The start of my 2023 was quite rough to say the least. Emotional, transitional, unexpected and a juggling act.

Covid was up in the house for the first time ever just before Christmas, brought to us by husband, brought to him by teaching in a public school where he masks adamantly among a majority of the population that just does not.

Shit ain’t cute but we survived.

Near the tale end of November I was introduced to the art work of digital artist, academic, cultural critic and STEAM fields advocate, Nettie Gaskins on Instagram. Her work introduced me to ai generative art through Midjourney and I fell into a rabbit hole for over a month generating images on the discord server and having my mind blown over and over again. I watched videos, read articles, made more images, printed a few, put together and published a book of a few images just to see what they would look like. I attended a webinar Gaskins gave on AI Generative art hosted by Berkeley Center for New Media last week and really enjoyed that.

Oh that’s right, in the midst of all this I started a new position I didn’t even apply for at the same job I’ve been working at for over a decade in December. More responsibility, more money, more adjustments, more adulting. No snow yet though.

…..shhhh….i miss snow….

But I made up for it by generating a bunch of snow themed images on Midjourney in December.

I made a video on my youtube channel about my sheer drop into the Midjourney rabbit hole because it literally just took over for a bit. I was up late at night just prompting and prompting and curating and organizing. I need a new external HD yesterday. I’ve since begun climbing out of the hole though. After a few hundreds of images inspired by artists I love, I began to focus more on cultivating more “original” prompts. That slowed me down considerably because discernment, intention and purposefulness requires planning and thought. In addition, starting this new position requires my focus and attention and a new set of skills I had not previously used in my previous position.

Needless to say, I’ve had a few nervous breakdowns because I’m very hard on myself, very scared of making mistakes and not great at feeling like I don’t know everything I need to.

Whew…

I finished a really great book by one of my fave writers, Haruki Murakimi, “Novelist as Vocation” and am now reading “Emergent Strategy” by Adrienne Maree Brown, my first read of the new year.

I’m writing this on a Saturday, trying my best to snatch whatever time I can to relax and be still because the weekends have been flying lately and there’s always so much to do. Shopping, cleaning organizing, planning. I swear, if I can spend an hour with my mom or my husband away from my cell phone, I feel victorious. I’m not gonna sit up here and trash social media because I think it’s a tool that needs to be used purposefully and is not all bad but you have to really know yourself and your tendencies to kind of gravitate towards social media without even knowing why you’re there. I have those so I have to be vigilant. It took me a month to get on here and write this but thankfully I still journal just about every morning in the hour before my work day gets started.

That’s all I got for now. If I blogged more I wouldn’t have to do so much to play catch up but life be lifin hardcore and I’m still in flight, still juggling, still trying to prepare and plan as much as I can to make my landing as smooth as possible because January shot me out of a cannon.