It’s the first blog of 2026 and oh how wildly different my life looks since the last time we chat.
workshitttt
If you live in America, I think it’s fair to say that work shit has been hard to focus on lately. We’re living in a ice-fueled nightmare, dictated by a self aggrandizing sack of birdshit, pretending to be a competent leader. It makes it hard to stay focused on emails or admin related tasks like paying taxes that will fund genocide and terrorism in our very own streets. I spend each day splitting my attention, and it’s honestly been exhausting.
I keep going back to this one memory…
In 4th grade, we read The Diary of Anne Frank. The teacher followed that book up with an assignment where she split the room in two, and had half of us write journals from the POV of a Jewish person, and half from the POV of a German. I fell into the first group by… luck? The irony of writing that is not lost on me, but in terms of the assignment — it was the easier POV as we had just heard it in the Diary.
I don’t remember what the second half of the class wrote about. They were on the wrong side of history, so why would I have kept that in my memory bank? I wish I had.
Did they consider the weird dynamic of being complicit, simply a from lack of power? Did they think about the mundanity of living through a time of mass suffering, when you are not the group being targeted? Did they struggle with the powerlessness that comes from growing up under constant propaganda? Or the guilt that would come from not doing enough?
We were in 4th grade, so likely it didn’t get that deep… but I wonder about what it actually felt like to live during that time. Surely it was filled with stupid things like having to check mail, and pay taxes even if it didn’t look exactly the same way that my day does.
Anyways, workshitt is getting back to normal-ish. I’m back on schedule. Working hard on this month’s patreon workshop, and prepping the rest of the time I have left at 9 Main st…. Which isn’t much!
lifeshitttt
So the last time I checked in on life, I was living in a third floor, studio apartment, with Miss Ellie. Fast forward to today, Elle has a massive back yard to romp around in (that is currently filled with snow) and I have so much more space in the HOUSE we now live in. The commute is a little further to the office, but I don’t mind one bit, I finally have a closet to put my clothes in again! Which sounds so silly to celebrate but my studio literally had zero closet space. Not a single storage spot in sight.
There’s plenty to be done in the house and I’ll probably never be fully unpacked, but that’s just the ADHD life. Speaking of squirrels, can I soft launch the fact that I moved into this house with my beau? We’ve been together for a while now and paying two rents and only ever being at one place is really the devils work, so it was a much needed change! And friends, it’s SO NICE to have someone to eat dinner with again. I didn’t mind living alone, until it came to dinner. There was something so lonely about sitting at a kitchen table set for one!
plannershitttt
This shoulda been at the top of the blog, but I’m still kicking it in my A5 Rings! Loving The Marie weekly layout. It’s really a form of planner peace for me and I will be printing at least 20 sets of it to keep on standby, before I’ve turned my printer back in to Xerox.
I’m also really proud to announce that I FINISHED my 2025 junk journal strong, I’ll have a full flip on youtube soon! And my 2026 journal is already looking great. I’m really trying to focus on making as many pages interactive as I can. It’s definitely my favorite way to make art come to life, and a great way to add context and tell a story on the page.
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The spread I did the day they murdered Renee Good includes a magazine image of a smiling woman - I cut her eyes out, and then glued them, along with a number of other scary visuals on a pull tab - with the words “don’t believe what your eyes can see” printed on top. As you pull the tab, it drags her eyes away and instead you see flames, curses, bombs, smiley faces and finally smoke. It’s really jarring. I coupled it with a short entry about how I felt. That’s the kinda energy I’m brining to 2026. The fascists can burn all the books they want, but they won’t find my memory keepers. |
Anyways, I know this doesn’t feel like the most light and bright way to enter the new year, but I think sometimes, in an effort to stay bright, you have to keep your light going, by any means necessary. Sometimes that means taking the time to sit, reflect, and record. Other times that might mean opening the door for a door dash driver fleeing from ICE. Either way, it’s the big and small actions that add up to us staying bright, together.
