Day after Day I Get Angry and I Will Say*

Hey, so sometimes a thing pops up and you think, hey! That’s cool. That’s really cool. Social Justice Sewing Academy is one of those things. When I was on the web last year, around the time our newest president reared his ugly head, I found the Instagram of a woman, Sara Trail, who was making banners for protests. She had posted patterns online (I think I wrote about her back then). Turns out she works with a group of kids, the Social Justice Sewing Academy, helping them express their ideas…wait, not just IDEAS, but ACTIVIST IDEAS…in fabric. And sewing. I think this is awesome, and they want to expand the program, so there’s a Kickstarter here. Watch the video, read the stuff…just looking at the art they make (their Instagram is @sjsacademy) makes you wanna back them. These kids deserve all the help they can get; I would love to see a program like that down here. Yes, I backed it. You should back it too…not only because it’s fabric, or even because it’s getting the younger generation into fabric, but because these kids have a lot of great political stuff to say and we should expand that to more voices, diverse voices. We’re gonna need some young, strong, loud voices to fight some of the shit being thrown around. She focuses on kids of color, kids who need a voice even more than most. Go. Look. Watch.

More on the eyeball…watched a movie and graded shit last night…

But sewed two nights of Whites of Your Eyes first…

Weird puppy…

So I broke two needles last night AND stabbed myself in the finger with a knife (OK, that was while making dinner and was just lame, but it still hurts this morning). I don’t exactly know how I didn’t see that safety pin, but it’s nice to know the needle can pierce it. Or is it?

The second needle broke…I don’t even know why. It was not an auspicious start. I think both broke in the first 10 minutes and I swore prodigiously, and then I got my rhythm back and got about an hour and a half of quilting in.

I didn’t want her to have a weapon, but I wanted her to be able to stop him, to hurt him, to catch attention. So octopus tentacles. Best I could do.

Most of the male figure is done…just his head and one arm, plus the thought bubble…

And then start quilting the background. Remember not to quilt the background in tiny little squiggles…because there ain’t no time (nor necessity) for that. Start seriously considering the next quilt, because it will be big too…about this size…and it doesn’t exist except as the beginning of a drawing and a list of ideas. Not that it’s a bad thing…drawing it will be nice. No, it’s not a happy topic…still…but it won’t be guns. I don’t know why that makes a difference, but it does. Because I feel like I can make changes about climate but not about guns? Who knows. Because one is nature and what we’ve done to it and one is human nature and that worries me more?

I do have an opening coming up on November 16 at the Rose Gallery at Francis Parker School…three pieces will be in that show, one never-before-seen (except here). The opening runs from 6-8 PM. It’s a really nice space…plus school kids are gonna see my work! OK, I had to do no nudity on this show, but it was worth it.

OK…to the day job, then the night job. Go back that Kickstarter. You know you wanna. And it’s totally worth it.

*Violent Femmes, Add It Up

I’d ‘a Danced Like the Queen of the Eyesores*

I didn’t write yesterday because I fell asleep Friday night while grading and then got up Saturday and kept grading. No art. Just trying to catch up. Not doing a great job of it. I did finally get to quilting at some point last night…and into the morning. I’m planning on doing today slightly differently. For one thing, I can’t go to sleep at 1:30 AM on a school night.

I lie. I CAN. But I shouldn’t. In fact, for about a year, I did just that. It was bad.

Grading meant cats lying on my stuff. It was hot yesterday, close to 100 degrees. Southern California sucks at Fall weather.

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Then he moved to the notebook. Because I was obviously using it, so lying on it made sense. I picked up his head to put papers under it a few times…

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This one was polite and just laid upon the graded paper pile. Although then I had to extend the pile past her because she was already lying on it.

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I realized I hadn’t touched this in days, so I did 4 nights’ worth…basically finishing the iris of the eye and starting on the white part…

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I keep trying to use a more sketch-like way of stitching, but I’m inherently ordered in how I stitch I guess.

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Then I made it into the quilting space around 10:30 PM…on a day when I had nothing but errands to do. Well. And grading. I was trying to get to a certain point. I did not. I gave up. Interestingly, here’s when I do all my work…after 9 PM.

