Death & Taxes (& Creative Roadmaps)
In this newsletter: some thoughts on grief, a new workshop, and a fundraiser for Gaza.
Hello everyone! It's been... a minute.
The last several months have been incredibly overwhelming, I won't lie! Without rehashing the entirety, I'll say that today I finalized travel plans to attend a memorial for one of my oldest friends, Blake Harrison, who passed away unexpectedly a little over a week ago at the age of 48. A few weeks prior to that, my cousin passed, also unexpectedly, at 44, and my beloved godmother Ann died last fall (she at least had a full and long life).
As I move through these very personal losses, I find it hard to hold space for my own individual grief, and for the devastating losses we have seen every day during the genocide in Gaza. As I talk with Palestinian friends, most of whom live in the US and have not been able to travel to Palestine (and in some cases have either been receiving calls from loved ones during active attacks, or unable to learn the fates of loved ones they can't get ahold of) it's hard to wrap one's mind around the sheer scale of grief. It feels complex and heavy to consider that the ability to attend a memorial for a friend's premature passing is a kind of privilege, when it is never a privilege to lose someone, or for a person to go before their time.
The last time I spoke to my friend Blake, it was about death-- or rather, it was to make a plan for us to talk about death. Last July, I started working on a project about the way death affects how we live-- without going deep into detail, I'll say that losing my father (who also died very suddenly, and at a relatively young age) when I was little deeply shaped the way I think about time, what I value, how I make decisions, and what I prioritize. Blake, who made his life as a musician in a bunch of heavy bands (all of which are amazing, if you like heavy music), had always been into horror, in the way a lot of people in heavy music are into dark aesthetics (I am making him sound like a goth, which he would hate-- to be clear he wasn't a goth, he just liked horror stuff). He'd also had his own recent brush with death, in the form of a battle with cancer, from which he emerged scathed but victorious. I wanted to talk with him about all of it, because while he was one of the goofiest, funniest people I think I'll ever know, he was also thoughtful and I knew he'd have interesting things to say. I'm sad we didn't get to have that conversation, and can't quite get over the irony that death was the reason for the last time we talked.
Even as I prepare to travel to Blake's memorial, I keep thinking I'm going to see him there. In a certain sense, I will: people who die survive in the memories of the living, and one small bright spot in all of this has been seeing people share their memories of him. Cold comfort, when I wish we could make new ones.
I titled this newsletter "death & taxes" on a whim, mostly with death on my mind, but there is actually sort of a taxes part, in that tax season is also peak "freelancer money panic" season. Workshop-wise, I have been focused on teaching my Search for Life in the Universe class at SAIC this semester, but after a long wait I have a couple workshops coming up.
On March 30th and April 6th, I'm offering a couple standalone virtual workshops on Creative Roadmaps. This is a hands-on, interactive virtual workshop where you learn to make a roadmap towards getting things done. Over three hours (with some breaks for everyone's sanity, of course) we’ll cover essential skills for goal setting, how to lay out milestones so you can see your progress, common roadblocks and how to get unstuck, and we will spend time creating your own personalized roadmap. Creative Roadmaps is geared towards anyone who needs structure for their work, and is particularly good for anyone who mostly manages their own time, e.g. creatives (artists, designers, musicians, writers), scientists, freelancers, etc. Learn more and sign up here!
I'm also running a fundraiser called The Moon for Palestine: if you donate to one of three charitable organizations who are providing desperately needed aid in Gaza (Palestinian Childrens' Relief Fund, GLIA, and HEAL Palestine), you get access to a month's worth of cool astronomy content! I am adding new stuff approximately daily throughout Ramadan, and it's never too late to sign up.
That's all for now. Tell you friends and family you love them, don't wait to do that thing you always meant to do, the future doesn't exist yet and the past lives in you.
LW