The Druthers

Thank you to everyone who participated in the raffle to win a Summer Camp animation frame. Your contributions raised $4,200 for Give Directly and low income families impacted by the LA Wildfires. The winners can be found here:

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I’m going to be posting less on instagram and sharing my work here and on my website instead. To quote the iconic Kirsten Lepore:

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I’ve been using the About a Boy Method to wean myself off social media.

But instead of Hugh’s 30 minute increments of time, my increments are measured in ‘is my thumb opening instagram.’ I’m only a few days in, but the exercise seems to be helping - I find myself faffing about much less.

To the Americans raising an eyebrow:

"Faff" is an informal British word that means to fuss or dither over something, or to spend time on unimportant things.

You’re probably thinking that looking up the word faff is in fact, a faff, but it makes me feel pretty good. I have never looked up the etymology of a word and not been like woah, that’s poetry. It reminds me that people are at their core are eccentric, lovable rogues. Case in point:

Faff: Originally a dialect word for ‘blow in puffs or small gusts’, faff was describing the wind, imitating the sound.

I recently discovered that the term ‘druther’ as in ‘if I had my druthers’ is a truncated version of ‘would rather,’ and now I often find myself saying ‘if I had my would rathers.’ Not to anyone in particular. That wouldn’t make any sense.

The other thing i’m doing when I have my would rathers is drawing. Every time I felt the urge to open something mind numbing this week, I drew instead.

Then I remembered that I went to see the Maurice Sendak exhibition at the Skirball Centre last year and was very taken by this informational placard:

One of his Fantasy Sketches laid the groundwork for Where the Wild Things Are:

So I popped on Sleeping Beauty and started to draw.

Sure, I am not as quick at Maurice, sure I am not as talented, but that is not the point. The point is to save me from my rotten rotten urges.

I’ve just got the two things on the list so far but feeling preeeetty smug.

In English, smug first appeared in the 1550s and meant “trim, neat, spruce, smart.” Smug and smock are the immigrant offspring of Middle Low German smücken, “to dress,” as in “to creep or slip into.” ^[1] You smücken into a smock.

Would love to hear what everyone else is doing with their druthers.