedback or outlet I was craving to balance out the demands and difficulties of other areas of my life. It was a great job in many ways, but not a great fit for where I was in my life at that moment. My current day job, while a bit farther removed from my creative interests (this relationship between the work we do for pay and our creative practice is exactly what I explore in my podcast), has been a much better fit in other ways. I've found that I'm the kind of person that does better creatively when my paid work is pretty different than what I'm doing in the studio. Call me jaded and resentful, but it was really hard for me to work at a college of art and design, but in an administrative capacity (I wanted to teach!). At my current day job, I guess you could say my ego is less of an issue since I'll never be the one doing the sexy stuff, nor do I really have the desire to. I'm a little more okay with being the person who organizes the mess behind the scenes. If you want to read more, I've written a little bit about the transition and what I do at my day job here and here.

All that said, I must also acknowledge that what I need as a creative person and what I have less of now is time. I had a pretty good thing going pre-pandemic, getting most of my work done Monday-Thursday while the kids were at school, and saving Fridays for, initially, training for the Oakland Running Festival, and longer-term, once the race was over, for studio time. If only the pandemic had never happened. If only part-time jobs came with things like: benefits, paid time off, saving for retirement, pathways to promotions and job growth, etc. If only. For now, I celebrate another year at a pretty decent gig and approach this new year with an open mind about things like "professional development" and "my career" balanced with a continued commitment to my creative practice and identity as an artist, even if it's only 15 minutes in the studio here, 20 minutes there, even if I never show this current body of work (but I'd really like to so if you have a space in the Bay Area, feel free to give me a show!).

P.S. I've had, to date, well over 15 jobs over the past 25 years, depending on whether or not you count things like TA-ships and Etsy shops (honestly I've kind of lost count). I've written about most of them right here on this blog as part of my ongoing "burning bridges" series.

pandemic diaries: week 27

Last week, week 27 of the pandemic diaries, also marked the one-year anniversary at my current day job. 

I don't write much about what I do for money, not because I don't like my job, but because what I do on a day-to-day basis is just not that sexy. I coordinate* training services for a company that makes 3D gaming software (to be clear, the 3D gaming part is super sexy...coordinating stuff, less so). Totally not my field of interest or study, but I love it. I've written only once about the transition from unemployed-by-choice to working again on this blog, here. In that post, I write about how working for a company that makes software for people and companies to then make games (and use in other industries as well, including film/animation, architecture, construction, automotive, etc.) reminds me of something one of my very favorite artists - Theaster Gates - is famous for saying about some of his own projects, which often aim to "make the thing that makes the thing." I've always really loved that - to do something creative that then empowers other creators - and that's the vibe I get from where I work. 

Pragmatically speaking, I also enjoy a certain level of job satisfaction I haven't experienced elsewhere because the work is not quite full-time, giving me a little bit of time to do other things during the week (right now, during a global pandemic, that time goes to facilitating distance learning and getting my two kids out of the house a couple of times a day), my schedule is totally flexible, I'm always remote (WFH works for me, mostly because of the kids, before and during our current situation), and it pays better than most full-time art jobs so I can work less (currently I work about 25-30 hours per week). It's not my dream job, but that's okay because the elusive "dream job" is a concept I've learned to let go (letting go is a work in progress; I realize that so much of my creative energy is motivated by this fear, the "fear of being unknown and unloved"). Anyway, it's easily one of my favorite day jobs yet, and I've had a few to compare to. 

I had to make this meme my own (you've probably seen the "vote" version of this).

Otherwise, I'd say the highlight of last week was the dramatic improvement in air quality by about mid-week. It continues to dip into the moderate range here and there but most days are "good," at least from an air quality perspective. We took full advantage, resuming our morning and evening neighborhood walks, and going on some of our favorite hikes. It's done my mood a world of good.

As things continue to be canceled and reimagined given our current circumstances with no end in sight, I found it amusing to learn that some well-known craft fairs are going virtual this year. As a former full-time Etsy seller (speaking of work), an online shop and craft fair presence seem like two sides of a shiny coin to me, so it's weird in a way I'm having a hard time articulating to see folks trying to figure out how to do both, virtually, but still unique from one another. Craft fairs never appealed to me much, having only participated in two, and barely breaking even at either (I wrote about those experiences here and here).

