I would happily create until I am cold in the soil

The Hypno Bat Electric Eel pillows are finally out in the world. A soft square thing that carries a bit of voltage in it. Camouflaged and blending into electrical eel currents, symmetry pulling against itself, light and dark circling each other like they are negotiating a truce. It looks calm, but it is not. There is a proper yin and yang tension stitched into it. Air and water. Predator and pulse. Stillness and charge. I like that it can sit on a couch behaving itself while quietly asking questions. Are you leaning back into comfort, or are you leaning forward into something that matters.

It could be a creative good luck charm, a strange little domestic talisman for anyone trying to carve their own path in a system that prefers us predictable and tired. Or it could hypnotise you into a comfortable life of small compromises. Soft cushion. Soft edges. A padded existence where you tell yourself you will start tomorrow. That is the risk with comfort. It can cradle you or it can numb you. The creative road with purpose is not comfortable and it never has been. It asks you to stand out when blending in would be easier, to keep going when the numbers do not look reassuring, and to back yourself when there is no guarantee.

What were your parents doing at your age?

My parents at my age were retiring with a house. Paid off. Done. That was the promise of their era. I do not have a house and there is no tidy finish line where I stop working and sip something on a veranda. That old script has shifted for a lot of us. The ground moved. The cost of entry went through the roof. The safety net got thinner.

So if I am going to work until I am in the ground, I would rather it be for my own imagination than for someone else’s bottom line. If I can get paid for my creativity and my art, I will take that as my version of retirement. Not stopping work, but shaping it. Choosing it. Living inside it.

I would happily create until I am cold in the soil. Drawing uncommon animals, building patterns, talking with other artists about how we stop starving and start thriving. Staying interested in the world, in its animals and its strange beauty, in community and conversation. That kind of engagement feels like longevity. It keeps the brain firing. It keeps the heart involved.

This pillow is soft. The life I am choosing is not. But maybe that is the balance. A bit of comfort under the weight of risk. A reminder on the couch that I am not chasing ease, I am chasing meaning.

If the old retirement model is out of reach, I will build a different one. Pattern by pattern. Story by story. Cushion by cushion. Art as the thing that holds me up when the system does not.