... # g ts n

When we started this journal
(it's still a journal to us)

we didn't think
any of this

was still ahead of us.

Today,
May 17,
we're not sure any of this
[???] [W7]

is still ahead of us.

All we're sure
is that
we're here now.

It's still enough.

The text is literally about the book itself, of course. I think I got the idea when we opened it to exactly the next blank page, first try, then realized it was probably the two exact center pages... We flipped WondLa open in its center yesterday too, and that book has a full-spread, no text drawing, there. So book midpoints were in mind.

I laughed at myself when I realized we were calling it a “journal” in our head. It’s not really a journal... but when we started this book, it actually was. Here are the first few pages:
2025-01-14c
2025-01-14d
2025-01-15a
(We’ve continued to use it in ways that are like a journal for us. We tried to set a... “let drawings be complete when we want them to be” standard, like it’s just fine to leave something as a loose sketch only. As we have, those are often - like this drawing - the ones where we write some accompanying text. Another example below. I... *squint* I guess from only a few days after the first ones, huh. Weird year.)
2025-01-19

Metaphorically, it’s the same message, just broader.

We’re so unsure what ever comes next. There’s no way to cope with that uncertainty, or to accept it - it’s just something that is true. A lot of things you can feel about it (excitement and fear, hope and defeat, wonder and apathy...) — but no feeling changes the truth, that you won’t know til you get there.

However... whether or not you “get used to it”, it really is how you live. It’s how you’ve always lived. Everything you do is done in a moment of not knowing what’s next.

Our journal is a record of that.

Every time a new drawing joins that record... I mean, that’s all, right? You can’t really linger on it any more than you can read the future. You’ve got the page turned, already. It’s blank.

Still there’s a comfort in it. Here’s everything we have done—only then, it’s still just some of it. The rest we’ll find out, but it won’t be unique any more or less than everything before has been. We’ll put it in this journal too—only then, still just some of it.

Today all we’ll do is be.

I guess there’s just a lot to take in how, you know, our book is ours? This drawing is one of me and Tangle and I mean, of course it is. (This is not an intentional reference to 2025-01-21b, but my life is not an intentional reference to 2025-01-21b!) The ‘???’ and ‘W7’ on the forwards arrow, the little swoop versus the neat right angle on the other side—that’s all playful on purpose, right? It’s a big LOL because we really don’t know what’s going on the other side of this page. It’s whimsical because there’s a beauty in it, right, and isn’t that fun? Isn’t it worth laughing about together, while we just live in the here and now?

<3 thanks for sharing...I had a feeling it was a life metaphor in addition to just talking about the book itself, but I really do appreciate hearing your complete take on it too (although I'm curious what drove the "W7" specifically hehe)

also, the drawing itself is very cozy looking and i like that a lot :)

<3 Thank you, thanks. /heart
W7 = lemme check
Guess it was bsky DM, ah well haha

ahhh nods nods
wasnt sure if it was -- i think you mentioned playin it at some point -- New Super Mario

yeah, exactly. <3 Yep

hehehe <3

lanolin, signal