Everyone brings something enjoyable to Zentangle. Sometimes it’s a style accessible to me where I am right now. Or maybe it’s a collaboration that connects me to Zentangle community. Other times it’s art so captivating I just have to pause to admire it. My favorite CZTs all appeal to me for different reasons.
Maybe you’re already familiar with these talented people. But just in case you aren’t, I thought I’d drop some links. They are worth checking out.
Romi Marks, CZT
I’ve talked about the Tangledyogi 333 YouTube channel before, and posted this picture of her Divine Dove design I finished a couple of years ago. The colors and designs Romi Marks comes up with are so fun and relaxing to draw, and the colors are always so vibrant and uplifting. If you haven’t tried one of her free video classes yet, you are missing out!
Shie Naritomi, CZT
Shie Naritomi follows offiicial Project Pack videos (Project Pack 24 is currently underway, in case that’s news to anyone) on YouTube from Zentangle HQ, with tutorials for Japanese speakers. I don’t speak Japanese, but love watching her videos. Turns out it’s quite soothing to hear the rhythm of her instructions in a language that’s unknown to me, but I also admire watching her instructions. Each day I’m reminded that Zentangle art is like handwriting—different enough to appreciate our uniqueness, but similar enough to share a common understanding. Her style is beautiful.
Tracy Anne Wilkinson, CZT
When I first started Zentangling, Tracey Ann Wilkinson’s tutorials and style really appealed to me too. Early on, I completed this Zendala design featuring a motif of swirl patterns, and it remains a favorite to this day. I am also a fan of the Art Deco pieces she has created on her YouTube channel. Easy to draw and beautiful to look at. To me, that’s the appeal of Zentangle.
Who are some of your favorite CZTs? Bonus points if you share a link to one of their videos or images so we can all explore the Zentangle community!
I’ve come across a fair amount of Zentangle criticism since I started tangling, and I’d like to address some of it.
Sometimes people who’d like to give it a try are discouraged from exploration when they see others’ misgivings. I’m compelled to offer my perspective and a few rebuttals in the event anyone cares what I think.
Some people genuinely don’t like Zentangle, and that’s absolutely fair. If everyone liked the same things, what would even be the point? I’ve not met every CZT on the planet, but the ones I do know are perfectly fine not force-feeding people patterns and making everyone draw.
Different strokes (pun intended) and all.
Zentangle Patterns are just things I doodled in high school.
Yes, that is almost entirely the point. If Zentangle Patterns were overly complicated people might give up, the practice wouldn’t be enjoyable, and CZTs would throw up their hands in exasperation and be like, “Screw this. I’m out.”
Those who want a Lamborghini don’t tend to find them at Ford dealerships. People who want an advanced art class will probably have to look elsewhere.
Zentangle is accessible for kids, adults, and seniors. Heck maybe your cat can do it too. Enjoy Zentangle. Or don’t. It’s your decision, and we all want you to find something you enjoy (if for no reason than you might be distracted and leave us alone.)
I don’t like that CZT.
When I first started making YouTube videos, I criticized Trump and got blowback from a Trumper in the comments. A few people also leave cranky-pants feedback because I don’t make content tailored specifically to their preferences, without knowing at all how hard it is for me to make a video while simultaneously drawing and brain tumoring.
Seriously. Internet strangers have had problems with me since 1995, and I don’t anticipate that changing. Ever.
But however personable I am (or am not) and whatever my politics, I want everyone to know loathing me is not a sound reason to refuse to explore something as enjoyable as Zentangling.
Passing on Zentangle because a specific CZT turns you off is like not eating because you don’t like broccoli. In Zentangle, as in life, find your people.
Supplies cost too much.
I’m no stranger to the unaffordable, but I try to think about it like this: small businesses need to turn a profit to pay themselves and employees. If that means I can’t afford it, I can’t. It’s not a personal insult when something is out of my price range or feels like an unjustifiable splurge.
I mean, I think people who spend $50 to get their nails done when they could be buying a Project Pack are missing out on a bargain. That’s just me, though. You do you.
The Zentangle Method feels religious.
Confession time. I don’t always take time out to do the gratitude thing when I Zentangle. If it makes you squirm, skip the part of the video that feels like woo to you. Zone out if you’re in a class at the library. Or decide that Zentangle isn’t your thing. As long as you’re not stealing someone else’s moment of Zen, we all just want you to be happy.
