It’s been a while

The last post I made was a month and half ago. My life has gone through quite a lot of turmoil in the interim.

I lost my job due to downsizing in the small startup that I was working in. This was a shock to the system that has still left me reeling. I’m good at my job and a dedicated worker, so I didn’t see it coming – but I’m also highly paid, and I guess that I should have seen the signs that the company wasn’t doing as well as it should have. I’m deep in the job search process, and learning a lot about myself and the industry as I go along. I enjoy the challenge of technical interviews and I enjoy meeting and talking to new people, but I wish that I could have done this under different circumstances. This is just a reminder that no, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best at what you do, and no, the company isn’t your family. It’s a business interest that sees you as a number, and it is your responsibility to ensure that your worth and your identity is never in their hands, but only in yours.

I lost my remaining grandparents – both my father’s mother and father died just three weeks apart. They were old and in poor health so it wasn’t a shock, but it’s still a “memento mori” sort of moment.

We’ve had more rockets, on-again off-again peace agreements, and are now in constant existential murk of “what does the future hold?” The only clarity from all this is that if we want a future here, we absolutely must have a new and better government come autumn.

My journaling practice has become patchy – the more stress I’m under the more I need it, and the more stress I’m under the less likely I am to pick up a pen and actually journal. I am still trying to figure out how to get back into the habit.

I got a cold, so the past two weeks my training has suffered. I only just got back to weight lifting, and I’ll see if my battered lungs can handle a bit of run and swim this weekend. Ever since my chemotherapy upper respiratory infections have been taking me longer to recover from (it’s a known long term side effect of the treatment), and as my mood is directly tied to how much exercise I manage to get in, it’s been rough.

I have been rucking more, to make up for not being able to run or swim. Rucking is just a fancy name for walking with weight on your back. As a treat for finishing my certification earlier in the year, I bought myself a GoRuck Basic Rucker and a 10lb ruck plate. I’ve been using it a few times a week to get more out of walks in my neighbourhood.

I’ve been using social media to numb some of these anxieties, and it’s not a good thing. It’s time for a
“detox” and to get back to using my free time for things that actually benefit me and the world, not a group of billionaires.

Quick Cafe Sketches

Quick cafe sketches done between the rocket alerts.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 5

Last day of the challenge and I got all 100 (well, 101) people done. Today includes people in the streets near my house as well as people in the shelter.

Field Notes sketchbook and Faber Castell Pitt pens.

The bottom panel was supposed to a panorama in fountain pen ink but this is very unfountain pen friendly paper

As usual this was a fun and challenging challenge to do, and I hope to get to do it again next year.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 4

Still lagging behind a bit since I’m still sick, but these are today’s batch. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

Field Notes sketchbook and Faber Castell Pitt pens

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 3

We had a rocket attack every three hours last night so I was very tired today. Got only 10 sketches out of the 20, although I may be able to get some more tonight.

Field Notes sketchbook, Faber Castell Pitt pens.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 2

Shelter sketches today as well, on a battered Field Notes sketchbook using Faber Castell Pitt pens. I have a cold, so it was a struggle to get these done today.

One Week 100 People 2026 Day 1

It’s time for the yearly one week 100 people challenge. This year I’ll be doing most of it out of a bomb shelter.

The first three sketches were done at a morning zoom meeting on a Stillman and Birn Alpha.

The rest were done in the bomb shelter throughout the day, on a a Field Notes sketchbook that has seen some water damage.

Sketched with a Faber Castell Pitt 0.3 pen and brush pens.

Weekly Update – Sketches, Film Photography and a 10K Race

A hectic week but an interesting one.

I went to see a local production of Singer, a play by Peter Flannery. It was phenomenal but it kept me up at night, which meant that the following morning I headed straight to my local cafe. I sketched the barista but something didn’t work in terms of getting her face right – she turned out sadder than she is. Sketching tired is rough.

Here’s the rather messy pencil and pen sketch. I can tell just by the line quality that I was very, very tired.

A day later I went to sketch at the nearby park and you can see the difference in the line quality in this sketch:

Initial sketch:

Later that week the film photographs that I’d had developed were returned to me. Here are a few of my favourites:

The local community cat that I feed twice a day coming to say hi

I love the atmosphere that the film gives this simple photo:

All of these photos are unedited. I’ll likely clean them up later on.

Bridge over water at a nature reserve near Haifa

There was a fire on the roof of a nearby hotel. I took this photo a day after the fire, and you can see the damage:

Cat failing to hunt a crow:

A stall at the local farmer’s market:

A stall at the local farmer’s market. You can see the see in the background.

I was supposed to run at a 10k night race on Wednesday, but I wasn’t feeling too good and I was apprehensive about dealing with the crowds so I ran the distance by myself a few hours before the official race start. It was a good decision as I was really struggling during the first 3k – but I did manage to finish, and finish strong.

