First Week of October

I hadn’t intended to participate in Inktober. I generally don’t commit to anything link Inktober or NaNoWriMo because I’m already juggling enough things every single day that adding an additional daily pressure just hasn’t appealed. I’ve figured that if I want my life to be different, I should permanently readjust my schedule to make up for the thing I lack rather than doing a one month push that I drop at month’s end. I see the value in stretching oneself for a month, but haven’t felt like the timing or practice coincided with my needs.

So I am surprised to discover that I’ve now done four Inktober drawings and posted them on my Instagram. The first I meant as an encouragement to people who might feel intimidated that their art isn’t good enough to participate. The other three each expressed something that was in my head that day. It pleased me to combine word and image to capture an idea.

I don’t know that I’ll continue daily Inktober. Tomorrow’s prompt is “cruel” and I have no desire to add cruelty to the world. Perhaps I’ll jump to a prompt from a prior year. Perhaps I’ll let it go and only participate in Inktober as the prompts match my thoughts for the day.

We’re in book-push week where the last pieces are falling into place so that we have books ready for print. This time there are two simultaneously. My week is a mix of regular work, still trying to unload the last of the t-shirts, final book prep, beginning Kickstarter set up, and end-of-term scramble to make sure kids pass all their classes. Only the end-of-term is less of a scramble than it has been in years. For the first time I’m saying “Hey maybe we should bring this grade up a little since we have time” instead of “You need to hurry and finish this list so you don’t fail this class.” Perhaps we’ve finally found the right balance of classes, or perhaps they’ve just matured enough to step up. Either way, I’ll take it with gratitude.

This week was further made interesting by a four and a half hour power outage which completely disrupted Monday evening plans. During the outage I had time and silence enough to contemplate power and the loss of it, also habit and convenience. All of these thoughts came in relation to the national politics of my country which feel like an angry tangled mess, and also the recent dire reports about climate change. In both cases I need to make my life less convenient in order to make the world a better place for everyone.