Bottom line is if you want to try it, I hope you will. Despite any criticism. Decide for yourself if you like it or you don’t.
One of the ways I can tell I’m feeling better is that I am getting things done again. That includes posting a new Zentangle video that went live this morning. Also I’m already thinking about new ones to create. Signs of life.
My hands are unsteady and my grip feels weird, but I did it. Taking a few minutes to watch this helps my channel, especially after a long hiatus like I took following my dad’s death and then doing more chemo a few months later. So, if you like Zentangles or just want to help a girl out, here you go:
These are actually the first nine patterns in the Project Pack 10, L5 spread. Sometimes what I need to do is go back to the basics. Anyway, if you’d like to take a look at the original videos from Zentangle HQ, you can find them here: Zentangle YouTube Channel.
I plan to film Part 2 soon, but I have to make sure I take some time off to take care of me and ordinary life things, and that requires being very intentional about how I spend my time. So check back here or subscribe to my YouTube channel if you want to know when the next video drops.
I’d like to invite you to draw Zentangle doodle art with me today. But first, an update for everyone who’s morbidly curious about the woman with the brain tumor: I’m still here. 🙂
It’s 46 °F in Urbana right now, and it’s supposed to be cloudy and rainy for the next couple of days. I checked the weather app on my phone just to be sure I wasn’t lying to you all about the forecast, but just know that my body already told me yesterday we were in for some crappy weather.
I took my last dose of edibles (a chocolate peanut butter indica candy bar) last night to quiet the loudest of the aches and pains, and my pain level is still tolerable this morning. But I know that will be wearing off shortly. I can already feel the future settling in.
I have some oils and a couple of loose joints, but they are just not as effective as edibles for me. I really wish the dispensary would go back to curbside service right now. I can’t describe how badly I do not want to be inside the dispensary. Not only do I not want to brush my pandemic hair, put on actual pants, and increase my chances of being exposed to Covid-19. I just don’t want to do people-ing today.
Might they bring my order to my car if I call and ask nicely and explain that I’m a med patient? Yeah, maybe. But I hate the phone, too. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m going to be using up my vape and tincture remnants because I’m having trouble shaking off this depressive mood.
So let’s talk about something else instead. Like my YouTube channel. I didn’t post anything for the entire month of November because my creative resources were entirely drained after the Inktober doodle art videos , but I’ve posted twice so far in December. Go me!
One thing that motivated me to start drawing and recording again was buying the first-ever Archer & Olive subscription box. (They gave me a referral link. Use it to get 15% off if you’re in the market for some premium bujo goodies: http://archerandolive.refr.cc/emilysuess)
The subscription box is a limited-supply quarterly thing (you can watch me unbox the contents here) that cost about $70. I would normally feel guilty about spending that much money on notebook and stationery supplies, but 1.) I just deserve to be happy sometimes, and 2.) I am confident it’ll help me grow my YouTube channel.
So anyway, the unboxing video didn’t perform so well. I actually had a net loss of subscribers the day I posted it. And that bummed me out. It’s not that I need every video I make to do well, but because the video was outside of my usual it took me longer than usual to edit it. Plus there was a voiceover with it, and that adds about 4 extra hours of work. There’s definitely something deflating about putting all your very limited effort into something that you’re super geeked about only to have the world be like, “meh.”
I plan to keep doing the bullet journal videos, though, because bullet journaling is what’s going to help me organize the rest of the content I produce. I figure I might as well have to camera rolling while I’m doing it. The #bujo community on YouTube is huge, and it seems like such a great fit with Zentangling. Anyway, I’m excited about it, even if no one else is at the moment.
Anyway, there’s a new Zentangle-only video up today for Patrons (tomorrow for everyone else). If you could use some simple, cheerful art to brighten your day, you will probably really enjoy this one featuring the pattern Alcatraz by Diana E. Marshall. In it I draw the Zentangle art at the top of this page. It’s not an overly intricate tile, so it’s a good Zentangle to try if you don’t consider yourself artsy but still want to Zentangle with me.
I did something I’m really proud of last month: I posted a new Zentangle video every day in October. It wasn’t always easy, and the drawings weren’t always good, but I persisted until I accomplished the thing: my Inktober Zentangle 2020 prompt list.
Inktober was something I really wanted to do despite the various things in the world that were working against me: cancer, Covid angst, election angst, roofing contractor woes (that’s a whole other blog post, folks. I can’t even with that right now.)
