2023

big long year. My creative practive fell off the planet at some point which doesn't feel great but a lot of life stuff happened so it wasn't unexpected. That being said here's what I was up to:

We had a baby!

Two kids is a lot of work but we're getting pretty good at it.

We bought a house!

I love it so much. It's the perfect size for our family and has a huge backyard and detached garage I can use as a ceramics studio. It's also right down the street from the library and 5 minutes away from both my brother and Mom. I've been renting apartments for so long and giving so much money to landlords and moving companies and it's just such a great feeling to put all that behind me.

I got into vegetable gardening!

Like really into vegetable gardening. I wrote a whole blog post on how the year went.

I built a fence!

I did this myself with materials from Lowe's (I had help of a friend to stretch the chain fabric on the big section). Took a lot of sweaty work but it was a lot of fun and I'm really proud I got it up.

I hung a 50 foot tree swing!

The only good spot was under a very high branch. I spent about 3 weeks trying to lob makeshift throwbags over the branch, I could get the height but never the exact right spot. Eventually I found an $8 slingshot in Harbor Freight and was able to shoot a bolt over the branch with a fishing line/reel attached, then pull a nylong string with the fishing line, then pull the rope over with the string.

The swing is really fun it's like a carnival ride, I've spent hours pushing the 3yo on it.

I participated in #Looptober!

This was my 5th #looptober, and I did a song every day of the month! Fairly proud of doing 31 days with how busy I am with the kids. (link to all songs) My favorite pieces:

• angel soft
• ankle biting
• The Folded Man
• crimson cattle

I got laid off!

My whole department got cut at the start of December, which really sucks and this is the worst time of year to be out of a job. I'm applying to a lot of jobs (40 so far) and keeping things positive. Feels like the tech job market is really saturated right now with all the layoffs but I'm sure I'll find something!

I made art!

Never the less I still made some stuff this year, here's a dump of everything: