3c0

I keep waking up around 11 in the morning, which isn’t my ideal, but at least I feel rested. I prefer to be an early bird. I like waking up before the sun’s even out at 5 or 6am. But because my schedule has been messy (as mentioned) I’d been staying up even when I am not doing my client work, and trying to read/write.

It’s okay. Tomorrow’s a new day. I can try to sleep and then wake up early to reset. I think I only have one work call in the afternoon.

It was raining madly by the time I had the energy to leave the house. I wanted to sell some books to a second-hand bookstore and also print a poster for one of my clients. These were the top items on my to-do list before my evening work shift. As I settled the paper size and type and the poster was sent for printer, I only had to walk a few paces towards the second-hand bookstore. I was afraid the rain had damaged the books slightly, but I was glad to see that my tote bag had protected them. I placed Books 3 to 6 of the Dune series and 4 other titles that were either left or given to me by friends on the counter—the man behind it told me he could only give me $3 for them. I figured that was better than nothing. And because of the rain, I didn’t want to have to haul them back to my studio. $3 for all of that, and I still felt triumphant for removing things from my apartment.

I picked up the poster I had printed and before heading home, I checked how it turned out. The blue was not the blue I had hoped and the paper was glossier than I expected. Worse, the emojis that were part of the design did not print at all, and in their place were simply white shadows of their form. I’m not using Ad0be suites anymore and using Canv4 instead so I wasn’t as familiar about preparing the files/settings for printing. It’s also been a minute since I’ve had to print anything without the guidance of a graphic designer who had studied these things. I now realize that I hadn’t selected that the PDF be flattened before exporting. Anyway, instead of paying another $12 to re-print, I had the idea to drop by the art supply store for construction paper and glue to DIY it when I got home. It didn’t take too long. I managed to finish it in less than an hour and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

I have been researching about the Yin-Yang. I’m learning how the 'west’ and Victoria-era scholars in their discovery of it, of course, butchered its original interpretation. It’s not about balance. It’s not about opposing forces. It’s kind of like Zen. Everything is in constant motion/transformation and change. Yin-Yang is better explained as two sides of the hill. Yin is the shaded side and Yang, the sunny side. They may seem like two opposing forces, but they are actually two phases of qi (vital energy or life force) in their eternal cycle of transformation. “You can't have one without the other because they're not actually separate.” In other words, it’s a bit like non-duality. In their own being-ness, they form parts of a whole. And the little circle in each—these represent that they contain seeds of each other too. Beautiful. I guess it makes sense I’m only encountering this now, since I had been reading more Japanese Zen Buddhist texts, which has so much literature, I’ve barely touched the surface of that.