Before I even started the Inktober Zentangle series on my YouTube channel, I warned Dan of my intentions. I told him to expect me to be pretty much useless to do anything else for the entire month. Because if I know me—and I do know me pretty well—setting aside the time for drawing and editing every day meant stealing it from something else.
That’s because I already triage essential daily tasks like eating, cleaning, showering, and managing cancer as a matter of course. Whatever things I reprioritized to make space for Inktober, they were going to be big-ticket essentials. And “reprioritizing” for me doesn’t mean “I’ll get to it later than usual today,” it means, “I will not get to it at all.” Things don’t move down a to-do list this short, they move OFF the list. Permanently.
So, probably a big “DUH” here for folks in the know, but October was a challenging month for both Dan and me, what with us perpetually negotiating our respective diseases in the midst of my “vanity” project.
The most notable problems we faced: eating and cleaning. On the average, we eat OK. We do not go hungry, which I am deeply thankful to be able to say, but what some people might eat as a treat or a convenience because time’s limited makes up a large part of a disabled person’s diet OUT OF ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.
And moving past eating to the cleaning stuff: Nothing got cleaned beyond a couple of necessary loads of laundry and the evening running of the dishwasher. Every time I look at my surroundings right now and see what needs to be done, my heart breaks and my stomach drops. I will probably have to raise money and hire help eventually, but no one’s coming in our door while Covid numbers are spiking again anyway. So I whisper that line to myself about being able to accept the things I cannot change.
Some evenings during Inktober I’d be on the verge of tears from the exhaustion saying, “Don’t make me do the GrubHub order tonight. I can’t.” And “can’t” was never an exaggeration. If my energy levels are depleted that far on a recurring basis, what manifests outwardly is an overtired 7-year-old girl in a 40-year-old woman’s body. There are breakdowns and meltdowns and outburts. These are not self-indulgent, whiny fits. These are biological things humans do when their bodies and brains “just can’t” anymore.
I imagine what I experience as a woman with disabling brain cancer is akin to a neurodivergent child being forced into an abled child’s classroom every day. The exception being that I’m generally extended a lot more grace because the “C” word is harder to sweep under the rug.
Tangent. Sorry, not sorry.
Anyway, I also knew that when I finished my last Inktober video there was going to be a really hard crash for me at the end. It was worse than I had anticipated though. So far I spent the first three days post-production (I was working 2 days ahead of the calendar the whole time) in various states of distress. It started with exhaustion, progressed to a migraine (complete with aura, numbness in my right arm, heightened noise and light sensitivity, nausea, and aphasia) and then turned into a sore throat, head congestion, and low-grade fever.
My fever broke overnight, but I feel like an absolute trash pile of skin, bones, and pajamas still today.
Because when I am that rundown, my already chemo-blown immune system is powerless to even sneeze at a mote of dust. What my pre-cancer body would have fought off virtually undetected, my post-cancer body is forced to entertain for days—sometimes weeks—at a time.
Coincidentally, this is why at-risk members of the population are absolutely disgusted by the selfishness of the anti-mask wearing crowd during the pandemic. We, people whose lives are already hanging by assorted threads of questionable strength, do not have the time or the energy for the tender care and keeping of some uneducated, overinflated ego.
Fighting cancer is equal parts maneuvering around the disease and dodging other people’s selfish bullshit. And believe me when I say that I’m not living with brain cancer AND smiling while Joe Bob McTrumpster pretends his right to spread diseases to me is more important than my health and safety.
I am not your inspirational cancer porn warrior on Sunday and someone you can spit on Monday morning.
I’m putting the world on notice: don’t make me make room for your shenanigans. If I put schooling you on my to-do list instead of, like, eating, you are not going to like it.
Ahem. Guess I had some things to get off my chest, there. But let me just sum up this entry by saying that doing a Zentangle every day this past Inktober was rewarding despite my challenges and limitations, and hearing back from people who enjoyed them gave me the strength to keep going. Thank you.
Happy Friday and happy Inktober! You know, if you’re doing that. I’m just popping in to update you on my progress with the Inktober Zentangle challenge. So far the response to my videos has been encouraging, and I’m glad I decided to give Inktober a go this year. There are a lot of days left, so we’ll see how I feel in another week or two. lol
First, I am happy to report I’ve posted a video *every day* so far. No small feat considering my health, but I’ve been lucky that there have been no additional setbacks on that front.
