All Your Crooked Heart

A Million Things I Haven’t Done

Aside from just being eternal Hamiltrash, I’ve picked the title of this post to reflect a fairly ambitious goal I have this coming year.

My sister and I have been itching to collab on something for the last few years, but could never quite settle on what. When I pitched this to her, she seemed interested¹, but we are still working out exactly what form the documentation of the project will take. YouTube channel has been tossed around, as has podcast, but a collaborative blog (like a Tumblr, that easily integrates multimedia) is also on the table.

But — hand-waving that whole debate side, the gist of the project is, we each pick a creative practice we’ve never tried, but wanted to, and devote five weeks to researching, practicing, and learning the skill, and document it (means of documentation, as mentioned, TBD).

To that end, I am compiling a list of skills I wish to explore — at five weeks each, we can fit ten new skills into 2025, so here are my Top Ten:

Ten New Creative Endeavors for 2025

Decorative Calligraphy
Embroidery/Cross-stitch
Stamp-making
Shrinkydink Graphic Jewelry
Wood Carving
Mixed Media Assemblage
Perler bead art
Paper quilling
Clothing alteration
Book sculpture

Some of these have been on my Want to Try list for literal decades — like, shrink plastic art? Quilling? My sister went through a quilling phase herself in the late 90s/early aughts, and while I was vaguely interested, I had both so little confidence and so little patience with myself that I just never undertook the endeavor. Just handwaved it away as something I “couldn’t” do.

I think I’m finally in the state of mind where I genuinely feel like with time and patience, all things are possible.

I am beyond excited to have such an ambitious plan for 2025 — this will be on top of my own creative endeavors, and I am hoping to be able to use my creative calendar to keep track of and plan each of these learning experiences.

I have even more exciting potential projects in the works that I can’t wait to share with all y’all, but (sadly) as they are collabs, I’ve gotta hold me tongue until I get the all-clear from the other participants.

What creative ambitions do y’all have in the pipeline for 2025?

¹ “She seemed interested” might be generous — intrigued might be a more fitting descriptor, as in, it sounded interesting and maybe fun, but might also be waaay too much of a time or energy commitment for her, so… should that be the case, I still intend to Do the Things, but I may simply document progress and results right here in this cozy little space instead of setting up elsewhere. Stayed tuned, I guess.

Giving Thanks

It’s hard to be grateful, living in this timeline. Living in this timeline at the crossroads of my circumstances and identities, doubly so.

Still, I’m trying. I’m trying to be cognizant of the good things I have, of the good things in my orbit, in the world at large.

So, to those ends, I felt the need to acknowledge.

I am thankful for living where I do, in a state that has been consistently ahead of the curve in legislation that defend and honor my right to marry, my right to self-identify, my right to bodily autonomy.

I am thankful to work in a field in which my neurodivergence is not only accommodated and respected, but actually gives me an edge and advantage., I am grateful to be surrounded by colleagues who value my input, seek me out for advice and consultations, and who both constantly challenge me and respect my need to rest when I need to rest.

I am thankful for my wife, who has not only never discouraged me from a goal or ambition, but actively encourages all of my silly little wishes and whims.

I am thankful for my son, who consistently amazes me with the brilliant, clever, hilarious, creative, silly things he comes up with. I am thankful for his natural curiousity and his passion for his interests.

I am thankful for my siblings, who understand me in a way that no one else does, and with whom I can be wholly myself.

I am thankful to be in a position where preparing to move is an option afforded to me — that I can afford homeownership, at a time when lot of my peers are struggling. It is a huge privilege, and being in such a position for me has been as much about luck and outside support as it had been my own efforts, and I am compelled to point that out. I am monumentally lucky.

I am thankful for hobbies that I can afford to keep as hobbies — while it might be nice to get commissioned once in a while or to sell a print or two, I am glad that my passion projects can remain passion projects, and do not have to bear the burden of being my financial bread-and-butter.

I m thankful for the people I have met on my creative journey.

I am thankful, in that regard (if not others) for the road ahead. I am excited to see where the path takes me, excited to try new mediums, embark on new projects, and meet new people.

I am thankful for the life I am living, and the people with whom I am living it.

