I don’t make new year’s resolutions. Instead, I make a new year’s to-do list comprised of a single, massive undertaking. Then, I break the overall undertaking into smaller and smaller groups of tasks, order them hierarchically, and work away at it all, bit by bit, until the project is done (or I give up).

My 2024 to-do was “get my affairs in order.” You know, estate planning. I have neither an estate to speak of nor plans nor a desire to become incapacitated or die any time soon. Even so, I’m a single parent with no family and few friends (and none who know me well enough or live close enough to take over if I were to become incapacitated or die any time soon) and a history of mental illness. Plus, there’s the ongoing COVID pandemic, the likely incoming bird flu pandemic, and climate collapse. So, even though I don’t have plans or a desire to become incapacitated or die any time soon, I recognize that these things are not, ultimately, in my control, and I made it my mission this year to plan as best I could for the inevitable.

This was a deeply uncomfortable undertaking. It was also an important and necessary one. After a year of difficult work—I had to stop and take weeks-long breaks several times throughout the year because thinking about these things often triggered my OCD (existential subtype) and derealization, and the administrative aspect of estate planning is not compatible with my autistic executive dysfunction—I managed to check this to-do off my list at the eleventh hour (yesterday!). Thank fuck.

In 2025, I want to tackle my digital photo and video organization and storage. Like 2024’s to-do, this will be a massive undertaking. I anticipate it will also be massively frustrating at most points and massively rewarding and helpful once it’s complete. (I’ve been trying (“trying”) to tackle this task since, like, 2018 as part of a larger digital decluttering project I’ve been very slowly chipping away at. It has always felt too overwhelming. Getting my affairs in order also felt incredibly overwhelming and I managed to do it anyway. I’m hoping the sense of achievement and ability that crossing that to-do off my list gave me helps me finally get to the finish line with this project, too.)

I’m not yet sure how I’ll approach this thing because I haven’t yet completely mapped out the project. I do know that my first steps will be to figure out where all my digital media is, and then, before I start fucking around with it, back it all up.

Completing these two steps will be challenging considering several of my memory cards are missing or lost (RIP), a not insignificant amount of media (about eight years’ worth) is saved locally on an old laptop that I don’t currently have physical access to (it’s in a co-parent’s garage, thousands of miles away) and may not actually even work anymore, my old Dropbox account isn’t downloading/exporting files correctly (and their support team can’t figure out why), and I have a bevy of photos that now exist only online with photo storage services I don’t remember the names of and maybe don’t exist anymore. And then there’s the headache of the media that I do currently have access to, which, at roughly 130,000 photos and videos, is beyond overwhelming.

Eventually, this undertaking will also involve distinguishing iPhone media from GoPro media from “real” camera media (this is something that is important to me right now; it may not be once I get going with this project); going through all my screenshots and probably deleting most of them; figuring out offline backup solutions; and drafting a README document that explains where everything is and how it’s organized so that when the time comes my kids can easily find what they’re looking for.

The end result of this project doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to work better than what I’m doing now: Whatever the solution, it should be able to adapt to changes (as best as can be anticipated) in technology, our access to it (I am deeply concerned about the future of the internet), and how we use it; it should be able to adapt to my needs; it should include both on- and offline redundancy; and it should be easy and economical to use, maintain, and back up. Data privacy and security, especially in regard to (1) citizen surveillance and (2) customer data being used to train AI, is also very important to me. Unfortunately, both of these things seem ultimately unavoidable.

Because this to-do overlaps so heavily with the types of things I’ve shared so far here on the blog—memorykeeping, other creative and creative-ish projects, small adventures I take (or find) myself on—I’m sharing about it here on the blog, too. Partly to help myself stay focused on this monumental task, and partly in case it’s the push someone else needs to get going—or pick back up—with their own similar effort. Progress report to come.

CW: rape, sexual assault

I have a lot of ideas for creative projects that I don’t follow through on for one reason or another. Mostly because I have no confidence. And also because I often lack the knowledge, technical skills, and/or network (and requisite networking skills) needed to produce the projects I’ve dreamt up. This is one of those projects.

I call it Things Like That Don’t Happen Here. It’s the beginning of a collection of photos of places at which I’ve been raped and otherwise sexually assaulted—all very normal, regular, everyday places where “things like that,” people like to say and think and believe, don’t happen. Below are the first four photos I took for the project. (Unfortunately, and likely unsurprising to many, I’ve been raped and otherwise sexually assaulted at far more than these four places.)

I was inspired to create this project almost a decade ago (!!) by the touring art exhibit What Were You Wearing, which displays different outfits—all very normal, regular, everyday outfits—that people were wearing when they were sexually assaulted. “The exhibit is meant to challenge the idea that provocative clothing is the cause of the sexual assault, a stereotype used for victim blaming.” I wanted this project to do something similar. I still want that.

My vision is for this project to be ongoing and community-sourced—an always-accessible, online collection of photos (and maybe accompanying vignettes?) contributed (anonymously, of course) by anyone who wants to share the story of their own sexual assault(s) in this way. I have no idea how to organize or curate or fund such a project. Here’s hoping that publishing this post will help jump start the momentum/motivate me to figure it the hell out.

As noted in my previous post a mere eight months ago, I’ve wanted to DIY my own candle using the leftover wax of a bunch of candles (of the same scent) that I’ve burned to the bone over the last couple years for months and months and months now and guess what bitch I finally did it. Behold.