You would think drawing everyday would be challenge enough for me, but I had to go and promise a new video with each Zentangle on top of it. (Why am I like this?) One thing I am realizing is that in order to finish a video every day, I cannot always finish what I attempt to draw. If I’m not done drawing by 1:30, I just stop where I am. Because I still need time to edit the video before completely crashing for the day.
I’m learning to be OK with unfinished pieces, but the old, pre-cancer me that’s buried in there somewhere really, REALLY wants to feel “done” with each Zentangle.
Every night when I finish editing, I say to Dan, “I need to stop trying to tackle so much and just do littler, simpler things.” But then the next morning I am back to my old ways, trying to take on something I really have no business attempting until 1.) I learn more about making art and 2.) I don’t have the time constraints of Inktober to contend with.
Anyway, here are a couple of my favorite Inktober Zentangle videos from the first nine days of the challenge. If you want to see new videos as they are published, by sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel. If you’re a Patron, remember that you can access videos a day before anyone else (without ads!!). Just go to my Patreon page to get the link for the October early release playlist.
Because it’s usually the first thing tanglers want to know, here are some of the supplies I used for my InktoberZentangle tutorials. More detailed lists can be found on YouTube under individual video descriptions.
Zentangle Tutorials
Day 1: Easy Zentangle Patterns for Beginners – Inspired by Project Pack No. 11 The wonderful people at Zentangle HQ create project packs a few times a year with accompanying Zentangle tutorials. If you want to learn more about the Inspiration for this Zentangle using phi proportions, be sure to see the official instructional videos for Project Pack 11.
Day 2: How to Draw Zentangle Pattern Khala This pattern is a stunning variation on Celtic knots created by Zen Linea. I’m still learning to draw it confidently and find that starting with a pencil sketch is a good idea. I would recommend this Zentangle pattern for intermediate to advanced Zentangle fans.
Day 3: Easy Zentangle Patterns for Beginners: Huggins Huggins is a fun tangle pattern drawn by constructing a grid out of dots. It’s an easy pattern that can be embellished as much or as little as you like. The variation of Huggins follows the same steps, but the dots are placed more randomly instead of on an evenly spaced grid.
Day 4: How to Draw a Zentangle Gem Incorporating colorful gems into Zentangle patterns is so much fun and adds a lot of dimension to your art. The gem in the video was colored using a basic set of colored pencils. Higher-quality pencils, however, are typically easier to blend and would allow for an even smoother result.
Day 5: Easy Zentangle Art Inspired by Home Patterns are everywhere from wallpaper and pottery to fabric and ferns. But this prompt could inspire so much more than trying to recreate an existing pattern. I decided to use the design on a piece of heirloom furniture as the string for this meditative Zentangle art.
Day 6: Subversive Cross-Stich Inspired Zentangle If you’re just getting to know me, I should probably tell you that I am a HUGE fan of subversive cross-stitch sayings. I borrowed the saying “Maybe Swearing Will Help” from a picture I found on Pinterest. What can I say? Swearing speaks to me.
Day 7: How to Draw a Zentangle Heart Switched up my materials today and grabbed an alcohol marker, a purple Micron, and a purple Gelly Roll pen from the Moonlight set for this super easy to draw Zentangle Heart. Of course, I couldn’t draw anything until my cat Izzy rolled around on my desk for a few minutes first.
Day 8: Zentangle Art Illuminated Letter When I chose this prompt for myself, I had illuminated letters in mind, like the ones Zentangle founder Maria Thomas creates. I didn’t have any metallic media to use at the time I created this Zentangle, so it’s colored with alcohol markers instead.
Day 9: Zentangle Art Inspired by Delftware The first time I saw someone working with the blue inks in Project Pack 7, I immediately thought of Delftware. But you don’t necessarily have to try to copy a Delft pattern for today’s prompt or even use blue ink. Just a friendly reminder to use these prompts as inspiration, not necessarily as rules or specific assignments. You do you, baby!
Day 10: How to Draw Zentangle Border Pattern Coil Around a Circle Lots of Zentangle patterns lend themselves to being used as a border and many of those border patterns are excellent for using as circle borders specifically. Or they could also be used as the edge of a Zendala or drawn within inside rows too..
