Captain's Log: I have FOMS

fear of missing summer, that is

Hey fronds. First order of biz - if we met at the art/food market in Porto last weekend, BEM-VINDO, e muito obrigada por seus olhos. It’s very cool of you to support an artist in this way. Great job! If you’ve been here: hope you know I love ye.

Last week was a bit of a Mack truck, and it ended with a full-on social experiment at the end der requiring me to maintain the human strength to sell my main squeeze with shy smiles and “please, go ahead” gestures. I felt like a weird aged clown for most of it, but in the end people were really nice, and I felt like a good dog on this new planet. I did it! Fuckin’ warmed my heart to watch people page through my 10,000 tiny paintings and chuckle to themselves - thank you for all of it. Big milestone for me, this art market. First one. lol

I am once again writing to you from someplace beautiful - a place I haven’t been all summer. It’s called partial employment ✨ and the forecast looks good. Halfway back to Normaltown. Although it isn’t so much an island as it is an anchor keeping me at Fort Laptop, I am relieved and delighted by this development, and the #gift of not having to abandon my entire life here, and like, return to America or some shit.

I really have no business being unemployed, and as much as I love saying “be your own favorite Matthew McConaughey” out loud, I am actually quite bad at being lazy. It’s why I have to walk two hours to the beach just to lay around, because otherwise I’m “laying around” in the sitting up position with my laptop beaming into my eyes hitting snooze on the “go to bed” alarm I have set on my phone.

The job hunt hustle is exhausting when you already have a job, but it’s a bad can of soup when you need a job. All the time + no income = really uncomfortable ash. [Redacted] says I shouldn’t say “I’m comin’ outta lockdown here!” anymore (lol, I’ll never), but f’real - I feel like I’m coming out of my creepy hunting shed, ready to admit to all my hunting buddies that I’m actually vegan and then take the weekend off.

The world around me seems to be at the cusp of change. The three baby seagulls living and partying on the terrace below have all learned to fly and gone. The roofing projects in the distance have nearly finished up, and cherries no longer glisten from the front of every frutaria. More of my morning stretching is done during the blue hour, the nights are getting cooler, and the cats are beginning to demand their share of the bed again. Feels like I may have missed my second summer in Portugal while in Damage Control, but I hope there’s still time to enjoy it (and a mf heatwave please).

Amidst the return of a stable income I’m feeling creatively motivated, like I want to start a project that takes a long time to finish. I’m thinking about painting again, I’ve started building Loose No. 03, and since I now have jobs, I finally allowed myself to leave Reserve Mode for just a sec and use some of the market revenue to buy two overpriced (I could gag) rolls of not-my-favorite film. I photographed a balloon in the road the other day (lol) - a very toothy return after almost three months of being unable to afford my oldest and most intimate art practice and wandering around this city with a broken heart.

It might just be an air bubble, but I feel like I can see the surface. 

‘til next week,

-A