The first posting of my traveling artist journal. I’ve not really done the blog thing before, so this will be largely experimental. I may also stop whenever I please with zero guilt. Planning to write about places after I leave them….so first up: San Francisco. For anyone who isn’t aware:
2 weeks before I left I needed to do the following:
Write the going away letter above, Pay a disgusting amount to break my lease, Give notice at work, Complete 3 animation packages, Do knowledge shares with my team, Organize and back up my work files, Organize and back up personal files, Transfer personal files to my travel laptop, find storage, find movers, buy some boxes, figure out where my mail would go, do a change of address, find health insurance, find travel insurance, figure out where I was going first, get a plane or train ticket, cancel my utilities, return my router, pack up all my belongings, pack for long-term travel, clean my apt, do laundry, put away laundry, move out of my apt into storage, find a cheap place to stay in SF for the 2 days after my lease ended yet before I planned to leave the city, organize my storage unit, do a series of goodbye hangouts, organize my own 2 day going away party with about 20 competitive events in three locations (THE BRUTUS CUP PART II), and most unexpectedly was interviewed to go to Space as a “Space For Humanity Citizen Astronaut Program Alternate or Finalist” (yes, you read that correctly, no I’m not allowed to say anything else about it one way or the other).
Because I clearly didn’t have enough to do I decided to add 2 frivolous task to the mix that I could procrastinate with. First Moving all my 2900+ Pokemon from 15 years and old 6 games to Nintendo’s online storage. (For anyone who doesn’t know (most of you)this is crazy hard. You have to use like 2 old handheld systems, update all the software on each manually, move them from one game to the next; and with some old games move them 6 at a time then recatch them). I pretended I needed to do this because Nintendo would be retiring their old storage system while I was away and I could lose all my hard earned Pokemon.
Second I NEEDED to learn one more song on upright bass before putting my favorite distraction into storage for an unknown amount of time. Seemed somewhat fitting to start this sabbatical with a skill I picked up during my last one. The Upright bass. Stephane Wremble’s “Big Brother” has been one of my favorites since watching Vicki Christina Barcelona. Didn’t quite have time to figure out much more than the roots /5ths of the chords and test out an octave change. So I took a break from packing to record this. Its riddled with mistakes. My last week in SF I was late to a bday gathering by about an hour. Recording this video is why if you’re reading this. Haha (Update) in my time away I decided to do a self portrait(#226 and 227) based on this. Been working on it on and off over the past couple weeks. Only the base sketch is done.
Regarding the packing, I don’t have a ton of stuff and often can pack and unpack in 2 days tops. Packing to move and packing to travel for 6 months+ through differing climates simultaneously is a very different challenge though. Fact of the matter is I have too many hobbies, needing a Yoga Mat, Rollerblades computer and minimal art supplies for upcoming Art Residencies made packing more strategic. Below are the packing Before and Afters. Eliminated about 30% of the stuff from my travel luggage. Honestly still trying to figure out what to I can get rid of 2 weeks into The Grand Adventure.
Anywho all the task got completed. While the whole thing was incredibly stressful I love the way my brain functions in situations like this.
The Brutus Cup was a blast too. I love seeing people from so many aspects of my life come together. I use to be pretty afraid of combining friend groups. What if they hate each other? What if they actually realize they’re clearly too cool to be hanging out with me? Now I realize this is how you build community. It’s a thing of beauty. Below are the official competitions and some key moments. Apparently I’m a monster at Tug of war. Most of my wins weren’t even recorded.
Again thank you to everyone that was able to make time skate together, meet up, come to the Brutus Cup, and help with assorted last min task. It’s been interesting to compare how I felt leaving Arkansas, to Florida to California. All those thoughts I’ll have to keep to myself though.
As I have about 3 months do to as I please as slowly as I want I’m about to hop on a train heading east… By “about to” I mean like a month ago, but let’s pretend I didn’t need to process anything (or draw that illustration and gather this all media) and wrote this immediately. Adios!