I finished reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie (a powerful narrative, but not as punchy as “With the Old Breed”), read “Death of a Nurse” by M.C. Beaton as a palate cleanser, and I’ve now started “The Shattering Peace”, John Scalzi’s long awaited sequel to his Old Man’s War series.

I’ve been overwhelmed with the responses to my Pelikan Hubs post. Thank you all for your kindness and for the thought and effort you put into your comments. I read them all, I just wasn’t able to respond to all of them this week.

Speaking of the Hubs, all of my pre-hubs inked pens have been written dry, which means that I currently have a 100% Pelikan rotation, plus some Platinum Preppy’s that I use for sketching.

Have a great week!

Weekly Update: Mars Yard 3.0

My Tom Sachs Nikecraft Mars Yard 3.0 sneakers arrived! I worked so hard to earn these and they were so expensive that for a moment I wondered if I’d ever wear them. But then I saw the bottom of the box:

The box is so well designed:

There are even hidden ten bullets:

There are two sets of sockliners that come with these shoes, one made of cork and one made of mesh:

And here are the shoes themselves:

Yes, I am wearing them, and yes, they are very comfortable. They aren’t in any way loud or attention grabbing, but that’s part of why I like them so much.

I’m nearing the end of reading “Helmet for My Pillow” by Robert Leckie. It’s a powerful narrative, but I think that “With the Old Breed” packed more punch. I also went to the Pelikan Hubs 2025 and you can read all about that here. I’ve now only got Pelikans inked up (and one Platinum Preppy), which is an interesting experience.

I sketched a new barista at my favourite cafe. The customers kept cutting off the view so I gave up on sketching the rest of the counter at some point. I was using my arttoolkit palette, which is ultra portable and contains a different set of paints than what I’m used to using. The notebook is a Stillman and Birn pocket Beta:

I went to develop film last week, and also went to an artist’s open house and splurged on a new painting. Have good art on your walls. It makes a difference.

Have a great week!

Weekly Update – Baristas and Cats and Plays, Oh My

Long time no update so this one contains multitudes.

I have started taking a small sketching kit with me on my long runs. I take my Pith Kabosu, Aquarius Urban Sketchers watercolour palette, a fineliner of some sort, a waterbrush and a Pentel P209 mechanical pencil. I finish my runs at my local cafe and sketch there over a sandwich and coffee.

Here’s the preliminary sketch, done in pencil and a 0.5 fineliner:

I am really enjoying my Pith sketchbook, and I’ve been taking it with me almost every day and sketching a lot more. My brother’s cat:

Another sketch at the cafe, this time of a customer:

While I’ve been sketching a lot more since the Urban Sketcher’s Poznan symposium, my journaling has taken a big hit. This oftentimes happens to me after traveling, as I rarely have time for regular journaling during a trip, and I often replace writing with sketching when traveling. The issue is that this time I’ve been struggling to return to the habit, mostly because I’ve picked up a few bad habits during the last two months of travel and chaos.

As many in the Urban Sketchers community use Instagram I started using the app before the symposium (I didn’t have it installed on my phone beforehand), and I got into the unfortunate habit of using it. Earlier this week I deleted it and logged out of YouTube on my phone, as I’ve been wasting time on there too. It’s been a relief – I’m not posting my sketches there, but I realized that I don’t really have an audience there – I’m just unpaid labour for billionaires. It’s bad enough that AI bots are scraping my site for content, but I don’t see a reason why I should allow my brain to be addicted to the slot machine tactics of an ecosystem that relies on me spending as much time as possible there to make its money.

My planning also took a hit due to travel, but I’ve gradually gotten things on track. My Q4 planning was about two weeks late, but as these were holiday weeks it wasn’t a big deal. I’ve also scaled down my plans to better accommodate holidays and travel.

Lest you think that I only go to plays when I’m abroad, I did catch two plays during the past two weeks. One was a wonderful community theatre staging of “Twisted”, performed during the local “comicon” – a sci-fi, fantasy and roleplaying game convention that happens once a year.

Twisted is a StarKid musical that is a funny, profanity full take of Aladdin from Jafar’s point of view. One of the striking things about it is that it highlights the actual problem points with the original plot.

Speaking of that convention, I also got to give a lecture, run a tabletop RPG (a Dungeon World adventure that I wrote and ran), help master a LARP and meet a lot of cool friends. Oh, and sell a good amount of books that I no longer needed. Yay to more room on my overcrowded shelves!

This week I got to see a play at the local theatre, “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem”. The play is based on a bestseller by the same name, and there has already been a TV series on the saga of the Ermoza family. While the actors were good, I thought that the play lacked depth, likely because the story needed more time to unfold.

The cast of The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem

This morning I went on a walk before my usual swim. This sketch was made using a combination of Aquarius watercolours, Caran d’Ache neocolor II crayons, a Tombow brush pen and a 0.5 fineliner, all on a Pith Kabosu sketchbook.

We’ve been having some stunning sunsets lately. Have a great and peaceful week!

Writing at Large

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