(no subject)

This week the Artist Way tasked me with "not reading for one week" or "reading deprivation" - which is impossible. I read for a living. My job requires some level of reading.

Instead, I decided to stop watching the morning news, and avoid reading the NY Times as much as possible. I don't know if that is helping or not.

I don't about anyone else - but I feel like I'm in a world where other people's opinions are constantly being flung at me. I've decided to start setting up filters to remain sane. I was a quarter of the way through an article about a novelist whose book was selected as the 100th novel for Oprah's Book Club, when I decided, I'm better off not knowing any of this. And I was a quarter of the way through an review on the book - raving about it - in the NY Times, when I decided, eh, not for me, moving on.

The choice to stop, when something isn't to my taste or isn't working for me right now - is not a new decision. But it is a necessary one. I'm no longer a student, or in a book club, or trying to impress, it is not my job to finish something I'm ostensibly reading for pleasure. If the spirit moves me to stop. I stop. It's oddly freeing to do so. To just stop and go one to something else. I did that with White Lotus and The Last of Us, two popular television shows, that had positive audience and critical ratings and were universally adored - and been rec'd by various people. Neither were to my taste. So I just stopped watching.

Just because other people like it? Doesn't mean I will. And I guess this is me flinging my opinions out into the world for no particular reason whatsoever.

Also, for some reason or other, if a popular nation wide book club selects something - I'm unlikely to find it enjoyable. I don't know why this is? I've seldom liked Oprah's choices when she selected them. I liked Beloved, but I read it in college long before I ever heard of Oprah.

And..I may be among the few people on the planet who never felt a need to read Louisa May Alcott's Little Women.

***

I've drawn three new pictures to paint of people that I see on the subway. I should probably have chosen to do this during comic con or Halloween, when folks wear costumes on the subway.

But it would have been harder. So there's that.

***

Crazy Workplace.

So we were talking about breasts or clothes at work? No it was blouses, I remember now.
( Apparently Busty is out of fashion now? )

The other day, after lunch, Chidi turned and said an indecipherable phrase at me and laughed my response, which was basically WTF?
( Won't He Do it )