Day 11: More Easy Zentangle Patterns for Beginners In this video, I fill an entire page in my sketchbook from edge-to-edge with some basic Zentangles. I drew in a pencil string first to divide the page into smaller sections, but there was no pre-planned composition. I just drew whatever I felt like.
Day 12: How to Draw Organic Zentangle Patterns Organic Zentangle patterns tend to be my favorites. In this Zentangle tutorial video you can see step by step how I created this mosaic-style tangle by outlining a Bijou tile and using flower pattern Henna Drum.
Day 13: How to Draw Zentangle Patterns Cubine and Zonked When I’m drawing geometric Zentangle patterns it’s easy to get into a rhythm and zone out for some relaxing tangle practice. These two grid-based patterns aren’t difficult to draw, but they do take a little time and help me settle into drawing when I need pleasant distraction.
Day 14: Zentangle Pattern Crescent Moon with Louise Belcher Fan Art Today’s Inktober Zentangle prompt was “fan art”. I today’s tangle is a little light on the Zentangle, but once I finished learning how to draw Louise from Bob’s Burgers, I almost didn’t want to add a single thing to the page!
Day 15: How to Draw Zentangle “Holes” For the prompt “holes” I used an alcohol marker plus a graphite pencil and tortillon for shading to make circles that look like three-dimensional holes in the sketchbook paper.
Day 16: Combining Easy Zentangle Patterns with Stickers I don’t know about you, but I have a ton of fun stickers. I plan to use them directly in my art for today’s prompt but you could also make Zentangle stickers.
Day 17: Easy Zentangle Inspired Art Zentangle art can be used to fill larger objects and scenes. Although basic shapes make up most of the composition here, you will find the Zentangle patterns Printemps and Yincut easily.
Day 18: How to Draw Zentangle Pattern B’tweed A monotangle makes use of a single pattern. I have divided a circle into eight parts and used B’tweed in all of them and created a Zentangle that looks spherical after it’s shaded.
Day 19: How to Draw an Offset Zentangle Zendala For today’s prompt, which is “Zendala” I wanted to draw a Zentangle that was different from what I usuallly do. So instead of using concentric circles that share the same center point for my string, I decided to do an offset Zendala.
Day 20: Easy Zentangle Art with Metallic Watercolors I drew and painted some basic fall leaves and added couple of Zentangle patterns to create a simple drawing with an autumn feel.
Day 21: Easy Zentangle Patterns from the Zentangle Legend The L5 spread of the Zentangle Legend booklet features 20 of Zentangle’s original patterns. I used the 20-sided die that comes in the project pack to randomly choose patterns Xircus, Poke Root, Keeko, and Hollibaugh.
Day 22: Zentangle Inspired Meditative Art Today’s prompt was “Grid” but I wasn’t really feeling like drawing the same exact square a dozen times. I decided to explore changing the grid size in different sections, which turned out to be a lot of fun.
Day 23: Black and White Zentangle with India Ink I painted on a flat wash of India Ink to create a contrasting background in the Zentangle tutorial.
Day 24: How to Draw Zentangle Pattern Bronx Cheer in Minimalist Style In keeping with the minimalist theme, I’ve used a single Micron and graphite for shading a beginner Zentangle pattern.
Day 25: How to Draw Solar System Inspired Zentangle Art I attempted to create a Zentangle art solar system. Disclaimer: my solar system is not to scale and I’m missing a couple of planets.
Day 26: How to Draw Easy Zentangle Flowers from Inkblots I decided to put down some random black india ink blobs and turn them into abstract Zentangle flowers.
Day 27: How to Draw and Shade an Embossed Zentangle A faux embossed look can be given to Zentangle art when shading and highlights are used to create the effect.
Day 28: How to Add Contrast to Zentangles with Masking The prompt for today was “masking”. I used regular blue painter’s tape to mask the areas of the paper I wanted to preserve.
Day 29: 7 Easy Zentangle Patterns in 1 Zentangle In all, there are seven Zentangle patterns in this piece: Xander and Printemps are used within the pattern Aquafleur and the larger composition is accented with Flux, Flooish, Fescue, and Springkle.
Day 30: Zentangle Zendala Step by Step I pulled out my sepia colored Micron pens to create this Zentangle Zendala — or Zentangle inspired mandala. I coordinated with brown Micron pen to add a little bit of contrast to the tangle.
