This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome and certainly encouraged (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please continue to preface if content is NSFW and properly spoiler/link such content. Those of you who’d like to post future Creative Endeavors Threads post your request in the comments below.

Now two weeks into the new reality. Things seem to be going well (Wednesday was probably the first time I felt comfortable at my present station and it was a terrific moment—the election certainly helped!). One of the more-or-less expected challenges of the new job is scheduling; for the first time in over twelve years, I don’t live within easy walking distance to work. Unlike most Americans who don’t live in New York or Chicago, I don’t have a car, and while that generally hasn’t been an existential issue (bus routes provide plenty of coverage, with one annoying weekly exception I can cover with my bike—it hasn’t been an issue riding straight home every night yet but that’s likely to change in a month or two) it’s still going to require some reconfiguration. I now don’t start work until noon, and so that frees up three or four hours of morning to create, which is really nice (I belatedly remembered that this was the general state of things during some of my most formative creative periods in the late teens). On the other hand, I have other priorities now, and while it looks like I can usually cover, say, exercise time after work with perks related to the new job, I’m still resistant to using my two consecutive days off for more mundane tasks like grocery shopping, not least as those two days are Fridays and Saturdays.

My feelings on having weekends off (or close to it) are complicated; I’ve wanted them for so long (for various reasons) that I don’t think I took into account how much I’d hitherto structured my social life around weeknight events—sketch nights, occasional bar trivia, club shows (the latter of which are still generally accessible on a strictly local basis)—until recently. While I’m going to miss those, it’s blowing my mind how much is now possible. The week before I started at the new place, I went to a (wonderful) exhibit at Wayne State’s Jacob Gallery in Detroit and noticed all of the event dates associated therewith were on future Fridays and Saturdays—this was also how I learned that the cancelled-last-year Noel Night (a holiday-themed late autumn festival centered around the creative communities of Wayne State, the DIA, and “Midtown” Detroit in general) was back on, which was great news. If anything, it looks like another challenge for me will be to find weekends when nothing’s going on so I can chill on occasion (and the coming holiday season will at least offer some free weeknights earlier than expected—there’ll be a week and a half of more-or-less paid vacation around Christmas and New Year’s*). Either way, looking forward to how things might shake up.

*I’m way too excited about this and will probably be disappointed as a result; “Betwixtmas” had been a pleasant, laidback time at my old job for much of my tenure as things usually died down after Christmas and, even if we’d get a brief uptick in business over New Year’s, it was generally nice and chill until the school year started back up, and sometimes well after. The season of 2017 saw the introduction of contract delivery services and Betwixtmas… was a thing of the past. Since that was also the month I started painting, I not only didn’t mind the Betwixtmas lull but was also massively looking forward to it, and the resulting letdown was palpable (though I swiftly rallied). This time around, not only should I have plenty of time to wrap up projects for the year (knock on wood), I should have a lot more leeway to plan stuff (that I haven’t already) for 2027.

How’s your work going?