Pinned
wrote this a month ago & 15 people liked it & that was enough to make me happy & put it out of mind.
this weekend someone at substack found it & featured it & I went from around 100 subscribers to almost 4k over a few days.
surreal.
shani π± (sf)
1,184 posts
- a close friendβs birthday is today & i asked the people who love him to text me an object that represents their friendship the outcome: a painting that is incomprehensible to most but means everything to him
- for years, i never left home without a sketchbook now i have 30 books full of thoughts & sketches from train stations/bars/laundromats i rarely go back and flip through them, but one day, i want my grandkids to be able to see the world that was alive in my head (seoul, 2018)
- psa: thereβs a man in sf who traveled the world for 4 years learning how to make the best baklava & it is indeed the best baklava
- my smartest friend in college left tech & is now a farmer at a buddhist monastery his days are: harvesting & meditating & walking through the forest & cooking his meals he could excel at anything he wanted. he chose a life that is simple and good, with all his intelligence
- interviewed a woman who owns a shop in chinatown & this line she said lives rent free in my head
- my life became a lot more fun once i realized work can literally be anything, if i know how to sell it (this month i'm paying rent by writing mothers day poems for tech employees to mail their mom)
- after a lot of lukewarm dates, a friend tells me about a girl he met on an international flight to sf, how they sat next to each other for 5 hrs talking, how when they were going through airport security to enter the US, he was stuck talking to border control for a long time &
- in long distance, we had a routine of learning & teaching one thing to each other every week he chose the topic & i did a deep dive & we have a v long call with images & graphics explaining the findings he chose βweird animal mating ritualsβ
- recently someone read a poem that spun in my head for days the last line: "it's fear that will give you half a life & convince you, you never wanted the other half anyway" it's been a new challenge figuring out how to paint someone else's poem. i like how this turned out
- i had a hard time feeling understood by my parents when i was a kid. now, i am realizing how much of it comes down to not understanding my parents too. this is a letter I wrote my dad. i was surprised that he wanted me to share it openly. 1/3
- two years ago i fell for someone who loved taking photos almost as much as he loved espresso & we lived in mexico city and could hear proposals happening in the restaurant across the street from our balcony & now we are no longer together and i know to move a little slower. but
- been dating someone & it was his birthday! made this for him (ft. his apt above joe and the juice, the green parrots in sf, his love for cats & the polish opening in chess)
- i asked a nyc photographer friend βwhatβs the best photo youβve taken recentlyβ (thinking i can paint it on a postcard & mail it to him) this wasnt what i expected
