Blog / 2025 / Struggling

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely floundering a bit at the moment.

The discontent isn’t professional. I have multiple projects I’m excited about, and I make progress on them every day. Plus, there’s you, supporting my work in a variety of ways, including by clicking through to my blog like you’ve done here. You are the reason I create.

The issue isn’t personal either. My partner and I have been together for almost twenty years, and every day I love him more. Plus, I have strange and delightful friends whom I adore, and I live in a community that makes me feel more able to be myself than ever before.

So my struggle doesn’t come from anything in my life.

Rather it’s the world, and, most especially, the state of the US government. Every day for the past six months, the cruelty and clownishness coming out of the White House has been making me feel gutted and numb and angry and half-dead all at once.

It’s a lot. So today I’m giving you this blog’s equivalent of a cat video.

This is the making of a portrait of my father-in-law’s best kitty, which I painted for him a few years ago. I never got around to sharing the work-in-progress images, but right now feels like a nice moment to post a hypnotic creative process animation. Hopefully it provides a small respite if you’re struggling too.