Chapter 33

It's day one of a new year and a new chapter in the story of our lives. Since I'm turning 33 in June, I've decided to call this Chapter 33.

So, 2016. All things considered—and despite the untimely deaths of Bowie, Prince and Professor Snape, among others—it was packed with good surprises:

• Generation Creation got published (and I do hope you'll read it, and like it)
• Hurrah got offices, five employees and closed the year off with 3 awesome long-term clients
• I appeared in my first panel in French!
• I made my own soap
• I KonMari'd and it totally changed my life
• I learned to knit, and closed out the year with a big-ass blanket
• I went to concerts!
• I traveled—a lot. Not far, but I discovered new places

And the traveling and the friending and the magic looks like it'll continue into the new year. January is already packed with new work, trips and visits.

This is chapter 33 of my life. If I'm lucky, I get around 85 of these. You can't waste a whole chapter, or multiple chapters, on things or people you don't like when you could be doing otherwise. There just aren't enough of them.

So let's raise our glasses to the next chapter. The pages are virgin and resplendent in white. We can pick how we mark them. I want to assume that choice every day, even if there's failure and sadness. It's all building to something that I hope will be beautiful, and there's no beauty without strain or real stakes.

Now: off to write a "thankfulness" email to an old new friend in response to her "thankfulness" text, in part because I know she hates email.

Today in Things I Thought Would Make Me Happy

• Baggy pants
• An N26 account
• Label maker
• Label maker with thermal ink
• Label maker with thermal ink that can also print on cloth, nylon or plastic
• Label maker with thermal ink that can also print on cloth, nylon or plastic and that saves addresses
• Label maker with all of the above that doesn't require 6 AAA batteries
• A hand calculator
• A solar hand calculator
• A yellow solar hand calculator
• A solar hand graphing calculator ... just in case?
• A Rolodex
• A battery charger 
• A vertical mouse "for better ergonomics"

I acted on too many of these impulses. On the cheery up, now I have labels.

We had a bad day. What's next?

My take on what happened today.

A Potentially Incomplete List of Things I Keep Lists Of

1. Tasks, organised by type (freelance, personal life, money owed, money loaned, etc. Long-term projects get their own special separate lists)
2. Shopping list
3. Things to pack for a given trip
4. Talking points for given events... or just to have a handle on what I want to say if I have my hand raised
5. Things I'd like to watch, and who referred them
6. Things I might read, and who referred them
7. Books I've read—the longest list running in terms of seniority. I think it's about six years old?
8. Shows I'm currently watching and have completed, plus notes on who referred them and how I generally feel about them
9. Articles or stories I'd like to write
10. Articles or stories written on a given day, and the word count (20.000 words at MIP alone!)
11. People I hang out with (full name, current job title, date, location, what we discussed, photo)
12. Things I may like to buy—a list I often forget about, but that's by design. When I open the list again, sometimes years later, I buy the thing if I still want it and the timing is right. Or I delete it, because it's otherwise taking up room on the list
13. Potentially cool book ideas
14. Potentially cool business ideas
15. Patterns I'd like to knit—possibly my youngest list
16. Things to be grateful for—not often updated, but generally updated in times of duress. It's a good exercise
17. People to buy presents for, and/or presents to buy people, and why 

I think that's everything, but I can't really be sure. Written out like this, it seems a bit manic. But the funny thing about lists is that they become religions, planets around which I orbit, gravitational anchors to keep from spinning into chaos.

It's possible that I do this because, like marketing people frenetically counting Likes, it's an easy way to mark progress. And maybe at some point, these small demarcations of a life will yield a deeper thing I'm trying to keep track of but can't quite put a finger on. 

That's about all I have to say about lists.

Inklust #21: Fake Eyelashes + Alligator Tears

Decorous weeping was another of those arts I never mastered, like putting on false eyelashes.

—Lady Oracle, Margaret Atwood

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What is "Inklust"? Boy am I glad you asked. Here's the manifesto: part I and part II.

Thinking About Ms. R

The ad above was made by RPA to advertise the Honda Accord, with help from the imagination of a four-year-old named Ethan, who transforms the Honda into a rocket to save a princess from a dragon.

The first feminist treatise I ever heard was when my fourth-grade teacher started ranting at us about how maybe the Mushroom Princess in "Super Mario" doesn't want to be saved. I can't remember what brought this on. In my recollection, we all stared wide-eyed while she spat and sputtered about the lame fictional heroics of our favourite Italian plumbers. A girl sitting next to me leaned into my ear and whispered, "I don't think she knows about Bowser."

I am probably a little older now than my teacher was then, and I get what she was trying to convey. The message would perhaps have had the chance to stick if she didn't do other weird things, like try teaching us about mass and density with an example about when she can, and cannot, fit into her boyfriend's pants.

Too soon, Ms. R, too soon.

Anyway, all this is to say that very little has changed, apart from that more little girls are perhaps more willing to say "I don't want to be a princess" and "I don't need to be saved." But there are still little boys who want to save princesses from dragons, and there are still advertising agencies who still imagine the default princess as a curly-haired blonde in a pink prom dress.

Great job, everybody, great job.