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Still debating this app. It might work. If I can remember what each icon is for. Plus at some point I’ll probably have to pay to have enough tasks…we’ll see. I don’t think this is one of the ones that charges monthly. I don’t need that level of tracking. And the last one I paid for disappeared with the new iOS…I’m still salty about that.

I’m still outlining stuff…I’ll be doing that for a while.

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That’s a fun heart. I want to do one like that again…much more decorative than in the old days. My hearts really have changed over the years.

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The eyes haven’t changed much…there’s only so many ways to make an eye. That’s not true. That might be a challenge. Huh. I need drawing time. Seriously need it.

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I did her torso and the head, except for half of the hair. I still need to do the other arm, but I’ll do the chalkboard first. I meant to buy thread for the chalkboard when I got the background thread, but I forgot. I’m hoping there’s something in my pitiful stash so I don’t have to go back to JoAnns this close to Halloween. Damn.

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I could have gone to bed at midnight…that’s about when I started quilting the head. But I didn’t. I kept going. I wasn’t tired.

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It’s kind of boggling how much time some of this takes.

My plan for today is to finish up the school stuff that I have to do and then start quilting. I’d like to get the outlining done today. I don’t know if I can, but that’s my goal. Then I can do background quilting all week and hopefully make time somewhere to go buy binding fabric and get it bound early next week. It’s taking too long. It’s not really…I was drawing in mid-August…and basically I’ve worked on it solidly, almost every day, since then. While working full time. But it’s taking up a lot of space in my head. Certainly last night while quilting the path that bullets would take through the head…you can only think about that shit so much before your brain gets tied up in knots.

In other news, the girlchild has been accepted to a school program in Madagascar…you know, where the outbreak of plague is. Yeah. Exciting stuff, but a bit scary for all of us. She’ll have an awesome experience…just getting there will take her two full days. But very cool opportunity…

OK. Work briefly and then quilt until I have to stop…

*The Shins, New Slang

I Can’t Operate on This Failure*

I’m ready to be Australia. Well. Except for some of the crazy bugs and spiders. Y’all can keep those. But let’s hand in all the guns. I think the biggest obstacles are the politicians who are more worried about their jobs than their constituents. No automatic or semi-automatic weapons…can you really argue that we need those? You do realize people in Australia can still own a gun, right? There are just strict rules for how and what. I have no problems with strict rules. Can you argue that your right to protect yourself is more important than my approximately 3,300 students’ (over 15 years) right to live? Or the 58 people who died in Vegas? Or the 49 who died in Orlando? Or any young black man wearing a hoodie?

The plus is that I finished stitching down the anti-gun quilt. Let’s be clear…my quilt is Anti-GUN. Because we don’t need them. Not in the numbers we have them. Not for what they’re being used for. Not. I just (in less than 5 minutes) contacted my three federal representatives. Told them to stand up and create legislation and keep fighting for it until it passes. Start there. You can do that.

This is who stares at me on the way home…after I pick her up…

She wants to know why I’m not petting her. And then why I’m not throwing the ball faster.

Still working on the eyeball in the top right. It doesn’t look like much right now.

Then I stitched. Well, I made dinner first. And finished my book…The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet. I liked it. And then I read some Goodreads reviews and felt bad for liking it. And then decided those people had no lives and I was allowed to like it. So there.

Stitching things down…

Sometimes I really hate America for its aggressive patriotism. I’ve been told so many times to LEAVE because I don’t agree with the majority…and I explain that is why we are here…because our ancestors didn’t agree with the majority and needed to flee…so we took over someone else’s country in a particularly nasty and violent way (somehow it was our inalienable right? I don’t think so…). So I mostly write off anyone who tells me I’m not patriotic when I object…it’s the core part of our country. I’m allowed.

Ah…this thought bubble. Why do people shoot other people up? Anger? Hate? Fear? Core emotions…that mature brains can learn to manage.

In a society that appreciates that. Yesterday, in the assignment we’re doing in class, I had told each class “no weapons” for their element superhero. One class started to argue…and I turned and said, “Really? After Las Vegas, you’re going to argue that you need weapons? Solve the problem without them. That’s what I want to see.”

