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to be seen without performing. to be heard without screaming. to be missed without disappearing. to be enough without proving it. to be held without falling apart. to be understood without explaining. to be wanted without conditions. to be. to be.

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I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing with my life but what I do know for sure is that as long as I continue to be kind and I continue to love and as long as I am capable of noticing beautiful things then I'll be okay

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Orphan's Lament (gouache) It rained on our little smoke tree. I named this painting for the Robbie Basho song!

This will be my postcard print for June. Join my postcard club on Patreon if you'd like this mini print in the mail - link in my pinned post!!

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June 24, 2025

I've come to realize that my biggest obstacle for Bicolline (outside of souring relationships between the United States and Canada) will not be the money or the costumes but my general lack of fitness. My cardiovascular health is likely not where it should be for my age, admittedly. I've abandoned many of the hobbies that kept me even somewhat active (musical theatre, marching band, climbing) without replacing them. I've been doing some research, and I've come across this idea of "zone 2 training" which is basically elevating your heart rate to ~70% of its maximum on a regular basis. This is supposed to start the process of increasing one's VO2max. I was super vague about my goal of aerobic exercise because I truly don't know much about what that might entail. I suspect I could start attending fitness classes in the fall, but I don't know if I want to wait that long. One of the articles I read indicated that beginners could very well start to build the routine with short, 20-minute workouts a few times a week to eventually build to some combination that hits 120 minutes over a full week. Maybe a thirty-minute stationary bike ride a two mornings in a week? Watch some show during it? I'd have to fix my sleep schedule, that's for sure.

My sleep schedule is real bad. Knitting as a Zero Hour activity is also not as beneficial as getting up out of bed and stretching immediately after waking up. With knitting I am liable to just sit in bed for hours and just knit and knit and knit. I think I shall need to set guidelines for when I should and should not knit so that I don't just sit around with it all the time.

That said, I did finish my sweater vest in 10 days hehe. And I won yarn chicken!!! With yarn to spare, no less. Hopefully blocking it will help make the fit a bit boxier. I wouldn't say that was a very sustainable pace for knitting, as I just happened to have a lot of time on my hands the past week and a half, though it was very fun and a decent way to stave off the doomscrolling (which I tend to do more when I'm nervous (so I've been doomscrolling pretty consistently the past three days, heh)). Regardless, it does fit, it looks adorable, I love the color, and I want to knit more green things. More things in general. I am so excited for the future of peering into a closet of items I love and made with care.

Speaking of making things with care, John Oliver did a segment on AI slop recently, and it's quite good. I was enraged at the one guy giving a tutorial on how to actively make pinterest a worse place just for a quick buck. Some other techbro believes, for some reason, that no one enjoys the process of making music anymore, that learning instruments and software is too cumbersome, that people want to offload artistic expression. Those comments made me want to scream. I want to believe that everyone has a creative side, but maybe there truly is a difference between people who appreciate the struggle involved in making art (whether that's the struggle to learn a technique or the struggle to perform the art or even the struggle that inspired the art) and people who see nothing more than the final, consumable product. I don't want to think that I am in any way special for enjoying the discipline and tenacity required to puzzle one's way through making art. Even when there are days that I don't want to practice, I know I will be happy one day to have pushed through the tedium. There are times when making music (or sewing a garment or rehearsing for a musical or rehearsing drill or writing a short story or even coding a solution to a problem) is less enjoyable. But I also don't want to offload that struggle entirely.

My experiments have been failing the past two weeks. I'd argue I've been experiencing failure for about a year now. It is disheartening to spend hours on a procedure and not see results. Multiple times in a row. But. With each failure, I am iterating through possible solutions and learning about the procedure in great detail. I am more thoroughly understanding the process as a whole through failures. Does it suck? Yes. Would I rather not fail? Obviously. But there is some utility in failure. There is utility in things that are not fun. Are there not-fun things we could offload? Sure. But I don't think it should be at the cost of tenacity, determination, persistence.

I learned a bit of "The Glory Days" bass part from The Incredibles (basically the first minute fifteen)! Was not feeling super motivated to start practicing, so I let myself kind of just mess around for a bit without any expectation to run through exercises (which I did end up feeling motivated to do at the end anyway). While I'm in a committed relationship with Austin Wintory, Michael Giacchino is absolutely my one and only hall pass lol. That man can compose. Anyway I can only play it up to about half speed, but I know basically all the notes! It's really fun!!

Today I'm thankful that I won yarn chicken.

I've been barring myself from excess sugar the past few days. Hoping to do a full two weeks before I head home. No apple juice, no cookies, no candy, no nothing. Well, I let myself snack on low-sugar graham crackers, and I do yogurt some mornings, but mostly it's just, like grapes. And water which is good, especially in this heat. But I want a cookie so bad oh my god.

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will you recognize me later?

am i memorable enough?

or will i fall out of your consciousness?

