In the fray

At last I can share the final version of the piece I did for the Desiderata 2023 calendar, which is open for preorder now! It has a really phenomenal roster of artists, and they're also all of them really nice? That stuff matters to me, so there you go.

I'm gonna copy and paste what I wrote about this when I posted the WIP, for those who didn't see why this piece is very important to me:

After I joined, I found out each artist was going to be assigned a palette based on that artist's work. It's a great idea, but when I got my palette, I was dismayed: no reds, no oranges, a single amber. So many pinks and purples. To me, it felt like the message was clearly: we want a specific thing from you. The message was actually, This palette we literally color-picked from your Instagram would look nice for May, go to town. I was so upset with the weak pastel palette that I almost ditched the project right there, which would have been not just really stupid but unkind to my dear friends, who would have had to replace me and my custom palette. So I took my snotty, misplaced anger and said, Fine. You want to give me pink and purple? You get what you get, and it won't be kissing under cherry blossoms. You get a fight.

I hated it. I was angry each time I worked on it. I was angry that they (reasonably) requested no gore splatter. I was angry about the fucking colors. What I didn't do was actually talk to the team (my friends) about my feelings, I just stewed irrationally. Finally I thought, I'll never like this, it's the wrong thing for this project, nobody wants to see this, they want kissing under cherry blossoms. Someone better should do this. And I quit, and I was an ass about it.

I am fortunate for SO many reasons, but a big one is that I have friends far better than I deserve, who don't shrink away from my tantrums, who call me out on bad behavior, who talk to me, and make me talk to them. And my very dear friend convinced me not to give up, and not to give this up. I had a long walk of shame, owning my shitty behavior, and it isn't the first time, and it may not be the last, but I am here to finish this, to make it worth people's time and interest, to own my anger and not just try to throw it away. I need to see it through. And wouldn't you know it, in the process of apologizing, owning my feelings and making better choices, I've come to really like this. I hope, once it's done, you will too.

I have a lot of growing to do as a person, but hopefully each time I screw up I can learn from it.