I hope there are things you can find in your own lives to celebrate, flickers of light in the darkness.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate.

Take care of yourself and each other.

The Plague

Well, surprising to none, I assume — I do, after all, work in the school system, have a 9-year-old, and am smack in the middle of an uptick in seasonal illness — but we’re sick.

He and I, I mean. The 9-year-old. I’ve been getting sick since Wednesday, but for him, it seems to have hit him like a mach truck all at once on Sunday night. I turned in for the night at about 11:15 and by 11:50 he was in my room crying about how awful he felt.

We spent the night on the downstairs couch, and while he didn’t sleep very well, he at least seemed to be more emotionally regulated. As for myself, I barely slept, and scheduled an absence from work and a text message to my coworkers for coverage to be sent at 4:30 am.

I’m still feeling pretty rough, though I’ve absolutely felt much worse, and while he seems a little loopy from lack of sleep, he’s also giggling like crazy over whatever ridiculousness is playing on YouTube and seems in an overall good mood.

Of course, the timing of this all comes at the crossroads of moving prep, several shake-ups at work, and Thanksgiving, so that’s cool. Cool cool cool.

Anyway, my goal for after work today had been to clean the walls and woodwork downstairs and finish patching the nail holes and whatnot, and if I gain a second wind, I might do that.

If not, the aim is to start my next digital painting. I think the goal of 2025 is going to be a return to more traditional media, but with the move coming, any of my traditional stuff that wasn’t purged has been packed.

Who knows what the day will bring, though I’m hoping for more sleep and a relief from this cough, at the very least.

Take care of yourselves, and each other.

Road Blocks

So, I’m going to level with you — this was probably not the best month to exercise even the smallest amount of ambition with regards to attempts to “organize” and “schedule” creativity, and I’ll tell you why — we’re moving.

Or hoping to, at least.

We’ve been in this house for eight years. In that time, we’ve accrued new hobbies, new passions, and new collections, and have thoroughly outgrown the place. Which is fine — this was always intended to be a starter home — but it’s only in the the last two years or so that we’ve really started feeling claustrophobic, and we’ve been fortunate in that it aligned with a significant uptick in our income.

In the last few weeks, we actually finally started to get the ball rolling with regards to concrete next steps, starting with contacting our realtor, and getting an estimate for our mortgage. We’re currently in the throes of finishing up a series of tasks set to us by said realtor, which included packing away all our extraneous belongings, purging old junk, painting the downstairs bathroom, touching up paint throughout the house, patching up the walls, and repaneling the basement ceiling.

So, you know. Perfect time to try to get ambitious with art, right?.

I’m updating and revising my calendar as I go, though, because right now the point is to get into the habit of scheduling and planning. The chaos of the move is temporary, but hopefully the habit of at least making a (flexible) plan will be longer-lasting.

The biggest change? In the interest of minimizing the need for last-minute packing, I am putting all my traditional media supplies (pyrography pen and wood for burning; junk journal supplies; Sculpey molds; acrylics and paintbrushes) either into storage or purging them in the hopes of repurchasing fresh supplies on the other side. So for the foreseeable future, all my art will be either graphite or digital.

And yeah, that’s a pivot. But it’s what I’ve gotta do.

I’m excited to have a new space, with new possibilities. I’m looking forward to the fun part of the process — touring homes and considering new possibilities — and I’m looking forward to settling in somewhere new and making it Ours.

But until then, life is gonna be up in the air for while, and my creative routine is gonna suffer.

Hope you’re all doing well, and will see you on the other side of this.

For any of you in the Merrimack Valley-area of Massachusetts, Essex Art Center just opened a single artist exhibition by Rixy. The exhibit is called There’s Glitter in the Concrete — we were there opening night, and it’s worth checking out if you’re local.

Scheduling Creativity

For those wondering how the plan to create a spreadsheet in order to organize my creative chaos is actually going:

I’m keeping the load light this month, and I am still already slightly behind, lol. I’m updating as I go — I took longer to start the drawing of CyKeem than I thought I would, and wound up working on that exclusively instead of in tandem with the other illustration I was doing, so that one is getting pushed back.