Day 31: Zentangle Tranzending Tranzending is drawing on top of an already completed tile. The layered effect can add extra depth to your tangles and help hide parts of a tile you don’t like.
For more Zentangle patterns and tutorials, see my One Zentangle a Day video series.
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So when we left off last, I was wondering whether I wanted to continue therapy. It turns out, I didn’t. I cancelled both appointments I had in July, and I never rescheduled them. If you’re curious why I quit therapy, read on!
As I was evaluating the pros and cons of therapy, I realized that therapy like all kinds of treatments, has side effects. Some of those side effects are minor, or at least would be if I was living in an alternate timeline where Covid wasn’t a concern and I didn’t have a disabling brain tumor.
As an introvert, I already spend a lot of time inside my head thinking and overthinking everything. Therapy intensified that for me, and at least for the time being, that’s not doing me much good. (Every session also means another medical bill to pay, so unless it’s something I see as necessary for my health and well-being, I’m not likely to keep forcing it on myself. Medicare actually pays less than Medicaid, but after two years of disability it’s pretty much your only option.)
I’m veering off course. Surprise!
Anyway, when I wasn’t in a therapy session, I was overthinking an upcoming session. I was ruminating about what to bring up and how to make that time productive, as I do for every medical appointment I have, and I was trying to knock back that same pre-appointment anxiety I always get a couple of days before seeing a doctor. It was weighing me down.
Not that there was no benefit for me at all. After my first session I initially felt unburdened and was bolstered by having someone on the outside say to me, “This is some heavy stuff. I’d be surprised if you weren’t dealing with these things right now.” But the returns diminished with each successive appointment.
That’s not therapy’s fault, though. I want to be really clear about that. I would consider going back again at some point in the future if my circumstances were different. And, of course, I would never discourage someone else from seeing if it helps them. There’s no way to know if it’s going to help than to give it a chance.
It just wasn’t good for me right now. I’m pretty sure I’ve said this here before, because I say it a lot: adding anything new to my routine means giving up something I was already doing. And cancer-related fatigue ensures that I never have enough energy to do all the things that need to be done. And I have to be careful about not cutting things from my day-to-day life that I enjoy because I see them as frivolous or whatever because going down that road is a fast-track to a major depressive episode where the little goblins in my head are like, “Why bother with anything?”
The price of therapy for me was being too exhausted and disinterested in things to Zentangle, and there’s a month-long gap in my YouTube uploads to drive home my point. Zentangling and my making videos for my channel are things that distract me from cancer, disability grief, the pandemic, and the general terribleness of a living through the age of Trumpism. So I’ve been doing my best to prioritize drawing simply because I like doing it.
If you missed any of my recent videos, I invite you to subscribe to my YouTube channel. Here’s my most recent Tangled Talk episode for those you who enjoy hearing me yap about stuff and things:
And here’s a more relaxing music-only video where I practice some basic Zentangle patterns. Enjoy!
Oh, one last thing! If you’re a Patron, get ready for the next Chapter of Who You Gonna Believe. It’ll be posted here on the blog Sunday morning.
The penultimate lesson for One Zentangle a Day is now complete! The lesson for Day 41 was to create Zentangle folk art using folk patterns. You can see those patterns in the art I created for the video. It includes wolf’s tooth, primrose, and pussy willow patterns plus a couple of others. All of them have symbolic meaning in traditional folk art.
I finally got my hands on a Helix circle and angle maker this week. My intent was to use them on Zendala art, but I was so excited to see how it worked that I just had to use it on this video. I can tell it is going to be my go-to tool for making Zendala (Zentangle mandala) tangles, and it only cost $5.
I also tried using my artist’s pencils for shading instead of the stubby little pencil that came with my original Zentangle kit. In the interest of time, I didn’t go all-out trying to make gradients for the Zentangle folk art piece, but I did enjoy working with a full-sized pencil. The brain tumor has impaired my fine motor skills enough that I really do benefit from have something substantial to hold on to. My hand cramps less and doesn’t fatigue as quickly — both good things for video making!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this tangle. Let me know what you’re creating these days.
Happy New Year, everyone. Historically, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day have not been very big deals to me, but I felt like celebrating today with 9 goals for 2020 if for no other reason than I’m feeling a little optimistic. (Note these are not resolutions I’m doomed to fail, just little nudges for making 2020 more fun than 2019.)