Seriously. America. Solve the problem without guns. Do it. You know you can. We have some of the best brains in the world. Use Them. If you’re a politician scared for your job, then GOOD. Do it anyway. It’s worth it.

I did finish the stitch down, just short of 6 hours.

The face of gun violence here in America…tonight I’ll sandwich it and pinbaste it…maybe even start quilting. We’ll see. Meanwhile, I started reading a book about violence in Africa. Maybe I should look for something lighter after that.

*Tears for Fears, Pale Shelter

I Won’t Back Down*

I keep skimming the news, looking for logical reasons to shoot up hundreds of people at a music concert, but all I see is more evidence that this was planned. Then I try to understand the brain that would do that…and I can’t. I understand anger and sadness and frustration, but not when it turns into that.

The work day wasn’t that hard…it was processing the rest that was hard. So I came home and took the dogs out…

Three miles (ish) as fast as we could go.

The sun was trying to beat us back. There’s coyotes out there, so that shit makes me nervous with the little guy…but we made it.

Good for them, good for me.

After making dinner, I had decided I wanted to do another eye, so I started it randomly on the right.

I only do one strand a night…this is Sunday’s and Monday’s…

I saved the blue for the iris, but maybe I’ll keep going with another color instead. I’ll have to see how I feel about it.

Then I had to force myself to get up and go in the office to sew.

Yeah. Well. Understandable. I realized how long ago Sandy Hook was and it took me that long to be able to process it into a piece of art. Some of that is not wanting to make A work that commemorates ONE event…it’s more about the feelings and ideas behind the event. Certainly Sandy Hook wasn’t the first school shooting, but it was the hardest to process…someone coming in and shooting up little kids for no apparent reason. Having worked in middle and high schools, the reasons to be angry and feel harassed, bullied, oppressed, to the point of thinking a shooting is a good idea? I can imagine that. Unfortunately. But little kids…seems so much worse. It’s not really…it’s innocent people of all ages, isn’t it? And Sandy Hook obviously wasn’t the last.

I hate that we’re becoming a country where it feels unsafe to do just about anything: go to work, get on a plane, go to a concert, go to school, go to a church, go to the store, the library, wherever. It shouldn’t be like that. There’s nothing about possessing a gun that would make me feel more safe. I have one and some “lone wolf” (really??? he was an older white male…most dangerous species out there, if you ask me) has 20 of them. Legally.

OK. Well. With all that weighing on me (and it IS weighing on me), I have a parent meeting this morning. I haven’t even gotten to Tom Petty…sad sad sad.

So many favorites of his…but this one is making me cry this morning.

*Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, I Won’t Back Down

Your Eyes Make a Circle*

Yesterday, I sewed. Not a lot. I also cleaned some stuff and organized some shit and moved some crap around and booked flights for the kids and I don’t even know what else, but I also sewed. I kinda wanted to see what it looked like when I sewed, so I figured out a way to prop the phone tripod on my bosom (yes, I just typed that…laughing while I did it, but for realz, that’s what I did) so I could do just that. Here it is…

And all I can say is wow…no wonder I’ve sewn through my finger more than once. Yup. I sew like I drive, I guess. Except fewer driving accidents than sewing ones, honestly. It’s very strange to watch one do things that one has been doing since one was 10 years old. Seriously…I’ve been sewing on a machine for 40 years. Wow. Long time. Longer than I’ve been doing most things.

So I started the meditative stitchdown in the afternoon and got the entire bottom section done…more later today…that’s the plan anyway. I’ve got errands to do first.

It’s fast because there’s not a lot of pieces or detail, but not REALLY fast, because everything is very big.

I pile it on the machine when I’m not sewing so that sweet furry black thing can’t lie on it…

Later, in front of the last episode of Ozark (not the baby! not the baby!), I did three nights on the left of this…staying caught up is getting harder I guess. Some star stitches and fly stitches and a herringbone. I think the corner is almost done.

Then we were still watching, so I got all the dots on this one; now it’s ready for embroidery…

And this one too…so that’s April, ready to go in the bag for the fun part.

