Life Lately

Lately I’ve been spending more time reading and drawing.

When I was in undergrad and hoping to change my area of study from biology to illustration and design, I took the advice (so many gave me this advice) that I can always maintain creative hobbies and stay in the sciences professionally. Sometimes I kind of regret taking that advice, I firmly believe the sciences can be embraced as a hobby as well - especially some natural sciences. Regardless, I feel like it’s been really challenging to make enough time for my creative hobbies over the years.

For the couple of years I’ve been trying to prioritize making time for things like drawing, crochet, painting, and writing. Even if I can only make time for some doodles, making and taking that time is important.

For the last few months I’ve entirely cut out working overtime in the lab and it’s given me so much more time to do the things I actually enjoy. I’ve been drawing more, I’m re-learning how to use Photoshop and learning how to use Illustrator and Figma. I’m building on my current functional-beginner level in web design languages like HTML and CSS (I like to think that I’m not a true beginner, but I still need to look things up all the time, I like to consider myself functional-beginner because I still need to look things up all the time).

I’ve been reading two books at any given time - usually one self-help or educational and one fiction/non-fiction/novel for entertainment - and I’m actually finishing them again.

I really want to keep this going and I hope that I can build on it. While I’d still love to change my career, these lifestyle changes are feeling pretty good for the time being. I’m excited to learn about the things that I enjoy most in my free time.