Austin Kleon - A snow day in Texas

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. I’ve lived in Austin, Texas for 14 years, and I’ve never seen it snow as much as it did this week. (It is now sunny and 66 degrees.) None of it seemed to phase Coconut The Owl, who is still living in our palm tree. (I’m thinking of getting an outdoor camera so I can livestream Coconut’s naps.)
    
2. Reading: I enjoyed Akilah S. Richard’s Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work, much of it based on her podcast, Fare of the Free Child. A much-needed voice in the unschooling world. (From my bookshelf: I wrote about Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone.)
    
3. The creative process in 43 Hayao Miyazaki screengrabs. 
    
4. Video games; My kids got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, and after playing Super Mario Maker 2 for a few days straight, they abandoned it for Minecraft and Scratch on their computers. (Or whatever it is they do during screen time.) The result has been that I have become totally addicted to The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild. (Here’s some creative wisdom in a Zelda screen grab.)
    
5. Who said art is only for the one percent? Here’s a painter subverting art-world economics, one $100 painting at a time. (Don’t miss Lynda Barry’s Etsy and the paintings of Steve Keene.) 
    
6. I did a lot of video editing in my office this week and updated my speaking page. If your organization could use a talk or a workshop, hit me up!
    
7. Netflix: Pretend It’s A City, Martin Scorsese’s mini-series about his friend, Fran Lebowitz, is pretty delightful. (And if you like that, don’t miss the documentary he made about her, Public Speaking.)
    
8. Ear candy: my friend Deb Chachra had two great BBC radio recommendations for music to work to: Ambient Focus and Focus Beats. (Don’t miss their MF Doom epsidode. I wrote this newsletter to a playlist of his Special Herbs cuts. )
    
9. RIP Joanne Rogers. (Check out her TEDx talk, “Make Goodness Attractive.”) 
    
10. Go easy on yourself this week. It’s still Winter in America. If you’re stuck on a project, maybe let it sit until it tells you what it wants.