I started working on June, but then TV time was over and there were dueling cats and eventually bedtime. Plus I got sidetracked by the fact that June blocks are supposed to be sewn to other blocks before I sew stuff down, but I’ve already started sewing stuff down, so I’m fucked. That’s it. Throw it out.

Naw. Not really. Just gonna improvise a bit.

Up too early this morning for the airport (not me, not the cats).

I keep the trash pieces around for a while…needed to cut a pencil tip, because I’d lost it and never found it and didn’t realize until I was doing the stitch down. These are useful because of weird shit like that.

Straight up, I’m tired, I’ve got a ton of schoolwork to do, and I really need a neck/shoulders massage so my chiropractor can crack the mousing side of my back. Just so you know. This week is going to be a bit of a challenge…but I’m trying to plan out enough that it’s not worse than it could be. I might need a nap. Like now. Not now. Now to stores. Bad Kathy. No nap for you.

*U2, I Will Follow

And I Will Try to Fix You*

Silly me, thinking I was gonna finish last night…because it bugged me most of the day, way back in the way back of my brain, but I was fairly sure I could make it better. So once I got home and got past the paralyzing exhaustion I apparently caught on the way here, I grabbed a blank piece of paper and traced over the part of the drawing that I wanted to change…

I was trying to keep the original drawing simple, so I only added one target, but then it ended up being on one of the lighter-colored heads, which was silly (but random) and said something I didn’t want it to say. It’s not that one kid is a target in a school shooting…in reality, a lot of the time, I think some kids might be because of bullying (them being the perceived bullies, and perhaps even in real life) or teachers or other staff might be, but sometimes it’s just anger at the whole world and a school has a lot of concentrated human beings so maybe it’s easier to go in there if you need to shoot a bunch of living creatures? Humans, to be specific…you don’t hear about zoo shootings or pet store shootings. I’m not being facetious…I’m serious here. Why does any sane (and that might be the issue) adult walk onto a school campus and shoot unless they feel the campus is part of their problem? I don’t pretend to understand anyone who uses a gun to solve their problems.

I did trace Wonder Under before dinner and a movie (it was one of those nights)…and caught up on three night’s worth of this. I’m behind because I’m doing other art stuff. I did stuff in the bottom left again…filling space…leaves and parts of that vine…

And after the movie (where I was sewing wool bits together)…I ironed. First I finished the thought cloud…but I had lost (misplaced) one of the Es…so this is why I keep my trash pile. It was in there. Duh.

And ironed it together…

Again, making a guess about what’s going through their heads. It’s hard…bullying is a real thing in middle and high school. Kids can be vicious assholes. But it would be nice to live somewhere that the solution was NOT to bring a bunch of guns to school and spray bullets everywhere.

So this was all ironed down already. I was hoping it wasn’t ironed down super hot, so it would still release and allow me to push stuff underneath. Otherwise, this would have been a pain in the ass.

I was still gonna do it though. Luckily, it did release pretty easily.

So I ironed and cut out and then ironed down all these little tiny target pieces…so it wasn’t about one kid with a target that was supposed to stand for all of them. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding about the target. Mostly the kids that get killed or shot (and hell, I go back to Sandy Hook Elementary every time…) just happen to be there. Because who shoots kindergarten kids? Because he had access to guns…otherwise maybe he would have done something else, something less deadly.

Such a dark place I go to when I work on this. Because as a teacher, I always have in my head what I will do if a shooter arrives on campus…how I will protect a classroom full of 12-year-olds? And if your response is to arm ME? Yeah. No. That’s not a solution. More guns. You want a gun to shoot? To protect yourself? To hunt? Is that more important than a 6-year-old’s life? Tell me that. Truthfully.

No. I didn’t finish.

*Coldplay, Fix You

Your Conscience Will Be Mine*

Grades are almost done…they’re close enough that I could ignore them last night and iron for a few hours. That’s how you know you’ve done it right. I’m up early for a parent meeting…I don’t really like morning meetings. I’m not fully functional even with a cup of tea in me. I need time and space to get my head in the right place to teach, to get my classroom ready, and morning meetings fuck with that. It’s better than the days my school day started at 7:25 AM though, so I am glad of that.

