small human gift

August 17, 2026

no one asked

today has been an interesting day. i did yoga in the morning and prepped to paint. i organised and cleaned my home. i listened to music and sally mann on audiobook talk about her own artistic process. i’m still in the middle of making my website. i have to learn how to polish up photos of my finished paintings. there are so many steps to all the aspects of the work i am doing that it can become debilatating. a battle i’ve been fighting since graduating from art school. i’m just intensely relieved that i’m painting again. to make are art for art sake. no ones asks for it. no one is in need of it. no one knows it exists. i am making it for myself. i am doing it because i can’t not do it anymore. i need it. my souls asks for it. i won’t survive without it. and so i continue to make what i think is bad art. i just have to keep doing it and write badly about it until i can feel like a person with some sort of purpose.

while listening to sally mann talk about her lifelong career in taking photos and her deep and vulnerable process and how a lot of it is really showing up for the work is really what art making is about. the only difference between that and a regular job so to speak is that no one has asked for what i create. we are so conditioned to serve that when we are not in service to production what you are doing feels so wrong. deeply wrong and deeply unnecessary. this feeling is existential. this feeling feels like death in society and a failure of survival. all the doubts about whether this is important and needed or even the question of how is can be good enough so someone will want it throws itself at my psyche that my own process of making is threatened at every moment and every stroke of the brush.

but then there are moments where i am in the moment and i’m not thinking anymore. i am in conversation with the color and the composition. i am in flow. that is all that matters and what i live for.

today’s painting progress

August 15, 2026

a day of coding

i am sitting here learning how to code with step-by-step directions from my ai. i never thought i would be coding. i remember taking a class once, actually twice, and both times i felt so utterly lost. i realize that i needed a conversation and a hand held. learning something new is a force to wield as someone who is practicing agency. doing things myself and learning how to do things i know little about strengthens our collective muscles of agency. we live in a world where we have been taught to trust authorities or those who know better. i am unlearning that.

i baked this japanese souffle cheesecake as a birthday cake on aug 10, 2026

August 14, 2026

new chapter: creating your own artist's website

i’ve used so many different website hosting sites and paid so many fees over the years only to creating something that i don’t have real control over and frustrated that i have to pay so much for the service. i thought i’d try coding it myself and leaving out all the bells and whistles in the name of autonomy and self-sufficiency. it feels great! i’m doing it!

today’s dinner of one: shrimp tomatoes and eggs w/ gai lan and white rice

August 13, 2026

first post

this is where a new entry starts. a photo, a few lines, whatever the day held.