Stream a video game on Twitch
My brother Ryan and I live a few hours apart, but we still manage to get together virtually once a week or so to play State of Decay 2. He and my sister-in-law brought up streaming on Twitch several months ago. The idea has been percolating in my brain for a while, and I want to give it a try. No commitments to anything more than seeing how it goes.
Write a crossword puzzle
With my brain being what it is, I do word and logic puzzles almost every day to try and keep the neurons firing. Recently while working on a crossword with a really weird answer to a horrible clue, I wondered if I could make a better one. Now I’m obsessed with noodling out how to create the pattern of squares, make a functioning grid of words, and write good clues.
Grow marijuana
Though I’ve had a medical license to consume marijuana for about three years, Illinois just made recreational use legal. The govenor is clearing thousands of convictions as we ring in the new year. (Halle-freakin-lujah! More criminal justice reform, please, Governor Pritzker!) We can now grow up to five plants for private, personal use. I have several seeds in my position, and intend to give it a try. No biggie if I fail, but it has the potential to help me save a lot of money. This is one medication that is 100% NOT covered by insurance.
Complete a 100 Things post
I started my first blog on AOL Journals circa 2006, and I made a ton of online friends through that platform. I still keep in touch with many of those bloggers to this day. In fact, AOL J-Land (as we affectionately called it) is how I met my husband Dan.
One of the fun things that swept J-Land back in the day was writing a 100 Things post. It’s where you cobble together 100 facts about yourself and post the list. It’s like an ice breaker for bloggers. I recently and randomly stumbled across the Twitter account of a name I recognized from the AOL days, Kelly Sedinger of Byzantium’s Shores. I saw he still had a One Hundred Things About Me post, and got sucker punched by the nostalgia.
I’m going to post a new one soon. Honestly, I’ve been working on it for a few days already, so it seemed like a good addition to my 9 goals for 2020 list. (Yes, I’m one of those people who writes shit in her to-do list that’s mostly done just so I can experience the pleasure of crossing it off.)
Make new Zentangle videos
It’s been a few months since I’ve created any new content for my YouTube channel, because life is just that way sometimes, you know? But the meditative aspect of creating the art and then watching the time-lapse playback is so good for me. It also seems to be something that others enjoy, because my channel keeps growing. I can’t commit to a schedule for health reasons, but I can promise myself to just make “more.”
Track Swagbucks for a year
Swagbucks is a cash back slash survey website where you participate in polls, submit receipts, watch videos, participate in special offers and other junk, and then earn “Swagbucks” which can be converted to gift cards and PayPal cash. The catch is that they collect your data and make use of affiliate links. But you know, data privacy is for the financially privileged, anyway.
Last year as a casual user, I earned about $150. Which isn’t much, unless you’re broke. In that case, it’s a tank of gas and Christmas presents for the family. This year I want to track how much I make in a full year from January 1 to Dec 31.
For reference, I’m starting today with 355 SB (roughly $3.55 when redeemed). If you want to try it, use my link and we both get 300 bonus Swagbucks if you reach 300 SB in your first 30 days. (FWIW, I got to 355 in just 3 days, so that is very doable.)
Learn Krita and make a printable coloring page
I gathered up the Amazon gift card money I collected and finally purchased this stylus for my computer so I can do some Zentangling and sketching without killing trees or using up all my Micron ink. Krita is the free drawing program I will be using, but it’s pretty complicated and will require setting aside some time to learn. It’s kind of like Photoshop. Except it’s totally free.
I think it would be really fun to draw a coloring page and maybe host a cheesy virtual coloring contest sort of like those ones I always participated in at the grocery store when I was a kid.
Reach 100 Patrons in 2020
My goal for Patreon this year is to reach 100 subscribers. I currently have 29. I chose a people-based goal as opposed to a money-based goal because despite our dire financial circumstances, I really just want to find and connect with people who want to read Who You Gonna Believe and watch my Zentangle videos.
Reach 1,000 YouTube subscribers in 2020
Speaking of those Zentangle videos… 1,000 subscribers seems like a lot, but I’m giving myself a whole year to get there, and as of this writing I’m already at 485. The One Zentangle a Day series I did in 2019 really helped me establish my channel. This year I want to focus on producing higher quality videos. It should be doable now that I’ve got some of the basics sorted out.
So those are my 9 goals for 2020. What are yours? What are you looking forward to in the new year?
