GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Life

  • OPM.66 Not Young

    Having worked in small firms, I’ve always been the young guy. Even that time I went corporate, I ended up being the junior staff member on a major project.

    That’s fine. I learn more from the experienced folks.

    So it was a bit odd turning Owner and suddenly becoming an old guy. In the few cases where I’m younger, it was by a year or two, not decades.

    Middle age is odd. They say architects don’t blossom till they are fifty. That was forever away, now just three years out.

    I’ve gone through the stereotypical “now what” moment, but I’m also comfortably confident in my skills. There’s still plenty to explore, but I have much to share with the next generation.

    Maybe this OPM letter was a my way to share some notes along this journey.

    ~

    Some Links

    Over the past few years I’ve fallen hard for calligraphy. It’s why this letter took a long hiatus. You can graph with the most simple of materials, but here are some things that stand out.

    The Pilot Parallel was my introduction to calligraphy. As a lefty, I had long thought it impossible, but once I got my hands on one of these pens, I just had to try (with the help of YouTube). It’s an inexpensive pen with none of the hassle of dip pens. If you’re not sure what size to get, go big with the 6.0mm.

    What to graph on? Anything will do, but normal printer paper will bleed, as will binder paper. The best value I found was acid-free sulfite paper from Blicks, which is usable on both sides.

    If you get deeper into the hobby, then splurge with the Brody Neuenschwander Handwritmic Ruling pen. I also enjoy the Dreaming Dogs ruling pens (especially for alternative shapes), but the Handwritmic has the best build quality with a nib that can handle a variety of scripts.

    LED light tables are super cheap now. Mine is just a non-name brand from Amazon. Print out guidelines on paper and now you won’t have to rule your sheets all the time.

    And finally books, books and more books.

    • Any edition of the Speedball Textbook is a good start (I’ve got 12, 16, and 20-25).
    • I’m fond of Arthur Baker’s Foundational Calligraphy Manual because he elucidates a technique of twisting the nib, which feels really weird until it’s natural. At this point I’ve picked up all of his books.
    • For good clear overview of scripts over history check out Julian Chazal’s Calligraphy a Complete Guide and David Harris’s Art of Calligraphy.
    • I also love Harris’s early book Calligraphy: Modern Masters, a survey of contemporary work around 1991.
    • A wild card, out-of-the-box gem is Scott Kim’s mind twisting Inversions.
    • And no list of books would be complete without grand matron Sheila Water’s epic Foundations of Calligraphy. I find this one intimidating—high standards are great, but for a hobby, fun comes first. But when you get serious, it’s a must-have.

    ~

    Christmas Party at Amalgamated Wireless, Ashfield, New South Wales, 1937, Sam Hood

    ~

    Goodbye

    Now it’s time to close out this project.

    If I was feeling frisky, I’d do a post mortem report of the OPM Letter with my four questions:

    1. Was the objective clear?
    2. What went wrong, how do we avoid it in the future?
    3. What went well, how do we keep it going?
    4. Did we miss any opportunities?

    But life isn’t always work, so I’ll let these questions linger. Instead, here is a parting gift, a collection of calligraphy, 100 Words on Design.

    Thanks again for reading this on-and-off newsletter.

    Please shoot me an email, I’d love to catch up.

    Cheers!
    Justus

  • OPM.62 Nobody Wants

    A few years ago, we ended up at the ER when the girl fell off the couch and hit her head on the tile floor.

    Fortunately she’s no worse for the wear. Unfortunately, we met an apathetic staff at the hospital.

    Looking around the waiting room, I saw a bunch of sick kids and worried parents. I get it, nobody wants to be here, and it’s a rough gig dealing with everyone’s worst day, every day.

    But still, those employees chose this life. If you can’t be happy practicing your craft, find another craft.

    I often think about this as a project manager. Yes, I’m improving the facilities for the future. But all my users experience at the moments are inconveniences and a bunch of extra meetings.

    At the very least, I can lead the project with joy and flair. After all, I’m the one who chose this life.

    ~

    Some Links

    I’m joining your favorite organizations by asking for donations before the clock strikes midnight.

    To start, Wikipedia needs no link, but if you use it as much as I do….

    But have you explored the Internet Archive? I became aware of them when looking for building codes (before the code publishing houses had online websites). They also archive much, much more (such as a DOSbox web implementation of the original Civilization). On second thought, maybe don’t give these guys money.

