2023 Week 33: I Made a Zine

The quote is:

diary writing is the death of fiction - all that trying to remember.

This week...

Mon: stay home day - writing, making Pets Hideout website

Tue: cycled to AMK for lunch and Daiso. then writing and yoga at home

Wed: 11-8 work

Thu: rock cactus painting class

Fri: 11-8 work

Sat: hang out with parents, eat durians

Sun: make zine, writing 

My copy of Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? arrived in the mail and wasted no time in abusing it (reading it cover to cover, cracking the spine as I read). 

... I thought about buying this book for a really long time. I have an issue with simply and sparsely written books like this - they just don't feel very value-for-money. Haha. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? is not your typical pop psychology book, where the main idea could've been an email, but it gets stretched to 500 pages thanks to anecdotes and studies and other filler. It's certainly no Infinite Jest.

But its very basic-ness gives you - the reader - the space you need to process your own experiences. Just like therapy really. Thank you, Dr Julie Smith, for exercising restraint! I've learnt so much just from a quick skim. True to the book's title, a lot of it is of the super-obvious, "d'oh! How did I not know this!?" variety.

After reading this book I have been practising meta-cognition - a fancy word for noticing your thoughts (and emotions and sensations and behaviours). This led to me being able to think about my life from a third person perspective. 

I realised that I've been undergoing some work-related changes in my life without really allowing myself to process things. The changes also seem to have unearthed some remnant damage from being made redundant, all those years (4) ago! Maybe that's why I've been feeling blue lately. I am now trying to be kinder to myself - but at the same time I also want some challenges in order to repair my self-confidence.

I acquired some really fantastic things for free this week. First there's the set of 24 watercolour pencils, which I planned to buy from a Carouseller at $2, but they ended up trading it for one of my books. I'd forgotten how much I love trades! Swapping was totally a thing back in the Y2K LiveJournal era but it's somehow died out.

Then an office chair (with bonus cushion) that I wheeled over from a nearby block, courtesy of someone on Olio. I've never used an ergonomic office chair in my life, can you believe it? It is sooo comfy, I love it.

Finally, a copy of Lin Yutang's The Importance of Living, from the community bookshelf. I'm super pleased because this book has been on my to-buy stack at the bookstore for ages.

What else? 

I am trying to exercise the faculty of attention by focusing my mind's eye on things that please me. Desire paths, unexpected beauty, adorable frogs.

And I have been looking at and drawing little old ladies.

I am feeling bright and hopeful about the coming weeks.