We are only a few days into May but, so far I have been pretty productive. In this entry, I’ll go into some details about new projects, and things I am hoping to release this month. This is mostly for me to keep track of what I’m doing, but maybe some other people might be curious about what I’m working on this month.

The main thing I will be working on this month is continuing to make more videos for my YouTube channel, which is linked on this site, it’s one of the socials buttons. I am working on some varied topics to release in the next month. The next video I hope to release is about an anime character from an older series that I think is an important character in the general world of manga and anime, but is not talked about that often.

The next video is what started out to be a longer video essay on an anime series, but has turned into a series of videos. I am thinking there will be seven videos in the series, but I’m still writing the first drafts of the videos from a rough outline I made this week. I did about two months of research for this series and I hope it turns out to not only be fun but also informative, and a starting resource to jump into one’s own exploration of different facets of the series. I’m hoping to be done with this series by the end of Summer.

Of course, I am also continuing to work on my Mutant Memories series, and I plan to still release a couple of New Mutants re-read videos a month, but I am spreading myself really thin so I may have to be a little less aggressive with my goals. I am possibly going to be involved with something really cool with some other people on the topic of the New Mutants, with a specific focus on Illyana, so I’m crossing my fingers it works out! (This might be happening at the end of the month.) As details develop and once I can reveal more I will definitely let everyone know!

I am really happy a lot of people are enjoying one of my videos about the anime Nana. I am getting a lot of great comments too! So if you are one of the people who was interacting with the video, thank you so very much! I make things because I enjoy it, but it definitely feels good to know something you made interacted nicely with other people.

The next thing I will be working on is continuing to experiment with different types of generative art and digital as well as traditional art (I want to do some line drawings and watercolor paintings). The primary way I have been making generative art is through already available apps but also using the R package “generative art” and C4 and “Processing” as well as other algorithms in different environments. Still, I’m just now (like in the past week) beginning to delve into this and I have a lot to learn still.

I have a lot of feelings about completely AI-created art, but I will make a future post detailing those. I did talk about it briefly on my Instagram so read that if you really care I guess. This leads me to the next project I’m doing preliminary work on and am researching.

My husband and I are both interested in eventually some time this year beginning to train our own AIs to help us streamline the different projects we are working on. The timeline on this depends on several factors so right now it’s still just “cloud talk”.(Our term for daydreaming or the beginning stages of just imagining goals and possibilities.) But we are both excited about the possibilities of future projects like this that we are dreaming up!

Also, this is a random thing but I’m typing to you from my new keyboard my husband bought for me! Do I sound cooler? It’s another mechanical keyboard because I will never not use mechanical keyboards again other than the gummy keyboard I have for writing on my iPad. My old keyboard I really liked my look of, and I am used to typing on it, so this is a bit weird and I’m going to have to get used to this. But it had round keys fashioned after an old-fashioned typewriter…which is super cool looking and people who saw it always thought it was so neat…BUT there is a lot of space between the keys and I found that dust and cat hair got in there very easily and it looked gross all the time. I would clean it so often, but to do that you had to remove all the keys which was a huge pain in the ass. The next keyboard I get I plan on building myself, but this new one has most of the things I would have in a custom-built keyboard. I haven’t decided which keyboard to make yet, but I do think I would like it to have some sort of screen on it, possibly blue switches, but I already use brown and am fond of those, I guess I will decide later. I am interested in ceramic keycaps as well. Sorry, I just really love getting new computer accessories! (I recently upgraded my monitor as well, my old one had some issues I put up with for a few years)This leads me to my next project for this month.

I got a small kit to build my own electric piano/synth with a few different sounds. I will have to do some soldering which I haven’t done extensively before, so that’s exciting. I’ll document my progress in photos probably because due to my schedule and family life this will have to be a weekend-only project most likely. But I am hoping to finish it in the next month or two. The next thing I want to build is a Theremin, I’m interested in building mostly computers and things to help me create music. Eventually, when I go back to work full time I would like to get into modular synths and the like, but I do not currently have the cash to fund this, and music is a hobby for me, not a thing that really pays me back monetarily, so I also cannot justify getting into all that at this time. But seriously it’s cool shit, and I have been playing with VCV Rack as much as I have time for.

To go further into music work, I know that I posted about my opening track on the new album I am working on. But I’m officially going to announce that my new album “Weird Machine” is coming out sometime this year! I’m about 1/4 of the way to a complete album, I think, but that is just a guess. My goal is to release it in November but that is subject to change.

Teaser image for the new Frost Flowers album

I have made many notes and stories that have influenced the feel and sound of the album “Weird Machine” that I am working on. The album takes place in a future where humans are almost extinct and there are random androids and machines wandering around a ruined world being overtaken by nature, but still filled with advanced tech. The different songs are about adventures and connections people and androids and machines connect in this world. It’s kind of a mish-mash of genres at the moment, but I feel good about four of the songs I have made. I might release some of the tracks not included on the album soon, just depends on how much I can get done. I have been experimenting with sampling, guitars, and highly filtered layers and voices as well as more organic sounds. I am just trying to be chill and enjoy the process.

Now for the writing updates, I am still editing my final content draft of the novel I have been working on forever and ever. I really hope I can make more headway on it, but I haven’t felt as into it recently and I have found it is best not to force things. But I actually did do some writing and because I am insane: I started a new novella/possible novel. The other night I stayed up until five am writing and writing and writing this story. It came out of nowhere. This book is kind of like a puzzle, kind of like an ARG, well at least inspired by ARGs and also fiction and experimental. It is very different than the things I have written in the past few years, but the change is good. I am hoping to release this book early next year, but again we will see how things go, these are loose timelines. This month I plan to work on it every Friday if I feel up to it. It’s kind of a rabbit hole of a project, so I feel breaks are necessary, also I have other projects I am trying to be consistent on like my videos and music so I can’t let this distract me too much. The themes of the book are psychosis, reality, the simulation hypothesis, mental health, and found computer files.

I was out of narcolepsy medicine the first few days of May so I was pretty laid out most of the day. But now I am doing a lot better back on my medication. Some of my psych meds are being changed as well, and so far the change is going very well. This is pleasing because sometimes medication changes do not go so well for me. I am still really weak and tired most of the time physically, but I am working on improving this, also I have been eating better and have lost some weight. I have been pretty productive the past few days, but I’m also kind of scrambling because my time to work on these things will be cut more than in half at the beginning of June due to certain responsibilities. I keep reminding myself not to push too hard because I don’t want to have a huge burnout. I think that is all the stuff I plan to work on this month!

Hope you have a great day or night! I’ll keep this blog updating hopefully pretty frequently and I will be continuing my series on being creative with mental or physical limitations probably in the next post.

-Aisling