DECEMBER

Again, oops, I think it'd be even sillier to just leave this month with only one entry, so I'll write something up real quick!

Uhh, I got a two pack of rotisserie chickens a while ago on sale, so I've been living off of those for the past two weeks. I did one of those meal subsciption kits, like, last year, and one had a recipe for white wine gravy that completely changed my life and ruined every other gravy for me... the issue is, I don't know what kind of wine it used! It was in a small, unlabelled bag and tasted very strongly and acidic. I've tried a couple of different wines now and it's been like. alright. but it just wasn't the same, y'know?

Additionally, my taste buds have been so messed up since I caught COVID... was it two years ago, now? Like, most things are sort of bland. Most devastatingly, I can't taste pineapple at all! And I can even bite into a lemon and it's a perfectly fine, somewhat mild experience! I love these bright, sour tastes so much but I can just barely taste them... :(

And yesterday, I finally bought a set of soft pastels! I had a few previously, but they were ~borrowed~ from my high school art class to make a very specific drawing / painting, so they weren't really the best palette. I had been using them to shade polymer clay / needlefelted pieces, but I've been looking at a bunch of pastel artworks & tutorials recently and I've fallen in love! You can get such beautiful loose effects, so excited to properly try them out! I'll be sure to report back with my findings soon!

Oopsie, I've been putting off making this journal page and now the month is already half gone!

This one is based off the Diploma for seeing all the Pokemon in Diamond & Pearl. Since I started the year with one of these, I thought it be fitting to end the year with one as well! I think the ones from gens 3 & 4 are really cute and have nice art, but the others are rather... well, diploma-y.

Also, I'm not really sure how to make an irregular image border around the browser, that's responsive and looks nice. It's so difficult to design something that looks attractive if you don't even know the dimensions of the canvas!

Oh, on that note: I ended up making another little zine:

I do still really enjoy designing the little covers and typesetting! (And you actually know what size pages you're designing for, lol.) Oh, also, someone left me a nice review on another zine I had posted! ^^

I've been buying a couple of indie zines (mostly ttrpgs and short stories), and looking at a listing for a collection of old Riot Grrl zines -- the shipping is kinda crazy, though!

While websites & ebooks, etc, are cool and everything, I'm still naturally inclined towards print media. It feels so much more real and impactful to be able to physically hold a little booklet than to scroll through a pdf or other digital-thing, y'know?

Hmm, what else, what else? I'm still working on the identities / Tumblr essay-thing! Might end up rewriting the intro, though.

Also, I just wanted to comment again on "hustle culture." My mom has gotten into crocheting and knitting recently, yeah? But now she's pretty much stopped crocheting and bought a knitting machine, to make hats and scarves "more efficiently." Why do your hobbies have to be efficient? Why do they have to be monetized? ...I understand that that's ironic to say, considering the earlier section of this journal, but it's something that's been coming up again and again in my life.

I kinda told my dad about this site. He's... not really interested in feminism, but he says I should collect my little stupid essays and put them up on Amazon to try and make money off them. That would defeat the point, wouldn't it? My mom told me about a video she saw, talking about designing covers and uploading a blank book or just lined pages to Amazon to sell as a "notebook" -- "it'd be much easier than binding them!"

Sorry that every journal entry I make invloves whining about capitalism in one way or another, but this worldview just upsets me... Sometimes the quicker way is worse. Sometimes it's enjoyable to slow down and do things the 'old fashioned way.' Sometimes you want to peel and grind garlic and cook a sauce rather than getting one premade in a jar. Sometimes you want to make small things you can be proud of, rather than churning out something generic and mass produceable to make money. Sometimes you want to speak with your own words, rather than conforming to what you're expected to think, do, act, and say...