    The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is a non-partisan organization focused on fighting for our free speech rights, I’m proud to be a card carrying member of this organization protecting our most fundamental right.

    ~

    Bus Station, Umeå, Västerbotten, Sweden, 1930-1939

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • 8 nights and 8 days

    Night 1

    I landed in the hospital with an abscess in my liver, which revealed itself by a relentless fever with soul sucking fatigue.

    Morning 4

    The first days in the hospital continued to be a haze of fever and fatigue, though greatly relieved with the interventions by the nurses and doctors.

    Night 7

    I was initially diagnosed with an ominous “growth in the liver” at the ER. Fortunately this ambiguity was resolved in a couple of days with an MRI, it was “just” a bacterial abscess in the liver.

    Morning 7

    I felt the full force of our health care technological complex, with ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, endoscopic ultrasound, and finally draining the abscess by an interventional radiologist, who used ultrasounds and x-rays to pinpoint and pierce the mass. And that doesn’t include all the other everyday hospital technologies that the nurses utilized throughout the week.

    Night 8

    Midway, I was transferred from a single room at the fifth floor to a double room in one of the oldest remaining wards. It was fun to explore this architectural relic. The air conditioning and roommate made it feel like riding an airplane.

    Morning 8

    Golden hour never fails. This new room had a streetside view of a residential subdivision. I wonder what it’s like to live in the shadow of the city’s major medical center. I guess you stop hearing the sirens.

    Afternoon 8

    As soon as the labs on my liver goop was completed, the doctors updated my prescription and sent me home that evening. My parents, who visited every day, came back to pick me up. I was happy to come home to the kids, but it was a sudden transition back into civilian life.

    ,

    Yeah, that was one long week. The fever started right after Labor Day, and a two days later I was in the ER digesting the news that there was a growth in my liver. Thankfully, an MRI clarified that it was “just” a golf ball sized bacterial abscess.

    As for cause. The official explanation is dumb luck—a stray bacteria snuck out of the gut and wreaked shop in the liver. Overworking might have made things worse, but other people work much harder and longer with minimal consequences. Then again I’m not other people.

    I’m on the mend, popping antibiotics, swimming in serious night sweats, and there’s still that a drain line…but I gladly take this over the specter of the C-word.

    As painful as it has been, this was a clarifying event in my mid-forties with some takeaways:

    1. My personal priority rank is Family > Health >>>> Work > Calligraphy > Reading >> Blogging >>>>>> YouTube (this last one is tough!).
    2. Due to various reasons, Work had snuck in front of Health. No more.
    3. Until I adopt a consistent health practice, I will not to pursue a promotion. I may even start going back to my old Tai Chi school, even if the kids continue to show no interest in martial arts.
    4. As much as I love my calligraphy as a meditative practice, it doesn’t pay bills and it doesn’t improve my health. I need to “pay myself first” in the morning with exercise and move the pen if I still have time. If I miss morning exercise before dropping the girl off at school, I might walk some laps around park near the office. My work is flexible and I’ll just start late.
    5. I didn’t regret anything up to this point. It would have been nice to take more trips abroad as a broke college student, but that’s an ancient regret, colored by the fact that I now have savings, which was not in my portfolio during the great recession.
    6. We’ll see how the bills line up, but if I read the documents correctly, the cost of the hospital stay may be laughably small for an American. If so, I might keep working to maintain this awesome county employee health insurance thru 65 (instead of 62 as allowed by the pension). Of course this is predicated on still enjoying the job.
    7. Moving forward, I’ll be both looser and tighter with money. I have a habit of buying books on the thought I’ll read them one day. When mortality strikes, buying “on spec” stinks of hubris. However, if I think I might enjoy something right now, I’m not gonna wait.
    8. Investment wise, no changes planned. My wife and I have always been conservative, and it was comforting to know that I wouldn’t need to make any tweaks to the portfolio, even with an extended career disruption.
    9. We have a slew of papers that need to be executed (advance directives, wills, homestead exemption). Once I’m well, those will be the top priority for our home economics. Second in priority is getting my wife fluid through the morass of retirement and investment accounts.

    Interestingly, I intuitively knew each bullet point (except #6) before this chaos in September. So nothing has changed, just the universe reminding me, emphatically, to get it done!