Finally, RIP Ruth Bader Ginsburg. This is the third post in a row that I've ended this way and I for one am getting really tired of it. When I was looking over some past blog posts to start writing this one (I included it when I announced I was quitting my last day job), I was reminded of this Atlantic piece about "the perspective that comes with motherhood." In the context of our highly charged political climate right now, though, I'd have to say this is one of my very favorite quotes of her's, truly something to aspire to right now.

*On the topic of job titles...interestingly, I remember at my old job being encouraged to avoid this word like the plague when describing what I did or when rewriting a job description during the hiring process. But I'm not sure how else I would describe what I do. I coordinate stuff. There's no way to make that sound any sexier than it is (though I'm really quite good at it, if I do say so myself).

good at goodbyes

I started this post last week, before the whole Etsy debacle, which seems weirdly prescient now. In short, my Etsy shop is one of a handful of things I've let go over the past few years, something I've been mulling over during this most recent professional transition (not to mention all the decade stuff going around - the "best of" lists, decade edition, the me in 2009 vs me in 2019, which was coincidentally the lifespan of my Etsy shop). A lot has happened even just since my last blog post, at the beginning of this academic year (I quit Facebook, for starters, plus lunch the week I tried intermittent fasting...you get the idea), when I was still spending a lot of time mulling over my podcast and next steps, should there be any. Thing is, turns out, unlike most people, I'm pretty good at goodbyes! It's a handy skill that I'm not always proud of. But I seem to be doing a lot of it lately.

Let's back up a few years and summarize briefly. It's June, 2017. I, like many rational Americans, have had a rough few months. In addition to the political environment, my husband had spent much of that school year looking for work after the start-up he worked for, well, didn't work out. Friends with more stable jobs reacted with horror, but for those of us used to less job security, it happens. Both of the cats we'd adopted in the last century had died, within six months of each other. I was unhappy at my job and had virtually no time for creative projects, still recovering from the transition from one kid to two. I was at what I'll say now was the beginning of a midlife crisis of sorts. Like menopause, it's ongoing, which, like menopause, no one tells you about.

A long time ago, when I lived with three (significantly less tidy) roommates, I used to play this game where I'd stop taking out the garbage. You know, see how long it would take, how full the garbage would get, before someone else took it out for a change. It would overflow and eventually, I'd give in and take it out. I started to feel this way with some of my relationships, which, and granted, maybe I was being overly self-involved in that "woe is me" way, were beginning to feel very one-sided. I felt like I was always the one initiating social stuff, and outings were always more convenient for the other person. At some point I decided to apply my taking-out-the-garbage test to some of my relationships, seeing how long it would be before the other person contacted me to initiate something instead of it always being the other way around. This time, I refused to give in and take out the garbage, so to speak. Those relationships fizzled.

And then I quit my job with nothing else lined up. I announced it here, including an ambitious list of projects I hoped to tackle over the coming year (one year eventually turned into two). A few months later, after I'd actually left that job (I'd given three months' notice), I wrote more about my decision here. Toward the end of the first academic year of unemployment-by-choice, as I called it, I took stock of the previous nine or so months here. Considering I only had, at most, 20 hours per week to devote to creative projects, it was a fairly productive year.

That summer I spent all but one day out of ten solid weeks with my kids. It was the first time, over nearly ten years of parenting, outside of baby/toddler years, that I'd done that. It was not easy. I half-heartedly looked for paid work again, this one planned year of unemployment coming to an end. But with my youngest kid entering (free) Kindergarten in the fall, meaning I'd have more time and more money, it was too tempting to quit my non-working status just yet. We decided we could swing this single-income arrangement for another year. In addition to making art and writing a screenplay, I decided to pull the trigger on my "artists in offices" podcast idea, having taken a one-day workshop about podcasting (so obviously I was an expert) earlier that year. That turned out to be the primary product of my second year of unemployment-by-choice, feeling very much like a full-time (unpaid) job between about March and May earlier this year. I wrote about the podcast here (nuts and bolts kind of stuff), here (more about the content of the podcast, its title taken from a book of the same name), and here (relevant-to-the-podcast portions of Lewis Hyde's 'The Gift,' a book every creative person should read). A full wrap-up of 2018-19, not that I accomplished much else, can be found here.