Here’s how I did it, and you can too:

Step 1: Head down to your local Rejuvenation and fork over $39* for a candle because it’s the best-smelling candle you’ve ever smelled in your entire life (it’s also the only thing in the store you can afford).

Step 2: Burn it for about an hour almost every evening before bed until it’ll no longer light.

Step 3: Move the burned-out candle to the back of one of your kitchen cabinets for safekeeping because you can’t bear to throw it out—it smells too good, the packaging is too pretty, it cost too much money.

Step 4: Repeat Steps 1 through 3 seven more times over the next 18-ish months.

Step 5: Quit the highest paying job you’ve ever had that provided you with the expendable income to regularly buy and burn a $39 candle.

Step 6: Intermittently grab one of the burned-out candles from your kitchen cabinet and huff it, sad to your core that you can no longer afford to regularly buy and burn a fresh replacement.

Step 7: Spend several months wondering if you have enough leftover wax from the eight burned-out candles in the back of one of your kitchen cabinets to make a candle because you can no longer afford to regularly buy and burn a fresh replacement.

Step 8: Spend several more months researching candle wicks, overwhelmed by the options and unable to make a decision about which to buy.

Step 9: Unexpectedly receive a package in the mail from your former roommate that contains the cutest little Old Fashioned glass that would make the perfect candle holder.

Step 10: Say “fuck it” and spend $24.76 (including standard shipping) on a sample pack of wicks of varying lengths, and a pack of little metal bars that holds the wick in place, so you can DIY your own candle using $312 of melted-down leftover wax from eight $39 candles and the cute little glass your former roommate sent you as a surprise gift.

*Due to inflation, this candle now costs $42 and the entire project will now cost you $360.76 (or $368.71 if you have to buy your own Old Fashioned glass) 🙁

Okay now that the fun part of the post is over I need to be so for real with you.

I consider myself a creative person. I absolutely do not consider myself an artistic or crafty person. My brain is good at coming up with ideas and much less good at bringing those ideas to life, especially when doing so requires using my hands in a traditionally artistic or crafty way. Drawing, painting, ceramics, knitting, sewing, needlepoint, cross-stitch, etc. I love the idea of doing those things in theory. I absolutely do not enjoy actually doing any of those things in practice. And I’ve tried! I’ve tried on my own, and I’ve tried taking classes. Hands-on making just isn’t my thing.

And yet, I still felt compelled to make this candle. It seemed like an unfuckupable project. And it was. It’s very hard to fuck up melting down wax in one container and pouring it into another.

I thought/hoped that doing a relatively simple and unfuckupable, hands-on crafty project might change how I feel about doing hands-on crafty stuff because I really do love the idea of being artsy and crafty. Unfortunately, a project being unfuckupable does not guarantee it will be fun or enjoyable. I didn’t fuck up this project, and I also didn’t have fun or enjoy doing it. I was mostly just stressed out and annoyed the entire time over how much time and space in my extremely tiny kitchen that has almost no counter space it took to melt down all the wax in eight different containers. They joy was not, as they say, in the journey; it was in the destination.

Will I do this type of project again? Maybe. If I end up with a bunch of burned-out candles of the same scent, sure. What I won’t be doing is picking up candle-making as a regular hobby, and it certainly won’t be something I try to make money from. Sorry folks, no Candles by Kelsey™ forthcoming.

Also, can I just say that I’m very happy that I didn’t pay to take a local candle-making class because I’m almost certain that I would’ve felt like that money was wasted and that I wouldn’t have enjoyed the group setting and social dynamics of the class, or the overall sensory experience of the space, because: autism.

(I know it sounds ridiculous to say I would’ve felt like taking a candle-making class was wasted money when I spent almost $350 doing this project on my own BUT I spent most of that $350-ish on the same candle with a scent I LOVE and got to enjoy for months and months and months as I burned through those eight candles. There’s no guarantee that I would like any of the available scents at an in-person candle-making class, and it’s more likely than not that my autistic brain would be overwhelmed by the assortment of available scents. And honestly, the at-home version is incredibly straightforward: melt wax (that’s already scented with a scent you love), pour into container, let sit to harden.)

Along with reinforcing my conviction that hands-on arts and crafts are not for me, this project also reinforced my appreciation and admiration for people who are good at and passionate and knowledgable about making things with their hands. I’d much rather spend my money (when I can afford to) on quality crafted goods than try to make them on my own. I want to spend my time doing things I enjoy, and I simply—and, sadly—don’t enjoy hands-on making/crafting.

For the last few years I’ve had the same three creative projects on my to-do list. I’d like to make some progress on them this year. One is pretty straightforward and has a very clear “finished” end state. The other two projects are less straightforward because I don’t yet know how I want to “do” them so I don’t yet know what either will look like when they’re “finished.”

Make a candle from a bunch of old candles of the same scent

This is the most straightforward project on my list. It’s also the least expensive and requires way less time, thought, effort, and energy than the other two. And it’s exactly what it sounds like: I want to make a candle using the leftover wax from a bunch of old candles of the same scent that I have stashed away in one of my kitchen cabinets. And I want to pour the candle in a new-to-me container that I thrift.

1923 daily diary transcription

A few years ago I found a “page-a-day” type diary at a local antique mall. It’s from 1923 and there’s an entry for every single day. I want to finish transcribing it and then…I don’t know. There’s at least one fun project in there. I’m just not sure what it is yet.

Vintage photos

Around the same time I found the 1923 diary, I began buying vintage photos from antique malls and thrift stores. I know what I want to do with them. I don’t yet know what media format I want to use. We’ll all just have to wait and see.