    Funny how things work, hopefully y’all not need such an incident to finish what you already know needs to be handled.

    .

  • another month of 52’s (five-pack ten+10 bits for a creative practice+self help junky)

    I’m now distant enough from these pieces they’ve become surprises to revisit. I should to accelerate the release of these five-packs, but things are about to crazy at work. If I fall further behind, that will let them age longer as old surprises to uncover.

    ,

    2/6 Inktober 52 (2024), week 19

    world
    floating
    in
    a
    jar

    I had a rough time with the composition, and I need to take a month to practice the sign painting script to hit right. Even so, I’m happy with this final version, even if it took a little computer magic to make it work.

    ,

    2/7 Inktober 52 (2022), week 9

    uhoh
    them
    mops
    gots
    buckets

    In retrospect, I the sign painted UH-OH would have worked better, but in the moment I pushed the cursive in the finished versions. I’m looking for a good pointed brush outside of my Pentel pens, but it will take a few tries to get right. That’s gonna be an expensive exercise since it requires buying individual brushes.

    ,

    1/25 Inktober 52 (2025), week 4

    aquarius
    poor
    ganymede
    mixing
    nectar

    I’ve been starting my mornings by practicing the my script of the month. Pushing the finished piece with the hue function gave it a nice watery feel, by changing the colors. My main practice inks are yellow and pink because they are quite dry (so they don’t heavily on cheap paper).

    BTW the original Aquarius myth is sad, if not traumatic. Them Greeks told things real. Same for the Bible, even if we normally gloss over those parts.

    ,

    2/1 Inktober 52 (2025), week 5

    we’re all in this zoo

    As always, there are so many little decisions that must be made after the overall concept. Again, the practice sheet came to the rescue, adding a little extra noise to give the composition presence.

    ,

    2/8 Inktober 52 (2025), week 6

    a light in the swamp

    The top two versions are tweaks of the same scan. All versions were done as black/grey ink on white paper and then inverted in GIMP. After that, it’s about how hard to push the dials.

    ,

    As much as I’d prefer to do it all perfectly on the page, the computer is an integral part of my process. These discussions about process are my penance for relying so much on the box.

    Similar to the writing seminar in undergrad, I suspect my most influential class in grad school was the digital photography course with Frank White. As an architectural photographer, he unapologetically embraced the computer as part of the process.

    Of course, the process is a lot harder if you don’t start with good inputs, but the final piece is the final piece. Excuses about what happened along the way don’t matter for the deliverable.

    That’s how I do it here. I’m not above the occasional process photo to flashthat I can do most of it in real life. I’m not hiding anything, whether it came from the pen or was pushed in the computer.

    It just is.

    Cya next time!

    ,

    PS—10 Bits For a Creative Practice

    I wrote this as a response to someone’s post in early 2024, but the records have been drowned in the endless feed of content. I liked this enough to save it as a draft and it’s finally time to reshare it.

    1. Show up every day.
    2. Jump in! FFS just start.
    3. Study the greats.
    4. Celebrate your peers.
    5. Don’t freak out about bad work.
    6. Tension is the trigger to breathe. Relax.
    7. If you can’t do it slow you can’t do it fast. No rush.
    8. Pivot freely.
    9. If the crop feels wrong, the crop IS wrong. (Trust your gut)—an aphorism I learned in that photography class.The concept of trusting default triggers has served me well over the decades for many things beyond images.
    10. Do it again tomorrow!

    .

    PPS—Self Help Junky

    Another response to someone else (exactly who lost in the endless feed).

    As a former self-help junky, I’m a big fan of the anti-self-help movement. Of course, a moderate approach is generally best in life, but if you could only pick path I’d recommend skipping self-help.

    But I’m moderating this reactionary stance after reading Kenny Werner’s Effortless Mastery.

    I wonder if the question for judging a book is “how” versus “what”. Don’t invest in books that tell you what to do (or avoid). But there might be value in books that explore how to get somewhere that you already want to reach.

    In that spirit, here is a quartet of self help books that might be of use:

    1. Fail-Safe Investing, Harry Browne (great life-finance advice, though do your own research on portfolio composition because the specifics are dated)
    2. So Great they Can’t Ignore You, Cal Newport (good compilation of career advice for someone entering the workforce)
    3. Several Short Sentences about Writing, Veryln Klinkenborg (this book goes beyond writing to life, even if a bastardized version of his advice has infected LinkedIn with punchy shallow drivel.)
    4. Effortless Mastery, Kenny Werner (a slow approach to practice, nominally about music but it applies to anything. It’s a distant second best to Tai Chi training at a good school.)

