Murky waters
Happy Friday from my cheerful little 6’ x 11’ basement studio!
I’ve been struggling to write this week, if I’m honest. My personal life is beyond bursting, and has been for a while, but this week it overwhelmed me. How do deep-feeling people navigate this so-full time of life? My children are so beautiful and each have their tender, complicated struggles with health and identity and social needs; several beloveds in intimate friend circles are navigating life-sized struggles or transitions, and it feels sacred to be a weft in their loom of support, even though I’m frayed and not as reliable as I wish I could be; my husband and I, predictably in this era of life, either efficiently coordinate daily logistics like generals moving troops at the end of the day or we are too burned out to connect, and missing someone you get to see for hours a day is a heavy feeling. I’ve dropped the ball in several arenas this week, and it feels bad! And yet still snacks have to be made, and dishes done, and bottomless laundry when recurrent bloody noses and dirty knees make re-wearing clothes a non-starter.
All of this is to say: I also missed my personal deadline last Friday to finish writing Act I of Monument. It’s close though! A keystone scene that needs to hold up two opposing weights is struggling to come out, but I reckon I’ll get there with a couple more hours of working through it. The hitch in the giddy-up is that I really needed to meet that deadline if I want to meet my “full script by end of summer” deadline, because Act II is extremely intimidating and I need all the time I can muster. Fingers crossed!
I also am not going to share the diary comics I’ve accumulated for a minute, until after my family and I get a chance to process some big (good!) changes. Autobio comics are so murky! How do people do this? I tip my hat to the many, many autobio cartoonists & artists & writers I love who choose this work and navigate the tension between the power of honesty and the need for privacy. It’s starting to feel above my pay grade. Fiction is so freeing!
I’ve been keeping up the daily comic diary since Feb 28, and yesterday I drew on the last page. This is the first sketchbook I’ve ever finished, and I’m irrationally proud of that fact. A lifetime of 1/2 full sketchbooks be damned! No more! I’m excited to crack open a new teeny little moleskine today.
Recommendations:
If it is within your risk tolerance, go see live music under the moon on a cool summer night with someone you love, and dance and cry and hold each other close. Then the next morning, watch a 6 year old almost hyperventilate with laughter at this Mr Bean bit. A+, would dance & laugh & cry again.