One of my goals for 2019-20 was to ease back into paid work. I worked harder in my two years of not working than I did at my previous day job. But, you know, for free. I have zero regrets about leaving that gig, but I feel like working super hard for no money for two years makes one appreciate actually getting paid, even if it's for work that might not be exactly what you dreamed of doing as a kid. When I recommended Felicia Day's memoir during my first year of not working, I wrote about how, after moving to Los Angeles, Day "counterweights the frustration of acting classes and auditions with what eventually turns into a World of Warcraft obsession." I go on to write: "This is, I suspect, how many artists feel about their day jobs (and vice versa). I am not one of them." Well, it's weird, guys, but this is kinda how I feel about my current day job! It's not rocket science, but I feel like I'm doing a good job, and getting positive feedback makes me feel a little bit less defeated, creatively speaking. It's a creative industry, to be sure, but one that's pretty foreign to me (as I write in my Felicia Day memoir review, I've never been much of a gamer). And yet, the vibe at my day job makes me think of artist Theaster Gates: "to make the thing that makes the things." These are also my people.

The job itself came about rather quickly and unexpectedly when a part-time, remote opportunity came up where my husband works. One thing that was frustrating me about looking for work was that all I could find were relatively low-paying (hello non-profit art gigs), full-time positions that included commutes to/from San Francisco (or even farther). Logistically speaking, that wasn't going to work unless we hired a nanny, and on a non-profit arts salary, that was unlikely (and, I mean no judgment by this, but not an arrangement I desired). Then this opportunity came up and, after nearly three months at it, I can confidently say I'm a much better worker when given flexibility and autonomy, regardless of the work I'm tasked to do. I love working from home. My commute is getting my kids to and from school (about 80-90 minutes of my day). I have no complaints.

So what did I bid farewell to so I could do this. Well, to be honest, temporarily anyway (hopefully), my studio practice, writing my screenplay, working on my podcast. I still play the part of default parent and have a lot of time with my kids, by design. The position is part-time so theoretically I should be able to squeeze in some creative projects. But most of my non-working time (4-5 hours a day) is spent with kids; there are some after-school activities but I haven't yet opted for full-time after-care. I did manage to squeeze in a bonus episode early on, but we'll see, now that I know the job and after this holiday season, what 2020 brings in terms of this art/work/family balance.

work, work, work

Now that my youngest kid is in (public) kindergarten, I have more time and money, which is why I continue to be unemployed-by-choice (spending about half of the traditional work-week with the kids and doing SAHM-type stuff). With more time, I'm certainly getting more done, and it's very exciting. I continue to plug away at two different bodies of work in my studio (here and here), am hoping to finish my screenplay early next year, and have finally started work on the "artists in offices" podcast!

Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor (if you read this, thank you; you know who you are), I got all the gear I wanted to get started about a month and a half ago. I made a couple of practice audio...things, one of which you can listen to here, in order to familiarize myself with said gear, using Adobe Audition to edit, etc. Interviews for the podcast began a couple of weeks ago. Not surprisingly, it's been challenging to find time that an artist with a day job is willing to sacrifice to talk to me for about an hour instead of working in their studios, but I'm on track to record about ten episodes for the first season into February of next year. The full season will be released by May 2019, hopefully sooner in the spring.