    All that said, the Bhagavad Gita would trump all of these books, even if it’s profane to place this text next to self-help fare. May the gods forgive me.

    But always be ready to ignore anything that you read in these books. Never confuse the author’s confidence in their advice for it’s applicability to your wild and wooly reality.

    .

    PPPS—Black to Yellow

    For giggles I took a brush pen with black in and put in a cartridge with Lamy Mango Yellow. The first sheet shows the transition from pure black (marked with the cyan slash on the second line) to yellow.

    1/24

    Interestingly, when I went back for more practice, there was still some more black that came out of the brush.

    1/24

    The next morning I made the “aquarius” 5WP (above), which had more black sneaking out (every other line was made with that black-mango ink, the other lines were made with the former mango pen, now filled with a pinkish ink).

    Funny how these things play. The joy of the real world!

    .

  • whump

    The kids placed the darbuka between a Poang chair and its ottoman. The threw an O-ball back and forth, bouncing it off of the drum head.

    That O-ball has been the best baby toy purchase that we’ve ever made.

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    I wrote this last year when we moved into our current home.

    Seventeen years ago I woke up in a 90 sf apartment overlooking an elementary school.

    Now we’re the proud owners of a 2,103 sf house. I can see the local elementary school between the neighbor’s houses.

    It wasn’t that long ago that I shared a toilet, halfway down a flight a stairs.

    Now there’s four of us. We share three toilets. Our kitchen sink is as wide as the whole damn kitchenette.

    It’s weird to wake up in this new reality. I’m not sure what to make of this change, except to be grateful.

    But dammit, I’ll always miss Paris.

    .

  • Twenty Twenty-Four, a year in Four parts

    Prompted by this marker on the solar cycle—a few thoughts on the past year and looking into this fresh, shiny, new year.

    Last year started hectic between moving into our new house and work piling up at my old job. That went from busy to crazy when the Administrator and Deputy Administrator were suddenly demoted adding a gray pall over the whole endeavor.

    Soon after, I was contacted by a former consultant engineer about an opening at the Airport. I initially demurred, because I wanted to finish my current projects. On the last day the position was open, she called me back to just apply already!

    Fine!

    I applied, using an iPad in a San Diego garage apartment before heading out to the Zoo (copy-pasting from my LinkedIn profile!)

    At my old job, the Spring during even-numbered years were always insane as we prepared for the upcoming State legislative session. Beyond normal duties, you’d be assigned a slew of projects to scope out and estimate.

    Now add going to an interview, negotiating salary, accepting the gig, waiting for background checks to clear, and ultimately giving notice.

    That was a long, fast three months.

    Over that season, I realized that my old job was no longer recognizable. The place had changed and I was lucky to have been pushed into a new position.

    Every new job comes with fresh jitters.

    Especially joining a unique place like an airport. It’s a high security mini-city transportation complex that’s carefully regulated by the federal government. Plus learning the different politics of being part of a new agency.

    I shouldn’t have worried. Each of my colleagues went through their own shock whenever of joining the airport and were all happy to help.

    And it was nice to be spare working crazy hours…and not having to think about work when I wasn’t at the office. This freed me to cement my daily practices.

    Before I left the old gig, I had started posting a daily “Vegas Ordinary” photograph to maintain a minimal semblance of creative sanity. With the extra breathing room at the new job, I turned it into a wider tracking exercise—clearing out blog drafts, diet, physical exercise, and music practice . In August, I pivoted from photography towards calligraphy.

    This endeavor was supercharged when we bought a printer-scanner and I pulled out an old light box. I was now composing on sheets, not just scribbles in notebook!

    This new obsession survived it’s first big interruption—a week in September with COVID. I was still graphing at the end of that lovely time off, which made me confident enough to step into two months of daily insanity.

    At first it was “just” Inktober. I planned on just doing a simple 5 Word Piece every morning. Nice and easy, but composition (and yeah a little competition) consumed the month.

    Inktober lead into Callivember and sixty-one days had suddenly disappeared. I’d unknowingly signed up for an unpaid part-time internship. At least I progressed quite a bit by pushing my limits every day.

