This week: the end of parental-leave, bike stuff, tattoo-flash, painting.

I’m returning to work tomorrow; this is my last week of parental leave. I’m feeling very grateful to have gotten 8 weeks off. I think the transition will be challenging for us, but we will adapt.

This week I got out for an evening ride / errand-hang. I picked up a Wald 157 basket off marketplace to attach to my Clydesdale fork. It’s a massive basket. The seller cited that it was too big for their wife whom they had bought it for. I got it for $60, regularly $120 + taxes new, so I was pretty stoked about that. Since getting the clydesdale, I’ve been rocking a standard milk crate on the front fork, but this basket is wider and longer. I biked to the east end with my friend Chad, bought the bakset, zip-tied the thing to my crate, and then went to check out the new Portlands park in the east-end of Toronto and get some ice cream. It was nice to have an evening out riding my bike after weeks of staying in parenting. The new Portlands park is gorgeous, too.

Yesterday, I put the basket to the test and loaded it up with 3 12-packs of sparkling water and some groceries. It was slow handling but it worked really well. I’m seeing that cycletrucks/short-johns definitely have place in my bike shed — they fill the gap of being both a commuter and hauling medium-sized cargo when getting out a full-sized cargo bike is not necessary.

I’ve been trying my hand at drawing traditional tattoo flash. I watched a few videos to understand how artists approach doing fades, linework, and what materials they use. Other than maybe acquiring a speedball b-5 nib, I’ve got pretty much everything I need: abundant watercolours, acrylic ink, india ink, and lots of paper. Most of my sketchbooks go neglected right now; I only have time to draw one thing a day, and that goes directly into the hobonichi journal where I also write up the day.

I started up an abstract painting at the beginning of the week. With painting, I usually have a mental block in preparing materials and your palette that can be a bit hard to get over—it really doesn’t take long, but I find it hard to get over that. Once I do, however, it’s bliss.I’m not sure what it’ll be, but I’m enjoying just playing with colour and brush strokes.

It seems the only markers of time passing right now are my nails growing and my repeating todo tasks telling me that another week has passed. Didn’t I just clip my nails? Didn’t I just balance my budget? The heatwave has returned and so it feels like we are in a cycle.

My latest fascination in stationary are isograph pens and glass dip pens. I’m wanting to start mixing my own inks using acrylic ink and need to find an appropriate non-fountain pen means for dispatching ink that also won’t get clogged up.

It was a week of good records in 1001 albums land. I’ve recently really enjoyed To Pimp a Butterfly (never listened to it before!), Red Headed Stranger, You want it Darker AND The last broadcast. Outside of the daily albums, I’ve been enjoying the latest release by Wayfarer.

Other notes:

• Went on our first family road trip
• I continue to wake up in the middle of the night delirious, semi-freaking out about where my child is
• Still running, but less frequently due to the heat.

The heatwave finally broke and things have cooled off here. Running has gotten much more pleasant, and I’ve been able to get out on the pavement and get more runs in.

I finished reading Akira—I’ve gone through all six volumes in the last 3 weeks. I still can’t get over the incredible detail in the background design, especially the panels with drawings of buildings.

Lately, I'm thinking about time management and prioritizing things. I was thinking a lot about this before we had a kid too. For the month of August, I'm trying something new: I pick one main project and one secondary project to advance for the month (and I'll try not to start new things or get distracted from these two.

I've been playing around with using Bear as my notes app instead of Obsidian, despite it's subscription fee (I'm happy to pay a small fee monthly for good software, right now). I like having an iOS/mac native app with out of the box syncing, widgets, and a simple, effective UI/UX. I think I'll give it another month or two trial. Having my notes in two separate places isn't the plan; I'm more using Bear for things like blog posts and project notes, whereas Obsidian is more of a comprehensive personal wiki + day-log.

Other notes:

• Sleep deprivation is the new norm
• I got a lesson in sharpening knives from my pal Frank
• Squirrels have chewed through our ceiling; they haunt me at night.

Another week of finding our footing as new parents. A few friends have asked what that’s like, but I can’t really describe it. There is a lot to do, and that is good in itself, as I don’t think my mind could process this big of a change if I had idle hands. Does that make sense? I slept three hours last night. There is love, joy, challenges, and sleep deprivation.

We did something called a Meal Train so that our friends and family could support us. So many people signed up to bring us meals. It really made us feel loved and supported.

With my limited time, I’ve taken refuge in paper journalling. At the end of the day, I write up what happened and try to squeeze in a drawing. Lately I’ve been drawn to traditional american style tattoo flash and have been practicing drawing them.

Projects

• Slowly chipping away at a video for my bike youtube channel.
• I bought Affinity’s universal licence and have been playing with doing some book design. It’s very satisfying. I’ll make a photo book for a recent trip to Ireland and have started working on one for our baby’s first year.

Media

• I joined a listening group for "1001 albums you have to hear before you die". Lots of fun, and having something I can consume in a controlled / intentful way during newborn days is nice. It pushes you to listen to an album a day.
• Been listening to non-fiction podcasts and audiobooks about space.
• I finally watched "The Rehearsal" with my partner and it’s great.
• I’m re-reading all of Akira, and am about half way done it. I’m constantly in awe of the attention to detail, pacing, and the story as a whole.
• Been playing a new game called "Peak" with a friend, which is a good low-stakes game you can chat and catch up over.