If you'd like to follow along, I have Instagram, Facebook (it's a closed group but feel free to join if you're into this kinda thing), and Twitter accounts created to socially mediate this effort. Eventually, the website will forward you along to where the podcasts will be hosted, with info on subscribing and all that good stuff. And if you're curious about podcast content beyond the title's summarization, this recent Vulture article by art critic Jerry Saltz is pretty spot-on (and hints at the podcast's second season, which will focus on parent-artists). The title of this post is taken from lesson 5 (of 33) about how to be an artist. You guys. It is so good. And validating. Stay tuned!

book deal dreams

As I near my final week of kid-free time (and by week I mean roughly 16-17 hours) to make stuff and write, before spending the summer with both kids in tow nearly 24/7, I wanted to take a little time to recap this academic year of unemployment-by-choice. First, a round-up of the posts I've written here about that decision and throughout the year (I didn't blog as much as I thought I might, only averaging about one post per month):

• The announcement.
• A lice-themed parody of Hamilton's 'Wait For It'. I include this because I'm a parent, and the reality is this kind of stuff happens more often than you might think, sabotaging hours, sometimes days, of your well-laid creative plans.
• I had planned to elaborate on the articles included in the initial announcement to quit my day job, above, but only wrote about a couple, here and here.
• My first day of unemployment-by-choice included a field trip to The Color Factory. I was not overly impressed, despite the price tag and hype, and, in hindsight, shouldn't have been spending that kind of money on that kind of "experience".
• Now that my most recent office gig was behind me, I could finally write the complete "artists in offices" chapter of the Burning Bridges series, a series of blog posts about my many day jobs over the past 22+ years.
• I made a few things in the fall before I really got to work in my studio, including this Day of the Dead altar for my past cats. I've also spent much of this year volunteering with and advocating on behalf of Oakland's cat population, through my work with Cat Town and Oakland Animal Services. I volunteer with cats and kittens more consistently at the latter, but have done some administrative work and fundraising for the former. I was even interviewed by KQED and NBC Bay Area about the shelter's staffing crisis. So this post is key to taking total stock of how I spent my year. After all, I wanted to be a veterinarian throughout most of my childhood and for the first couple of years of college, before I switched my major to art. I won't say I haven't researched the cost of vet tech certificate programs.
• I also saw a lot of art, mostly with my kids accompanying me. I wrote about the first half of the year here. We got out and about a little less in the second half of the school year but I'll write a recap of those field trips eventually.

Waiting for Daphne.

• A little side project this year has been this Instagram account dedicated to mostly bathroom selfies I take while waiting for my daughter. I spend more time with her than my older son, as she gets ready for kindergarten (because preschool is expensive). I also wrote about these images here.
• Finally, in January this year, I started making progress on my recent collection of mixed media...stuff, collectively titled 'Heavenly'. I wrote about the beginnings of that project and other stuff I did in the fall to "warm up" here.

• In late January/early February I began applying to - and getting rejected from - various, local art residencies and exhibition opportunities. I wrote first about my generalist tendencies - problematic when you have so little time and really need to focus - here. Later I wrote about my frustration in the face of said rejection and my decision to pivot to screenwriting here.
• I've been really into reading memoirs lately, perhaps because so much of my own art and writing are autobiographical in nature. In April, my last post before this one, I singled out 5 reasons why creative folks should read Felicia Day's memoir.

Day writes about her experience with Geek & Sundry, "the more mistakes, the better the story afterwards, especially if there's a happy ending." I feel like my starts and stops make one helluva story, but I'm still working on the happy ending. After all, nobody wants to read a story about a string of mistakes, do they?

Anyway, that sums up much of how I spent the past nine months. But in the spirit of checklists, let's see how much I accomplished from that initial to do list in my announcement last June:

• I’m writing a screenplay. I need to finish it by next March so I can submit it to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. 

Okay, so this is not finished and was not submitted to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. And the story has changed a lot. But! I did manage to write over 40 pages and I feel pretty good about that. The trick will be finishing it, especially if I find myself in another day job situation at the end of summer. Which is likely.

• I need more time to make art in my cozy little backyard studio. Preferably before I turn 65.

Yeah, I did this. Just not as much as I'd like and I haven't been successful in getting any of this new work out into the world anywhere, other than via social media. And maybe it's just crap, I don't know. I have also, if I'm being honest, been challenged by my lack of funds to go toward art supplies and any opportunities that require a fee. I've done a few and I've bought some supplies, but I have no money to put into my art practice. None. Nada. Zilch. Such is the paradox of making art.

