Welcome to My Life

What if you could live your life all over again? I was thirty-three, clumsy, frustrated with life and terrified of fatherhood. I went years without a steady job, which really ticked my wife off because she was forced to work 12 hours a day so she could give our daughter a better future.

Our apartment was a messy two-bedroom located on the third floor of a very old building in downtown Manila. It was filled with college kids and the landlord was accustomed to haggling over rents. She was fifty-two but looked forty. A skinny woman with short brown hair trapped in a boring, sexless marriage. I'd spent hours in that little burrow wondering if I could steal her away for a weekend.

Not very long ago, I looked at some classy townhouses down south fit for a young professional. I'd dreamed of working in a high-pressure environment filled with great minds. I was sickened and saddened by what I had become, and I was astounded by the speed at which I had fallen.

But I vowed not to give up. I told myself: "Sure it's a rough and tumble world out there...but I will prevail. Sit on your butt around here all day and you'll starve to death." I promised to do something different and reinvent myself. That's what I did.

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Gilbert Legrand turns mundane stuff into delightful characters

Gilbert Legrand doesn't see the world like the rest of us. You see a scrubbing brush, he sees an Apache chief. You see a a pair of scissors, he sees smooching lovers. The French artist's imagination is so wild and unrestricted that he can turn the most ordinary objects into unexpected sources of delight. I just spent half an hour lurking on his website, and you should, too.

Katy Ann Gilmore is my new favorite on Instagram

Katy Ann Gilmore is a Los Angeles-based visual artist who specializes in making extraordinary illustrations on paper and large scale murals using micron and gel pens. Her elaborate line work is painstakingly methodical, layering strokes of the pen in varying directions to create amazing shapes and topography that look like they are covered with intricate mesh netting. I was wondering how many pen strokes does it take to complete just one of these drawings, so I did some research and found out that her small 5 in. by 7 in. illustrations typically take a few hours, while an 11 in. by 14 in. picture can take anywhere from 10-25 hours. "My hand does hurt a bit after marathon sessions, but never anything too crazy," she told Lisa Congdon. "I try to rest my eyes/hands/brain every once in awhile by looking away from the drawing, dropping the pen, and taking a breather." Katy received a BA in Mathematics, Art, and Spanish from Greenville College in Il...

The Salimbaa

Here's a strange tribal instrument I never heard of before now. Originally from the Tinananon tribe of southern Philippines, the bowl-shaped Salimbaa is made of metal and wood, has 30 bronze wound strings, and is played using two small sticks. Caleb Byerly, who makes lost/extinct musical tools in his North Carolina workshop, has an interesting story on how he made his first Salimbaa. WATCH: More details about Caleb and his craft over at Our State .

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