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jesse diaz

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November 5th, 2024

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June 20, 2025

I should have scheduled my trip home for right after my big deadline a few weeks ago. I don't think I'm performing optimally right now, especially not in terms of motivation. I think I need a long-ish rest to reset, since I sort of went straight from classes back into lab work. It kind of worked last year, but I think this year was more stressful than last. Like, things are getting done, but I feel distracted (more than usual, at least).

And then this week, none of my experiments have been working properly even though they're supposed to be walks in the park. Easy stuff. Already optimized, already functioning properly. And they've just been failing. For like a week and a half straight. Maybe longer and I've just been blind to it. And I can't figure out why. This afternoon I'm going to be troubleshooting one of them and hopefully will figure out a solution, but I'm really worried about how my progress will slow if I can't, like last year. It's extremely annoying, everything was going so well for like two weeks. And that didn't help my feelings of fatigue.

And then after I left lab on the day that I'd done both procedures that had been going wrong and they both failed on the same day, I spent an hour on my Scarlet Witch draft at the makerspace and it sucked. I did almost everything wrong. So Wednesday was pretty awful, actually.

Thankfully, Wednesday was also arts and crafts night with the discord crew. I chatted with my dnd-friend for an hour or so and then with my dancer friend for a bit longer, and that helped. That cooled me down and relaxed me a bit. Because they're fun! And I don't see my dnd-friend much at all recently.

The following day was Juneteenth, and I spent the morning knitting (the vest I started last Saturday is coming along sooooo fast, I'm so excited to finish!), then went to have lunch with my island-friend, turquoise-friend, and their mutual friend who I also know and really like but have generally not spent much time around (it should be noted that it was me who scheduled this outing for the three of us because I wanted to spend more time with her before she moves away). As an aside, I'd planned on having this nice, semi-sleek blowout, but the humidity puffed her up immediately. As it was Juneteenth, and my hair was still pretty nicely shaped (though now more rounded), I decided to take up space instead of whipping my hair into a bun for the day, and I'm glad I did! Even though sweat was dripping from every crevice, I was kind of giving carefree black girl which I loved. I had dim sum for the first time and it started off really overwhelming but was actually really nice (and surprisingly economical)! Then we got gelato (at a place with an ironic name) and chatted, stopped at another coffee shop, chatted, went to the park, chatted, went to a speakeasy, chatted, and closed out the evening with a nice little walk through a historic neighborhood and along the water (while chatting). It was a fantastic day in the city, probably a perfect Juneteenth. While effectively Thursday, it was spiritually Saturday (making it three weekends in a row that I've had a drink which is.. unheard of).

My mom thinks my fatigue could be coming from the fact that I've consistently been extremely social the past several weekends without having enough time to recover, truly. She's probably right (though consistently failing experiments don't help). Arcade-bar, then clubbing, then Juneteenth (and a craft night tonight with a less close friend). And tomorrow I was planning to hit this free live music event. Granted, this is personally all kind of in celebration of me hitting that one big presentation deadline a few weeks ago (plus I had to miss another free live music thing about a month ago, so I'm making up for that). Well, I'll be home in a little over a week. And I shall rest then.

Today I'm thankful for my friends!!! It's so cool to have friends who are so cool. I feel lucky to know them and thankful that spending time with them makes me feel loved. I'm thankful that craft night happened to be on that day (even though it was me who scheduled it, I had no idea that it was going to be an awful Wednesday). I'm thankful that it was followed up by a fantastic (-ally hot and humid) Juneteenth. This one feels kind of self-centered, but I'm thankful that I have friends that are black and/or brown women of color who I feel close to! Not only are they just cool and interesting, but, I dunno! Sometimes (not all the time, I think plenty of our conversations are on equal footing) I slip into something of a little sister kind of mindset which is quite distinct from being the eldest daughter! They just feel safe. And I want to absorb as much as I can from them.

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Sonnenuntergang an der Flensburger Förde.

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“I should be at the club” this “I should be at the club” that. Well for ME, I wish I were out of doors—I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy and free…and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? Why does my blood rush into a hell of a tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills

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"fruit has sugar" warning post reminds me of my coworker who told me to make sure I don't get "addicted to fruit". yeah i'm also addicted to a nice walk on the beach

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go on more walks. walk for no reason. walk to solve a problem. walk to blow off steam. walk to get outside. walk to listen, read, and learn. walk to escape distractions. walk to improve your health. walk to think. a simple walking habit can change absolutely everything.

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Sometimes I forget I have a tumblr account and I should also share things here. So here’s one of my recent rebinds, The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig! It actually had signatures so I was able to sew my own endbands.

Originally I set out to do this all with inlays but for many reasons that was a complete failure and heat transfer vinyl does not have enough shades of blue, so I ordered a custom direct to film transfer which thankfully was a lot cheaper than actually buying a dtf printer.

Cover inspired by gothic windows, stained glass, and used the chapter header art for the moth and sword.

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misty

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