Decemberween: Fox, 2021 – The Art Gremblin Rises
Hey, it’s Christmas, so you know I gotta talk about this.
Fox has been doing a lot this year. In addition to you know, coping while she works under a pandemic conditions, doing work that can be enormously straining and tedious, she’s also been just doing a lot to improve our lives around us. She’s been interested in improving our life infrastructure – fixing problems, fixing things that are causing small problems. This can be things like storage containers, or improving our rice cooker situation, or even just dedicating a mind that normally does con prep to managing food storage.
Bear in mind, I’m the one who does the bulk of the cooking for us.
Fox has also done a rebrand this year. After years of using a Munchlax plushie as her avatar, she’s now moving on to make an identity she can own more directly. She made a pngtuber avatar for herself (and then made me one too!), and now she uses it to do art streams.
And look: People with thousands of followers talk about the problems there. They talk about what it’s like to have an unreasonable loud presence in your life that you can’t communicate with. But there’s a very different problem at the other end, which is not to say a big chat isn’t a problem, but that it’s hard to hear those complaints when you’re showing up and streaming a little bit, every week, to very few people.
Fox has been streaming her art. She’s basically looked at the problem of not doing enough drawing, and decided to make a practice out of it, that involves practicing in public, and being okay with not getting attention.
And that’s cool. It’s cool to do hard things for no external reward. It’s cool to try something so hard even when it’s hard.
And I’m so proud of Fox.
Every day is a gift.