I haven't done this for a while.

I've written about Small Web September so it's not a proof-of-life for once, but I've also stopped posting on Mastodon at one point and it feels weird to just reappear with no "where have you been all these months".

So. Update post that I can link to from wherever.

Well, Crow, what have you been doing since... uh... May?

(This is so long. Here it is with cuts if you want them.)

Scooter

Kitten

Battleship Exchange

Oh crap. I thought I've made a post about that already. So I'm gonna do that, but in the meantime: I played, I wrote, I painted (quite a lot, that was great), and I had fun. It was cool to see how far the organization improved since I've played last, it's very very impressive. Battleship is definitely still my favorite fandom event of the year.

Boat trip

Yay, an event that doesn't require five paragraphs. Annual two days on the water have been had, we made campfires, we cooked špekáčky, we got woken up at 1am by surprisingly good but very drunk guitar players, we got rained on multiple times but nobody tipped over on a weir this time.

I've been a bit disillusioned with this event, thought I might not go next year, but you know what, nah. I like going splashy splashy, even if it means Being Social. Besides, people even bring their cute dogs sometimes. (There was this wonderful Border Collie, I fell in love.)

The Artist's Way

I have gone through the entire book The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, exercises and all. This is a topic that I want to dedicate a separate post to, but in short: it did not fix (what I perceive as) my problems or lead to a major artistic breakthrough (I did not expect one, but oh, I hoped); it did improve my life, especially in regards to creativity; I do not regret investing the time and effort into it (and it is quite an investment); it isn't a magical panacea but I would, with some caveats, recommend it.

As for lasting impact, I am still writing morning pages - they are not a magical panacea either, but they do bring some benefit and I'm at the point where breaking the habit would be more bother than keeping it up.

Library card

A small-but-significant event, I got a library subscription for the larger of the local libraries. While it carries all book genres (it's one o the institutions which receive a legal deposit copy of every book published in the country), it's mostly geared toward researchers and students. Despite that, I've never actually used it during my studies. Getting a subscription now is... reliving the nicer parts of my twenties, tbh. I miss reading specialist literature. I know I can do that at home - and do, I've structured my entire morning routine around it in fact - but getting it from a library is its own thing.

I don't know how much I will actually use the card, especially since a majority of the books are only available at the location and I just don't have that kind of free time during the day anymore, but it makes me feel good anyway.

Building things

I'm running out of steam here, so in bullet points:

• A catio. Not done yet, not even close. It's fun, but it's not a priority and so it loses against things like "cook this veg before it rots", "clean the damn floors", or "if I don't rest this weekend I'm gonna lose my shit". I get to use power tools. It's awesome.
• New furniture for my work/art corner. Inspired by The Artist's Way, in the sense that I want to prioritize my art making? Perhaps. I did a big IKEA purchase and now I have a new desk and two drawer cabinets, i.e. a bit more surface to do art on and a lot of storage to put my art supplies.
• A hanging rod for the kitchen. Still not installed because the tiles are made from adamantium or I don't know what; concrete drill bit did not work, cheap glass/ceramic drill bit worked somewhat and then broke, and now I'll have to buy an expensive one because I refuse to surrender.

Walstad aquariums

So... that's that. It's been an interesting few months. A lot of good things, although I'm running a bit ragged. Conveniently, the weather is slipping into fall here, so maybe my brain will take a hint and I can have a bit of a hibernation period.