I spent the day with artist Rochelle Botello the other day. I wrote a thing about her in the Huffington Post a little while back. She rocks. I haven’t been feeling social, but do I ever? We had a good time. We met at Buster’s for coffee and came back to my place and I showed her what I used to look like before I put on weight. Ha! Overall, we talked about some good stuff, like art and how important the moment is. She opened my eyes a bit about that. I needed reminding about how important the little moments are. I suffer from depression and I don’t focus on these little happinesses as much as I need to. Luckily, I’m about to start seeing a therapist again. Something I haven’t done in a long, long time. Not really since my parents died, so it will probably be good for me. Am I getting too personal? Too bad for you!

I’m so tired, but today I finally finished up a couple logo designs – I don’t usually do such thing, but it is for a very special organization that means a lot to me and they asked me to submit something, so I gave them a couple options. They may or may not use them. We’ll see. I’ll know by next week or so. I’m also waiting on a couple things I applied to, like the special print residency at the Lower East Side Print Shop in NY. I don’t think I will hear back from them until February though. Can’t get my hopes up. I always say that, but my hopes are always up. Who am I fooling. I think it’s funny when people say they aren’t going to get their hopes up about this stuff because when the rejection comes, we are going to be just as disappointed whether we acted like our hopes were up or not. So why not live with our hopes high? It’s all a big fucking let down in the end, or it’s not. Such is the roller-coaster of being an artist. It’s mostly rejection – we know that going in.

December I think I got 4 rejections, 2 on the same day. January I didn’t win the West Prize. (Big surprise!) But I am always applying for shit anyway. I’ve applied for the Guggenheim twice. And as for the Pollock-Krasner: the 8th time’s a charm! Last week I put in my application for CCF. I probably shouldn’t have put it in so early, but I don’t have anything coming up on the horizon to add to the resume, so I figured, why not? I want to apply for the CCI thing, but I want funding for my novel. I’m stuck not knowing how to submit my materials. Do I submit my past artwork, or do I submit parts of the manuscript? See? Who knows. I wrote them to ask and they would not give me an answer, but they encouraged me to apply for a change-up in my medium. Great, but what work sample do I submit??? I don’t even know if I’m past the deadline by now.

The novel is daunting. I work on it like a leaky sink: drip-drip-drip. Meanwhile, Michael pounds out 9000 words at a time. I’m lucky if I can write 1000 in a sitting. I have my toe in too many ponds, or whatever the saying is. If I’m going to be a writer, you’d think I’d know my metaphors!

I have a group show opening this Sunday. Do you want to drive all the way out to West Hills? I don’t even know if I do! The work is simple, but it’s all new and it’s in Hebrew.