My Approach to Anxiety about US Elections

This election season in the United States is complex, hard to navigate, and not easy to live through. Not the first hard election season but probably the scariest so far for me up to now.

I believe that the very idea of democracy surviving in this country is at stake. Autocratic propaganda keeps lying that single votes do not count yet the margins will be slim and every little step in the right direction is a step to keep democracy going. There are many levels on which democracy exists and I think it is important to participate in the democratic process of governance on all the levels that are available for us.

So here are things that are helping me:

1. I do not look at social media as a source of the news. I found several sources for aggregated news from writers that I find balanced and who do a lot of research (I receive one email a day).
2. My other source is www.allsides.com - offers many ways to check sources as much less a sensational source of information.
3. I made sure that I have a local news source - even if you live in a tiny town or if have someone you care about who lives in a small community having that different scale of the news in your input helps to have a different perspective on things.
4. I limit my news consumption in general and try to have a good variety of reading materials ready everywhere. Timer is my friend. 
5. I made sure that I kept tabs on many issues that I care about throughout the whole country, different states, my county, and city - spreading my attention over many important things instead of sinking it all into the results of the presidential race (however important it is).
6. I continue writing letters and donating what resources I have - till the very end. Encouraging people to go vote, make sure that their voice is heard. Sending messages asking people to open their eyes and choose a future in which they are heard and are part of decision-making. I make every card and letter personal. And I enclose my owl "vote" sticker inside :) 
7. And I try to connect to people I know personally - send them a letter, or card or text or place a call - with an unseasonal hello, some news, and a reminder to vote too.
8. I made plans for the election day and days before and after: keeping busy helping people in the community, drawing, and being with people I care about, friends, and connecting to nature. It will be there long after we forget this all.
9. And I voted!

I wish you peace and strength. If you are an American - please vote. For your future, for the future of democracy in this country and in the world.

End of the year thoughts.

I haven's posted in a while and I haven't uploaded everything I sketched this year. By this time (end of December) I am usually all caught up with scanning/posting and writing (however few words I add to my images). But not this year - and there is a reason for that.

On the outside certain changes in the platforms and online communities that I use made me aware that I need to adjust a lot of things at once and to took some time to figure out. I am not sure if I have the right system now but I am trying something different and will keep tweaking it until it feels like a sustainable practice.

On the inside, I've been asking myself why do I keep this blog and how to make it more relevant to the current work and not feel like I am always catching up. This stems from the fact that if last year I had over 700 sketches it is closer to  850 this year and this number does not include all the special projects I did - from "One week 100 people" to "Direct watercolor challenge" which I did in gouache and set myself a rule to make one painting each day of June with 20 brush strokes or less. I also started sketching as a part of my project-based learning of the Spanish Language and did a whole Inktober with it. I did over 100 gouache paintings of the Silicon Valley and made a poster with them. I taught several group and private workshops. I filled two sketchbooks underwater (while scuba diving on Bonnaire) and participated in the Sketching Work Design Online Exhibition. Made a set of Greeting Cards, went out to sketch with friends and made a bunch of new sketching friends. Changed some not very visible but important things on my website and quite a few visible things too. I also changed my relationship with iPad from artificial and strained to useful and even joyful sometimes. And the list goes on and overlaps with some of the graphic design jobs I did as I hope it will more and more.

The point is I used to try and post EVERYTHING. And slowly but surely I got bored and fell so much behind that it does not make any sense to catch up. So I tried to re-think the whole thing - from why I keep this blog to how to be responsible with the time and attention of others and myself. And something that Roz Stendahl said in her post really helped me to coin the answer for why I keep blogging: "I am writing letters to friends who may or may not be interested in sketching or art materials, but are happy to know what I’m up to, and happy to know I’m occupied—because that keeps me out of real trouble!"

I will continue uploading photos of my process on instagram, will use Flickr as organized storage of all scanned work - you can browse it by subject, sketchbook number, travel destination or project. And I will follow my friend's Suhita's advice and will be picking up patterns from all of this and sharing them as blog posts which I will then point to on social media.

Let's see how long till I succumb to the lure of just dumping a bunch of images on facebook :)