But you know, like most things that are truly useful and functional, it’s a living document, and is allowed to move and change — but I will say, seeing things laid out, and at least having a devoted time to do certain things (even if those times need to be shifted over by a day or two) does make me feel more balanced.

As I get more accustomed to the system, I will likely populate it with more concurrent projects, but until then, focusing on one or two at a time is still fine. I’ve got no real deadlines (the submissions deadline you see if for a gallery where I will submit an extant piece) and am still just creating art I want to create right now, so I’m not in a hurry to make, make, make. I can afford to take my time and do this right.

Keeping On

Ooh. Hoo, boy. This… this has been a week.

I keep saying, on all my public-facing socials, that I’m not going to talk about it, and I’m not. And it’s not because I don’t care or because it doesn’t affect me, but because, as Kafka said, “if I open my mouth, I may never stop screaming.“

I am a queer, non-binary person in possession of a uterus. I am neurodivergent, work in education, have an autistic child, and a visibly transgender partner. Rest assured (for this and countless other, less self-involved reasons), I feel it.

But I can do nothing about the big picture.

So I will focus on the details.

I will hold space for others and for myself. I will fight on the local level. I will find and serve community. I will donate and volunteer.

I will make art.

I will keep going.

I hope you all will, too.

Time Management & Making Art

Surprising no one who knows me, I am currently having a hard time balancing my creative needs. I already chronically struggle with balancing my hygiene, mental health, social, and personal needs, so as I’ve said, this is not shocking or even especially interesting.

It’s just irritating.

This October, I took a break from visual art in order to run an online fanfic writing challenge. It was a daily prompt challenge, and it was for a small fandom, but I was incredibly happy with the number of people who threw their hats into the ring and wrote, even if it was just for one or two prompts, and absolutely ecstatic that there were some people who wrote daily for the duration of the challenge. Even more encouraging, there are some people clamoring to run another round of it this month or next (and, like, that is genuinely flattering, but I just do not have the spoons).

So now, on the back end of the challenge, having written 18k words in October and rekindled my love of writing, I return to visual arts — as I had promised myself — with a deep, deep necessity to find a way to balance my desire to write with my desire to draw, sculpt, collage, etc., and the knowledge that, yeah, that’s probably never gonna happen unless I make a very conscious, concerted effort.

There’s always going to be in internal conflict, I think, about what I could or should be doing at any given moment — I’ll be struggling with a particularly challenging painting and consider that maybe I should be writing instead; I’ll hit a roadblock in a personal essay and think that maybe it would have been more productive to have started a junk journal spread.

It’s just the way it is, I guess. Six years of a steady art practice means I don’t procrastinate the way I used to, nor do I really suffer from a dearth of ideas or inspiration. I’ve just never learned how to naturally divide my drive or attention cross multiple disciplines, so I just have to accept the fact that certain things will sit on the backburner for so long as my brain has decided to hyperfixate on certain other ones unless I make an effort otherwise.

So, this is me, making a conscious choice, as I promised myself, to return to visual art for the time being.

And this is me, recognizing that what needs to happen — what I really need to do — is start scheduling my creative time. Which, I mean, feels like kind of a drag, honestly, but if I have it within me to make a conscious decision about how I’m choosing to be creative — just not in the moment, that’s the problem — then I should do so. Make a spreadsheet or something and plan out which projects to work on and when. Maybe alternate writing and art, even diversify what kind of art I work on — maybe a week on a digital project, and then a weekend doing journal spreads, a couple of nights doing pyro work, a week of acrylic.

How do people with multiple hobbies and interests — the one of indulge frequently, as part of their, like, lifestyle, and don’t just dabble in sometimes — organize their time? Do they just go with the flow and allow whims to foster their creativity, or does prioritizing actually help them be more well-rounded in their practice and their creativity?

Oh, and I keep meaning to make time to read more, as well, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

I am also making a conscious choice not to buy myself too many thing prior to the holidays, but we stopped at our local Big Lots today and they were selling 12 packs of canvas board in both 8×10 and 5×7 for $4.99 each, so if you’re looking for some basic boards to paint on at a good price, go see if your stores are selling them. I bought two packs of each, totaling 48 canvas board for just under $20.

Anyway, I’m off to see if a spreadsheet is truly the solution to my problem.

Cheers, all.