    But no time for rest. By the end of November it was time to get into the holiday spirit, make cards, wrap presents, and boom we’re now in tax season!

    So what to make of this new year?

    I’m not serious about goals but I am fond of noting a yearly theme. The exercise helps me reflect on the past year and nudge my attention for the new trip around the sun.

    At first, I toyed with the idea of a mass purge. Refinement. Crucible. Burn the dross. Much too aggressive.

    Let’s go with a much gentler vibe of “letting go”. Admittedly I started 2024 hoping to work through this slew of old blog posts and unfinished digital projects. This time I’ll take a chill approach to clearing them out.

    I don’t plan on changing jobs this year. So hopefully I’ll make a legit dent this time! Or maybe, I’ll end ’25 with the realization that I need to let go of that urge to clean out this digital house.

    We’ll find out in 365 days. Hope you’ll hang around for the fun!

    .

  • On elections and making art

    Bad result, go make art!

    I get why this statement is so obnoxious. Shit happens and just advise folks to move on? Is this the content creator’s version of hustle culture? How do you say #privilege with anything more trite?

    Let me try to defend the sentiment with three tangents.

    1. What else should we do? Making art is unequivocally better than doom-scrolling (or gloat-trolling). This world hasn’t actually changed today—a guy just won a four-year lease on a building at the edge of a continent. You’re not that dude. If you should’ve been making art on Monday then you should make art on Wednesday too.
    2. In a world of competing truths, I hope you believe there is something special with your truth. Make art that lives in this truth and let us partake through your art.
    3. Most importantly, making art shifts your world. It might not be a direct path to enlightenment like reading Spinoza, but if you aren’t meditating under a waterfall, then mashing marks on paper is a fine way to exploring the truth.

    By all means, be human. Feel the dread (or elation). Curse the gods. Then hug the kids and guinea pig. Shit, shower, and shave. And get to work. We need you to make it.

    ,

    11/8—Inktober 52, week 45

    polar
    spinning
    round
    and
    round

    .

  • 2023 Retrospective & 2024 Prospective

    I’m trying a new format where I just comment on things with three bullet points. Hopefully it will help me blow through the backlog of old blog drafts. Thought I’d try it out by looking at the year in review and the year to come.

    But you must read Andrei Atanasov’s No. 26 – Dancing In A Supermarket first! I don’t care if you make it back.

    ,
     

    2023

    My theme this year was “catching up”. I feel like I did just OK with the theme, but the more that I think about it, it was an eventful year as we started re-integrated back into society despite our pandemic caution.

    Highlights

    • Buying a House
    • Visiting San Diego (twice!)
    • Two great architects joined the Division

    Hobbies

    • Reading — Homer and Tarot
    • Substack — finding fellow wanderers on Notes
    • Fountain Pens — Sketching and Calligraphy

    Lowlights

    • Getting the house ready for move-in, renovations are still miserable.
    • Didn’t exercise nor eat well enough, gained weight.
    • Distractions, unfocused focused, especially the second half of this year.

    ,
     

    a year
    a life
    goodbye
    tomorrow
    smiles and
    sorrow
    hello

    When calligraphing, I have to be completely focused. This morning I chose John Coltrane’s Giant Steps instead of the usual Chicken and Dumplin’s by Bobby Timmons. That slight change was enough to add an extra O to the page. Fortunately, the early mistake kept me ultra-concentrated for the rest of the exercise.

    It’s been twenty years since hand drafting at the ground floor of Ron Bogley’s house. Small residential doesn’t pay well, but it was the most fun I’ve had as an architect. Graphite on vellum is a lot more forgiving so I would listen to the baseball games as I lettered.

    ,

    2024

    My theme for next year is “settling in”. For the new house and everywhere else. The first half of the year will be a mess between the house and the biennial cycle for my government job. Hopefully the second half will be a time of customizing the home to fit our needs, it’s been a decade of always thinking we’re moving soon.

