Earlier in the week, I had a bit of a dripping faucet issue, so I used some of the water for a quick watercolour painting. I think my watercolours usually look better in photos than in real life...

Even though I rarely have the patience to sketch outdoors, the elastic of my Talens sketchbook still managed to get too loose. I was hesitant for a while to cut off the elastic entirely or replace it but I decided to give it a try since I had some thin white elastic at home. But white elastic looked boring with my pink cover. Since I had some leftover matching chiffon fabric, I sewed a scrunchie-like elastic casing for it. Not perfect, but cute.

If anyone is interested in replacing the over-stretched elastic of their sketchbook in a similae way, here's the process:

• Use an x-acto knife to cut open enough of the interior back where the elastic is glued onto the sketchbook. Remove the old elastic.
• Measure your new elastic to fit the sketchbook plus 1 inch overlap. Since I was going to cover the elastic with fabric, I wasn't going to glue the elastic back on. Instead I was going to sew the ends together and have the seam hidden inside the fabric sleeve.
• Sew a fabric sleeve for the length of the exposed elastic plus several inches or more. I probably should've made mine longer for a more scrunchie look.
• While the elastic is inserted into the holes of the sketchbook in the right place, pull it to one end and insert the long end into the fabric sleeve. Checking that there are no twists, sew the elastic together. I sewed mine using the sewing machine but it may be easier to sew by hand since the sketchbook is hanging off the elastic.
• If your cuts in the interior back were done neatly, you can glue whatever flaps that were left back in place, or you could just do what I did and use cute stickers to hide the open cuts at both ends.

Lots and lots of flowers. These images are from the Fleurs de Villes flower exhibit this past week. It's been around for a few years, but somehow I only knew about it this year. My favourites are the first two mannequins—elegant, seductive, and authoritative—just like how goddesses should be.

A few weeks ago, I went to The Art of The Brick Exhibit which features works by artist Nathan Sawaya made from LEGO pieces. I was a bit skeptical about whether it would be a waste of money, but it was more enjoyable than I expected. While there were many re-imagined pieces of famous artworks and new sculptural artworks, two of my favourites were Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Malevich's Suprematist Composition.

The last photo I included is the shadow from one of the art installations that consisted of figures hanging from the ceiling. I find myself quite drawn to interesting shadows of sculptural art (and plants). Sometimes, they can be just as or more intriguing than the artwork itself.

I also wondered why the camera was able to pick up more of a pixelated image than the eye. When I looked at Rembrandt's Self Portrait, there was barely an impression of a face. But at a distance or through the camera lens, the face was clearly visible. Google says it's because the human eye is an interpreter. It can only see the central area, called the fovea, in high resolution, so it needs to move and scan the area in order to stitch together the image and fill in any gaps. The camera, on the other hand, already has a set of uniform sensors in place to capture the image.

I don't even leave my apartment everyday so I was lucky to see the poster in the elevator and get a spot for a free bouquet workshop at my rental complex yesterday. Of course, the flowers were beautiful and the floral instructor from Make Lemonade was lovely. But there's a dark side too! When I go to workshops, my ego gets worked up. I feel that part of me that is confident in my artistic abilities and my mind judges it as arrogance. I feel that part of me that wants validation but my mind judges it as inadequacy. When I'm making art by myself I know that imperfection is part of the process, but for some reason in a group, I revert back to the shy and awkward child who is afraid to shine and have fun.

Early last year, I quit Instagram and LinkedIn. It wasn't for political reasons like many others who were leaving IG at that time. I was just uncomfortable with the ingrained inauthenticity that came with those platforms. I didn't have many followers and whether I was right or wrong, I didn't feel like the ones I had were able to see the real me, then or in the future, anyway. To make matters worse, many of them were my former colleagues, so I felt like I was performing a role that I had long since walked away from.

I tried to start fresh on Bluesky and Cara. My follower count never grew, so each post felt like a muffled shout into the void of a busy marketplace. Eventually, I realized that it didn't matter what platform I used. It was the structure of a social media feed that didn't work for me. I wanted to share the things that gave me joy in a pure and heart-felt way but social media was triggering my insecurities and my childhood need for validation. I was probably empathically picking up the energy of others who felt the same way as well. So again, I quit those platforms and decided to make my own image gallery without followers or likes.

It was a complicated quest because I wanted to use the gallery as a portfolio for my creative hobbies but also as a place to share what I found beautiful in the world. My triggered ego would tell me that I was arrogant and was just trying to show off when I wasn't a professional photographer or crafter, but my heart would say that the world's beauty is found outside and inside me. I am the observer and the vessel for the beauty that reaches me and the tools I used did not define the value of that beauty. What helped me through my dissonance was Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's quote that "love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."

My image gallery is an expression of my love and my search for love. But the true love I seek can only be found when the visitor is ready to see the beauty in me and resonate with the lens of beauty that I use to see the world. Its name, Glimpses: A Visual Archive of Life's Beauty, shows that even though individual glimpses may be brief, many glimpses together make an impression. Similarly, our lives may not be always beautiful, but our existence is always a resonance of divine beauty.

Since the gallery is static, I needed a place to share my ongoing glimpses. It isn't a perfect solution, but I can use this blog for that. The caveat, however, is that I need to integrate my two identities: the me who can step back to write high-level philosophy from the position of an observer of humanity, and the other, the messy, vulnerable me who longs to love and be loved, and like an innocent child, wants to share little moments of beauty and wonder with anyone and everyone. To make this possible, I now have two feeds in the menu (philosophy & glimpses). You can find the high-level me and the grounded me as two separate threads, but together, you will find me in my totality.