The photo above is me in my backyard studio in mid-late 2020.
[Image Description: A young woman in a small garage converted workspace stands by her desk with a sewing machine and other appliances on top. She is looking at the camera with a slight smile on her face. Next to her is a clothing rack with pants and other garments she has made. Behind her over looks palm trees and other trees in the background].
The quick update is that it’s 2021, we’re still in the covid-19 pandemic, and after being forced leaving my job at the most beautiful intergenerational community technology center ever, running away to Aruba for 10 days and then two weeks later to Mexico for a month, and finally getting out of my 3 year saturn return (whew!) I’ve decided to go back to school 😝. I’m getting my DIY PHD in something like technology and new media applications for community empowerment movements (😂 I just made that up! so it will probably change on a weekly basis haha). I started on January 4th, 2020 and so far the schedule is bomb and the syllabus is cute and I’m excited to see how this evolves, shapes, grows, and what I take away from it. Over the next several months, I’ll be documenting my classes, process, progress, and insights here (hopefully 🤞). Keep reading to see my course schedule, what I’ll be studying this semester and why I’m doing this.
I will be using this space to document each class, project, learnings, and findings. Sometimes these posts may long/insightful, other times they may just be notes so I can remember things later. I’m trying to get better at documenting my process, and that’s what this is all about enjoying, being present in, and learning from the process. Not only am I the eager student but I’m also the eager professor so I will be developing my syllabus, assignments, and a process for evaluation (!) as I go. So let’s get started with the basics.
COURSE LISTINGS (which of course is subject to change, grow, all the things)
Sewing Techniques (Sew It Academy)
Conversational Spanish (Pimsleur language app)
Witchcraft, Death Studies, and Magical Development
Fashion and Waste (Slow Factory - Open Education)
Independent Study 1: Waste as Wearable Art
Independent Study 2: Creating fashion as tools of political and social resistance and protection.
SCHEDULE
Monday, Tuesday:
10-11am: Conversational Spanish
11-1:30pm: Sew It Academy
1:30-3:00pm: Lunch break
3:00 - 4pm: Witchcraft
Wednesday:
10-11am: Conversational Spanish
11:00am - 1:30: Independent Study 1
1:30-2:30pm: Lunch
2:30-4:00pm: Independent Study 1
Thursday:
Hanging with Ziva (6-year-old neice) all day!
Friday:
9am-10:00am: Fashion & Waste
10:30-11:30: Conversational Spanish
12:00 - 4:00pm: Independent Study 2
I also do a lot of my reading for my witchcraft class every night. The syllabus is as follows but continues to grow.
Syllabus for Witchcraft and Magical Developments:
You Were Born for This, Chani Nicholas
Witchery, Juliet Diaz
Plant Witchery, Juliet Diaz
Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown
Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
Surviving Death, Netflix Series
(syllabus will be updated as the semester continues). I will also be keeping a dream journal as I am focusing on dream messages and I also have downloaded the Chani app for weekly and daily astrology readings.
A little bit about why I am doing this...
2020 was a crazy year for us all. For me, it involved leaving my dream job 9 months into the year after experiencing months of horrible toxic masculinity from a new employer. This was the year the Earth threw us Covid-19 and was like, “I tried to tell y’all to stop with your fuck shit that is destroying us all so you know what, I’m gonna kill you now and in order to stay safe you have to stay inside and think about how to create a new world that actually works for the Earth and for the people.” So I listened and now I’m thinking. In December, around the time of the Great Conjunction and Saturn leaving Capricorn, I went back and reread old journals from my three year Saturn Return, to reflect on how much I’ve grown. Except I went back even further. And I realized that there have been project ideas and skills I’ve been wanting to learn for years that I haven’t gotten the courage to pursue yet. So I wanted to take the time to learn them and finish them. And in order to do that, I knew I needed to have some kind of schedule. So I decided to pretend I was in school and write down what the courses would be if I really were. And viola, I put the classes on my calendar and I started after the holiday break. I have some project goals and outcomes that would be nice to have come out of this time, but I’m really just here to learn, to practice, and be in the process not focused on the end result. This concept is so new to me, so I’m really happy and excited to be here, to have the opportunity available to me right now (disclaimer: I have unemployment and some savings) and to see where this takes me next. But I’m excited for this ride.
