My waking thoughts are all of thee...

Finally finished the incredible biography, James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon over the past weekend.  I can attest that it was the best biography I have ever read.  I became interest in it after I watched a youtuber talk about the book.  To be honest, I was not particularly interest until she showed a passage Sheldon wrote regarding the "genius horse".


After taking the time to pause the video and read through the quote, I felt such a profound sense of recognition that I loaded up my local library's catalog search to see if the biography was available.  Lucky for me, it was.

I found myself empathizing a lot with All's emotions and struggles.  Her gender, he frustration with the direction of life, her relationship with her mother; all of it resonated with me.  I'm trying to be careful with my admiration towards her, as nowadays I roll my eyes at anyone who is quick to deify anybody they find perceived similarities to.  She was an incredibly complicated individual and the biography excels at allowing the reader to draw their own conclusions about her.  Since finishing the book, I want to seek out her( his?) stories and actually engage with them.

I'm attempting to read more from marginalized authors.  Recently, I checked out Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower from the library.  I have never read one of her books but I am familiar with her journals and they were instrumental in me deciding to start writing again a couple years ago.

Drawing in my sketchbook again has been frustrating but I am trying to remind myself I do not need to be perfect.  I have multiple WIPs sitting in my art folder that are gathering dust but I am terrified to plunge back.  I know this isn't a healthy mindset and it is one I want to explore once I get back into therapy.  The two months I spent earlier in the year brutally grinding my fundamental skills did provide me a lot of insight with art and the process of improving.  There hasn't been such a significant improvement that I can consider being a professional, but the difference is obvious.  The expectations I place myself are too high so I need to ease myself into recognizing small wins.  Even opening up my sketchbook and completing a page is a win.  

I feel like I second guess myself whenever I write anything.  I need to be comfortable again with just being able to verbalize my thoughts and not necessarily care if it's particularly "successful" writing.  When I was writing in my commonplace book earlier this morning, I was seriously considering restarting the entire thing because it seemed so disorganized.  The commonplace book does not need to be this glamorous, highly organized archive of my life.  It can exist as it is.  Messy.  A place for thinking.  I shouldn't try to force myself into a specific way of using it.

I interview for a new job on Tuesday and actually heard back from them today.  I genuinely beleived I flubbed the interview but they want to meet up with me to discuss further.  They even explained the salary so I'm assuming they are interested in hiring me.  We'll see what happens.