I managed three nights’ worth on this…blue, white, and peach down in the bottom left, a variety of stitches…some lazy daisies, straight stitches, fly stitches, and French knots…whatever it took to fill the space. Chain stitches too…

Then filling in the elephant…that might take a while.

Then I came home and ironed…got the face done. The eyes are always a bit fussy. I don’t like ironing one down to the face until I have both of them and I can place them together.

It can be a bit fidgety sometimes, getting them in the right place that is…

And then it gets dark. This is a dark quilt. There’s no doubt about it. I guess many of my quilts are challenging, but this is straight up painful to think about and to make. So maybe that’s why I’m so troubled about whether it says what I want it to say.

I finished the head and the arm in the middle…gray, not flesh. I guess people will read that however they need to.

I’m 500 pieces in…only have 360 or so to go. So hopefully by Tuesday night I’ll be ironing it to the background, and then maybe stitching down after that. It’s big, so that part will take a while. I think I’m about 7 hours in on the ironing. I can’t check right now…my phone is in the other room charging…I’m not sure why it wasn’t charged this morning, but it wasn’t. Weird. Hopefully this is not a sign that the phone is dying early.

This morning’s reward for having to be up too early…

May the rest of the day follow that with abandon.

*Adam and the Ants, Stand and Deliver

Everyone’s Taking Everything They Can*

So everything I was supposed to do last night got canceled, and I ended up with a free evening. Which is strange. So like any good teacher worried about grades, that’s what I did first…but it was good, because I got an entire assignment out of the way and in the gradebook. I’m feeling much better about progress report grades being due next week now. I’ve got one major assignment, but I’m just over halfway through grading it, and I think I can get a chunk done at school today (I hope), so that will help. I don’t want a weekend full of grading. I’m trying to avoid it.

Never look a bunch of cancellations in the mouth? Just go for it?

It meant I was back to art stuff pretty early…well, early for me anyway. When I sat down on the couch, there were three animals with me in about 14 seconds flat…Satchemo, looking plaintive.

Calli, who is finally feeling better, and Simba with his bone…

Seriously, Satchemo always looks a bit plaintive.

Mostly it’s because he does not get all the food and all the pets.

Two nights’ worth on here…in the bottom left still…the pink lazy daisies and fly stitches, and then the flowers in a slightly different pink.

I have to decide on how to add another thing, a motif. And what to add.

I did finish cutting out finally…it’s a good thing I didn’t try the night before, because it took another hour and a half, for 14 hours total.

A lot of bigger pieces…filling up the box.

At that point, it was just after 11 and I was trying to decide…do I sort tonight? Well yes, I do. It’s easier to do that and then start clean tonight with ironing.

It took just under an hour to sort them all…not bad.

Nine bins full of pieces ready to be ironed together. I’ll hopefully start tonight and get some done this weekend. I do want to do some enjoyable things this weekend too, though, so that will be on the agenda. I’ve read another 17 articles about teacher work/life balance (it must be September!). It’s a myth that you can ever have that with this career and do a decent job of it…but certainly you should always be carving out time for self and friends and family. Carve is the appropriate term too…with a rather sharp, nasty, and dangerous sword.

Good news though…three pieces are in an upcoming local show at the Rose Gallery, located at Francis Parker School…so yeah, no nudity! And I had three of them. Miraculous. The opening is November 16…put it on the calendar. They do a lovely reception and it’s a beautiful space…it’ll be the first time I’ve had work there. It’s all good…persuades me to enter yet another show.

I don’t actually need persuading. I know better than to look at any one (or series of) rejection(s) and take any life’s purpose from that.

*Zero 7, In the Waiting Line

I Need Direction to Perfection*

I spent an hour plus last night fighting my internet…slow as heck, same old stuff. Whatever it was, sludge speeds, figured itself out by the time dinner was done, so I could upload photos at the speed of light again (entering a show…yes, hope springs eternal) and do the other internetty things that needed doing. But I had carved out an hour and a bit for grading and then that didn’t happen…and I couldn’t bring myself to sit down and do it after dinner, because I wanted to get to the art stuff, you know? Too many hours of working and you start to go nuts.

So no grading yesterday. None. Sigh. Don’t think about grades being due. You’ll do what you can.