    Settling In

    • At the new House
    • Returning to the Office (again)
    • Digital Places and Processes

    Practices

    • Sketching and Calligraphy
    • Exercising
    • Reading my repeating “little library” and pushing forward on the classics

    Tiny Targets (and goals)

    • Three deep breaths on a yoga mat every morning. (I’d love to do the 8 Brocades three times a week, but I’ll start tiny.)
    • Sit down and say a small mantra before eating anything, including snacks. (The big goal is to lose a couple of pounds a month, but the numerical goal failed spectacularly last year. Maybe instilling a mindfulness practice is the first step in the process.)
    • Do something with a pen every morning (It would be nice to finish my OPM Letters and clear out my pile of read books to be blogged.)

    ,
     

    new book
    new year
    new month
    new week
    new day
    Foundational Hand
    new font 

    I wrote this on 12/26 with a new-to-me font from The Art of Calligraphy by David Harris. I messed up the word order on the last line (working from bottom up) and kept it for the rest of the poem. But it sounds wrong so I went back to the original wording in the light blue scribbles.

    I’m not sure if I will stick with Foundational Hand for a long period (as I did with Uncial) but I’ll give it at least a week before exploring other fonts.

    This morning habit of writing a tiny poem for calligraphy practice has a highlight of this season to close out the year. Thanks to Beth Kempton and Nadia Gerassimenko for catalyzing the #tinypoem project! I just got Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook — hopefully her wisdom will help me write gooder before I start publishing them in earnest.

    On to another 366 days of discovery in 2024!

    !

  • Merry Christmas!

    Woke up early.

    Checked my phone. Post a comment on a blog.

    Realize it’s Christmas!

    Wrote a tiny poem.
     

    I don’t
    believe
    in Baby
    Jesus
    no more
    so I
    Christmas
    all the
    Harder

    I grew up conservative Christian. And Asian-American. My parents left Hong Kong and Taiwan and met here in the States. With the clarity of immigrants, they sensed that Christmas was a frivolous, secular holiday.

    When my sister and I were teens, they gave in. We started exchanging small gifts. My mom added small decorations around to the house but never bothered with a tree.

    We still drove down to LA from the Bay Area on Christmas because traffic was lighter. We’d eat at my grandparent’s favorite dim sum place in Monterey Park. (My aunt suspected that they liked that spot because the tea was brewed extra strong.)

    We didn’t buck the holiday, but we never gave it religious significance. For a real Christian, every day is Christmas and Easter. Picking out holy-days still feels kind of pagan.

    I drifted away when I grew up. It didn’t do much for me emotionally, and I finally bailed when George W. Bush co-opted the religious establishment to support his optional war. Even so, I always planned on taking my kids to church on Christmas, so they could feel the religious origins of this season.

    That notion died with the election of the Trump. My wife (never religious) was so disgusted with white evangelicals that she didn’t want our kids anywhere near such cruel hypocrites nor be tempted by the pomp and circumstance of their celebration.

    Instead, every year I put up a plastic tree from Ikea on Thanksgiving, buy a few toys, wrap the last six months of library book sale finds in old architectural printouts, watch a Christmas movie, and clean everything up on New Year’s Day.

    Last year ago, I told my daughter the myth of Jesus. It blew her mind. I might as well have grown a third head (or narrated the nsfw story of Lot and his daughters).

    An all-powerful deity came down to this filthy planet to be born in horse shit, grow up as a carpenter, start a small cult as a wandering sage, only to be executed in excruciating fashion. All to pay the blood penalty for the evil committed by his own shithead creatures.

    So here I am, suddenly marveling at the magic of Christmas. Say what you will about the religion, that’s an awesome story.

  • Imperfections and All

    I quit drawing twenty years ago because of the anxiety about the fidelity between the image and reality.

    I would feel a panic attack in my throat when the image went off script and I knew I wasn’t going to spend the hours to make it perfect.

    A few years ago I had accepted the hard fact that I would never draw again, like I will never take the time become literate in Chinese.

    Last November, I started sketching again because I wanted to see more drawings on Post and Tara Trudel encouraged us to share our work.

    It became a drawing habit by quietly following the 30 day challenge on Wendy MacNaughton’s Substack.

    Now I’m drawing cause I enjoy it.

    I know I’ve hit the flow when a deep breath exhales from my lungs. These 10 minute hand sketches have become a daily meditation.

    They’re not perfect. They’re not even great (look at the all amazing hands on Pinterest!) But they’re mine and I’m an indulgent judge when I’m not worried about what other people might think.

    Like my kids, I’ve learned to proudly marvel at the stuff that comes from my own hand. Imperfections and all.

    2023