JANUARY 2015: in review

January was both busy and not at all busy – I don't quite know how to describe it. Front-loaded, maybe. I raced into the month headlong and while I think that went well it also made me very, very tired by the time the 20th rolled around. Which was, of course, when I started classes again.

In the first week of the month I made some resolutions and went full vegan. While I haven't been exactly…… fantastic with keeping up with the specifics of my resolutions, I think I have been honoring them. No, I'm not drawing every day like I wanted to but I am making art every week. I haven't spent nearly enough time with family but I'm okay with that, I'm working on it. I think that's really the goal of resolutions, not to start with immediately meeting all of them from the get-go, but working for them, striving for them. I'd rather end the year meeting all my resolutions than start by doing all of them and tapering off over the course of the year.

I have done one resolution pretty successfully: reading. I've been reading a ton of books lately, mostly thanks to time off school and really generous gifts. So far I've read The Secret History which MESSED ME UP (I think that's kind of the point though). I'd been reading it since August of 2014 but had been struggling with the first hundred pages. I think I just had to be in the right mindset to read it. I've also read all of the published books in The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater after they had been recommend to me by several friends. There are currently three books in the series: The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, and Blue Lily, Lily Blue. They definitely fall under what I (lovingly) call "trashy YA" but they are SO GOOD. The characters are compelling and interesting – and there are even queer characters. So basically it was destined to be a favorite.

I'm currently nearly done with Wild (which I picked up after seeing the film – it was incredible) and am trudging my way through Homer for work. It's not a favorite of mine by any means but oh well.

I've also read some comics (because there will probably never be a time in my life when I'm not reading at least one run of comics). For Christmas Sam gave me two Captain America titles: Man Out of Time and The Winter Soldier. I definitely preferred Man Out of Time of the two, but I'm obsessed with the The Winter Soldier run because, you know, Bucky Barnes. I was also given the first volume of Saga – I know, I know I am sooooooo late to that party – and it was amazing, stunning, and wonderful. And of course, I'm reading The Wicked + Divine as it runs (as well as several others – Ody-c, Sex Criminals and Angela of Asgard are the most noteworthy).

And now to wrap up the post…

When I was a kid, I was really into photography but never had the guts to stick it out and deal with sucking at it before I got good at it. When I got an iPhone in 2013, I started getting back into it just because I always have my phone on me. What started with getting in a couple pictures at concerts has since grown into a bit of an obsession with iPhone photography. One of my goals for 2015 is documentation, so I've been trying to photograph everything. Here are some things I've been up to in January, curtsey of my crappy iPhone photography.

I'm currently listening to a lot of The Blood Brothers. Best new releases so far are definitely the new albums from Sleater-Kinney and The Decemberists. 

xxxxxxxxx

AR

what i've been listening to this week

• the new Pixies single is actually super good. "Greens and Blues" is just the reminder of summer I needed (not really - it's fucking cold and thinking of summer is a bummer, kind of). the song has serious mermaid/merman concepts and the video is just as trippy as you expected a Pixies video would be
  
• riot grrrl-inspired pop punk band, Potty Mouth has a new interview in New York Magazine which features their video for "Black and Studs". they're a) a really fucking good band and I'm all about girls in pop punk (especially girls who are conscious of their place in the scene) and b) "Black and Studs" is really interesting to me because of the chorus' what happened to you to make you wear black and studs? there's something there about certain things having to have happened to make people punk, which I'll probably unpack later.
  
• as Warped Tour announcements continue to come out, I'm getting increasingly excited to see The Story So Far live. I've spent the last day and a half listening to pretty strictly their albums Under Soil and Dirt and What You Don't See.
• Modern Baseball has a new album out too. it's pretty good. 

what have y'all be filling your ear holes with this week?

bear hugs n sloppy kisses

AR