There’s Calli…she’s sick. Some tummy thing. She’s going to the vet this morning…hopefully it’s something simple. Because she doesn’t feel well. Usually she comes down the driveway with me to get the mail. It’s one of the exciting parts of her day.

Yesterday she just sat there until I started coming back and then she got up and slowly walked toward me. Poor baby.

I did two nights on this…the green feather stitch and blue lazy daisies on the left, building up from the bottom now.

I guess it’s all either curved lines or straight ones.

Puppy hung out with me on the couch for most of the night.

See how close he gets? I’m still cutting out…did almost 3 hours last night and I can see progress, the end of the road.

Although all those octopus bits were a tad annoying. The suckers…that’s what they are.

But it meant I was down in the mostly big pieces of the female figure by the end of the night. Those are the 100s, I think. There’s dirt below…more big pieces. The top box still needs to be cut out, but you can see the box is nearly empty. All the stuff that’s cut out is in the bottom left and the trash in the bottom right.

I’m pretty close to done I think. Unfortunately, I have a potentially longish meeting tonight, so very little time for grading or cutting…but we’ll see. I’ll still cut stuff…I just may not finish. I’d like to finish…but then I have another meeting Thursday, so even if I finish and sort before that, I won’t be able to start ironing until late Thursday at the earliest. But progress! Remember progress! Because that’s what keeps me going…that and getting to see it finally ironed together and deciding if I actually like it. That’s a big one with this quilt.

Plus the next one is percolating in my head. It’s already started on paper, and it’s gonna be big, but I need to finish this one first. And I might cut myself a break and finish that other smaller one in between. Or not. Hard to say. It’s partially done already.

Anyway, hopefully the dog is better by tonight, the meeting is productive but doesn’t put another piece to be done on my plate (not sure where that would fit), and I get through the cutting stage. My hand would be happy with that.

*The Killers, All These Things That I’ve Done

Face Away and Pretend That I’m Not*

Grades are due in a week…it’s part of why I put my head down and put in 10 or so hours this weekend. I got some significant stuff out of the way, but there’s more in the classroom. That plan to spend an hour on the deck drawing? Well it turned into a half hour of talking and a glass of wine, but that was fine. I forget to take that time for myself…there’s always something dragging me back into what I have to do…so it was nice to have someone else remind me. Yo! Go sit outside and relax!

I’m not great at that.

So I didn’t get as much art done as I wanted to, but it’s coming…this is a busy week with lots of meetings, so who knows what’s going to happen. I’d like to be done with the cutting sooner rather than later, but I can’t guess how much longer it’s going to take. I’m over 6 hours in now and it doesn’t seem like I’m half done…although I did a bunch of tiny pieces yesterday and I feel like the rest is mostly larger pieces, so maybe I am halfway? Hard to say.

Lots of numbers and letters…this bit took forever and fussy little scissors.

You can see them all there…the little triangles will wait to be cut out until I’m ready to iron them down. They get lost too easily.

So here’s where I’m at…trash box at the top…to-be-cut-out on the left, and stuff I’ve cut out on the right. It seems like there’s still more in the to-be-cut box than the cut box…so I guess I still have a lot to go.

Usually cutting out takes less time than ironing, so this being halfway would make sense…and big pieces are generally easier to cut out than the fussy little ones.

We’ll see. I’ll be lucky to get 2 hours in tonight…Tuesday might be a little better. Wednesday for finishing? Eh. Maybe Thursday. But ironing together by the weekend? Maybe even Friday night? That would be nice…this thing is taking longer than I thought it would.

Cat standoff…

Things are getting slightly better. Less growling. Not getting along yet per se, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.

Still working on this…filling in the left bottom. I did a pink and a maroon, lots of French knots and some chain stitch.

Soon I’ll have to decide what to do with the rest of the left side.

Puppy sleep.

Spending the whole weekend working makes my brain fuzzy…seriously. It does. Aaugh. This job. It really does try to take over everything. I guess the art is kinda the same way, but I prefer that. Almost every waking moment thinking about art? Not a problem. Maybe it’s because school is such an impossible problem and art is a solution to me.

*Linkin Park, Faint