I took my sweet time naming the title for this post. I could’ve easily just went with “Life Lately” and run with it but my creative little self was feeling pedantic and refused to take the easy way out.

I’m on a journey to creativity. A self-enforced boot camp, so to speak. Pushing myself to write. To read. To draw. To use all the art materials that I have lovingly hoarded all these years.

I signed up for this drawing course I found on Instagram by an account called Dream and Draw Art School.

I signed up because it was free.

I reckon I did alright on the first lesson, where I learned the intricacies of detailing I never even knew before. The fact that shadows had shadows blew my mind and tested my patience.

And here I thought in-depth shadow work only existed in spirituality.

The next lesson I did was drawing and painting an autumn-themed door. I fucked that one up. I would’ve been happy to do more and learn more from the artist but the proper course was more than I was happy to pay for when USD was converted to AUD so in the meantime, while inflation is inflating, I settled into buying myself a $15 book at Kmart called 365 Days of Creativity by Lorna Scobie. Something to hopefully get my creative juices going.

Meanwhile, Jeff has been busy improving his e-blades. A continuous endeavour. When he doesn’t come upstairs to interrupt my journaling to show me his latest progress, he comes with a plate of pancake with strawberries and salted caramel ice cream on top sprinkled with raw sugar to give it a bit of texture and me with a bit of diabetes-related paranoia.

The gesture is always appreciated, though. Especially when it comes with a cup of weak black tea.

But if there’s one person in this house making the most out of my ‘Creativity’ book, it’s Raven. Today, she must’ve done about seven activities, using my art materials and my journaling table while I was demoted to cleaning the double-sided sticky tapes off her desk.

She’s one creative kid, though, and I love her so much. I encourage her art and I hope, for her own sake, that she would continue to do so for all her life. May she find her creative path and may her journey be a meaningful one.

For now, I’m happy to be her benefactor and her guinea pig when she needs to buy more Posca markers or when she’s in the mood to practice doing makeup. I’ll show her how to properly do it when she’s older. Just like I showed her my two favorite Street Fighter characters — Dhalsim and Chun-Li — after she asked me who the latter was when I told her I was going to do her hair “Chun-Li style” for her school’s Chinese Day.

The weather’s shit as I write this but nonetheless, I am still grateful for the sunny reprieves that we have had last week. It was such a joy looking out my window and seeing blue skies and green trees.

At the start of the year, I told myself I was going to hug our pine tree more. Just a way of saying thank you or something. I haven’t done that in a while. I feel it makes me look crazy. Although I talk to it from my windows so either way, I’m still off my rocker.

*Raven at 7 years old