On this date...
10 things worth sharing this week
TGIF. Next month I’m being interviewed by comics legend Tom Hart and the event is open to everyone.
Here are 10 other things I thought were worth sharing this week:
A question that’s haunted me like a friendly ghost the past few weeks: “You’re someone who’s so curious about so many things — why aren’t you curious about this?”
On Tuesday we threw an art show in our paid subscriber chat and y’all blew me away with over 500 posts of flower arrangements, origami, oil paintings, pottery, blackout poems, collage, weavings, quilts, photos, drawings, jewelry, artist books, crochet, comics, screenplays, rugs, patterns, books, sketchbooks, paper cache, watercolor, bookmarks, video installations, felt, printmaking, stained glass, mandalas, encaustic, zines, and more. If you haven’t joined us yet, it’s really the best crew on the internet. More chats to come.
A half decade ago, after I started keeping a good ol’ fashioned daily diary, I got obsessed with a daily “on this day” reading of Thoreau’s journal and Peanuts cartoons. I’ve started re-reading my old diaries in the same way, and it got me thinking it’d be cool to time-travel on my blog, too. So I used AI to help me make a “On This Date” widget for my website.
I tried reading The Hobbit to my boys. They shut that down real quick, so I decided to read it myself before bed. I’ve joked before that the most valuable book on your nightstand is the one that puts you to sleep, but it took me two months to finish?!? The whole time I was reading it, I kept thinking, ridiculously, “Elves? Gigantic eagles? It’s like he’s just making this stuff up as he goes!” (I am terrible at following my own rules.)
If you’re a big music nerd like me, you might enjoy Ethan Hein’s blog. Here are excellent posts on the guitar solo in Prince’s “Kiss” and John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” (I’ve been meaning to give Apple Music Classical a spin — I still, unfortunately, use Spotify for their superior UI and playlists, but the lossless quality on Apple Music sounds so much better.)
Some great cover reveals for books I cannot wait to read: Carlo Rovelli’s White Holes and Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wilds. Both authors made my best of 2021 reading list — I’ve read 4 or 5 Rovelli books and I think Matrix is one of the best novels I’ve ever read. (In other publishing news: Questlove gets an imprint, and the first book is Sly Stone’s memoir.)
Movies: I didn’t realize it was PG-13 until it was too late, but the boys loved Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle, a movie much more clever than you’d think it’d be. (Also: Take me down to the Asteroid City where the grass ain’t green but the girls are pretty.)
“Don’t overlook the value of not having what you don’t want.” I am on a diet and I am relying heavily on my willingness to be bad for as long as it takes. Tomorrow is April if you want to do a 30-day practice and suck less challenge.
“Light is everything. Light is life.” RIP light designer Howard Brandston and RIP composer Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou. The Ethiopian nun made some of my favorite music. (Do not miss Ethiopiques, Vol. 21. I’m also fond of The Vernon Spring’s cover of “Mother’s Love.”)
A journal is a magic space to hang out.
Thanks for reading! This newsletter is a completely reader-supported publication. If you love it and want to support it, the best ways are to buy my books, hire me to speak, or become a paid subscriber:
xoxo,
Austin
PS. Just got my hands on the Spanish translation of the 10th anniversary edition of Steal Like An Artist:
I love the idea of my journal being more than a book that I write in. I go back and forth between not taking it too seriously and treating it as something that makes up so much of who I am. It’s almost become this living thing in itself because there is so much of me in there that I don’t choose to share with others. I will most likely hang on to them and leave them to my children when I’m gone because I want them to know who I am and was, how I felt when they were growing up, the struggles that we went/go through as a family, moments that were innocuous to them but brought me great joy. In many ways my journals have become the most authentic representation of who I am as a person. They’re where I go to think, where I go to wonder, where I go to remember, where I go to vent, where I go to hope. In the grand design of things, so much that I do will never matter, but my journals are a footprint that lets me know that I was here. Time flies when you’ve got two young kids, but everyday when I write in my journal, I’m here. Even though the majority of my days goes to parenting, I sit down and I put down my thoughts. They become tangible. Journaling has become a habitual part of my day that it is intrinsic to who I am. Even when I’m just screwing around in there and doodling, it’s something that I do solely for myself and I’ll never take the importance of it for granted. Apologies for rambling, I just got going and couldn’t stop. Have a great day everyone!
Fantastic as always! I’ve been meaning to subscribe for ages and so glad I did! Regarding the Practice more Suck less concept, have you read The Gap and the Gain? It’s about perfectionists hanging out in the gap instead of what they’ve gained /progress etc. ?