• I’m starting a podcast (and/or support network) about(/for) other artists in offices.

I did indeed start a Facebook group and very sporadically post items of interest to it, with minimal but satisfying interaction. I'm also very slowly making my way through the book Artists in Offices. And, most exciting, I took a class, at CCA of all places, with Julia Scott, about podcasting!

Hello old friend.

Unfortunately, it turns out podcasting is a little more expensive to pull off well than I imagined (is it considered bad audio to use Voice Memo on my iPhone?) so my goal is to buy minimal gear I'd need to practice with my kids this summer before scheduling interviews in the fall. I have a handful of willing interviewees so, again, I just need more time to pull this off.

• I'm going to revive my boutique wedding invitation design business. But maybe explore platforms other than Etsy!

I did handle a handful of holiday card orders in November/December and continue to get the occasional ready-to-send card sale in my Etsy shop. But this one's tricky. I'm reluctant to officially call it quits, because if I could make some dough this way it'd be ideal in terms of schedule flexibility and parenting obligations and such, but the truth is, I do very little to promote my business. And there were things I didn't love about it, mostly the fact that, like a full-time job, it took over my life. I'm constantly debating "closing" the business so that, in the very least, I no longer have to pay the fees associated with owning a small business, regardless of income (business license, resale permit, checking account fees, etc.). But I'm hesitant to do so.

• I’m working on a kids’ book based on the Cosmos series, starring a cuddly tardigrade as Neil deGrasse Tyson.

This has officially moved to my summer to do list, in the hopes that I can work on this during the summer months. In the meantime, you can check out past tardigrade tomfoolery here.

• I’m planning to volunteer at the cat cafe until they just give me a job.

See above. No job offer yet, but I have been spending a lot of time with cats. Probably too much, if I'm really being honest. But I dig it. 

(Sweet) Caroline. Current foster kitten for Oakland Animal Services.

• I’m compiling a “quit your day job” bibliography that will eventually be turned into a manuscript for a self-help book with the working title: “Little Boxes: How to get out of the office and into the studio...” (or something like that).

As I wrote above, I only elaborated on two of the articles included in said bibliography. Not exactly a book manuscript. But a girl can dream about a book deal, can't she?

• I'm going to figure out how to make hand-stitched felt phone cases for Android, minus the carpal tunnel syndrome.

No progress made on this point and I'm 100% okay with that. I would, however, love to sell the handful of ready-to-send cases in my product inventory currently stored in my garage so if you know anyone with a really old Android device (and/or a really small smart phone), send them my way!

• I’ll be making videos for my YouTube channel “dances with kids” of me, dancing with my kids.

I've made a few videos, some dance-related, some not. I have a video currently in the works for my cat-themed parody of Sophie B. Hawkins' 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' (Damn, I Wish I Was Your Kitteh. Obvs.) so be sure to subscribe if you want to be one of the first to see that! You won't be disappointed.

• I’m developing recipes for a cookbook called “Sweet on Oakland: Cookies Inspired by Oakland Neighborhoods".

I started a new recipe for the Dimond 'hood of Oakland in the fall but it flopped and I never really got back to it. This, like the tardigrade kids' book above, has been moved to the summer to do list. You can follow that project here. If you know anyone in the cookbook publishing industry, hook me up!

• I’m starting a food truck business that serves only peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. Each PB&J order comes with a free carton of milk!

Again, nothing. But I have made countless PB&J sandwiches over the past 9 months. I'm sure I'll make a lot more for my two kids over the summer. Maybe I'll get creative. 

• I’ve signed a NDA and I can’t tell you where I'm going from here.

This was never true, of course. I've signed nothing and I'm going nowhere. But if you want to offer me a super cool, creatively fulfilling, preferably not full-time but still well-paying day job I can do mostly from home, I'll sign an employment contract on August 13th, when my kids go back to school. Book deals also accepted.