civility or so it seemed: letterpress, amanda, and me.

So I just got home from hanging out with a couple of friends, it was really nice. I don't see either one of them nearly often enough. So happy.

In the spirit of that joy I searched up amanda on twitter. I figured after we spoke on saturday and with my posi mood, maybe we could begin to reconcile, just as people. I was going to see if she wanted to be Facebook/twitter friends again. Maybe work toward healing ill will, work toward peace between us.

Instead I found a bunch of responses to something she must have posted about me doing letterpress. Now she and I have had emails about this, have had real life discussions about it throughout our entire relationship. I began writing her an email about the responses I found on twitter which I've included just below here.

"I have explained the letterpress stuff to you before and would appreciate it if you either, a. spoke with me about it or b. didn't put stuff up for your 500+ friends on twitter.
 I thought we were going to be civil, maybe even friendly. I'm not trying to steal this from you, I'm pursuing an interest I've had for a very long time and I thank you for inspiring me to get motivated"

I decided to not send this to her directly but to post it publicly instead, this achieves two things:

1, it eliminates hearsay, he said-she said garbage. These are my genuine feelings and I've explained them in earlier blogs here and in many correspondences with her. How if we stayed together I never would have taken the risk, would have been content with her taken all of them. How, basically, I never would have done something that I've allways been interested because I am/was a coward.

2, it allows me to get this out without continuing the back and forth shit that has occurred between us in the past.

I really am sorry if it makes her angry but, I can't do anything about that. Letterpress is the reason she and I first spoke. The first day we spoke on the phone she said she would teach me how and that never happened. Here is excerpt from an email I sent to her in response to her finding out I was pursuing printing.

"LETTERPRESS: it's the reason we first spoke, it's the reason I gave
you the first batch of blocks, because I hadn't done anything with
them and wanted to see something good come from them. Our first phone
conversation I asked you to teach me and you said you would. I
expressed an interest, not because you were into it but because I was
just interested in it. It's what got me interested in you frankly. You
actually hadn't done any printing from well before we met. All I did,
the whole time, was try and support this, support you printing. I
think it's awesome, thought it would be awesome to do with you, would
be awesome to learn and grow from you.

I'm interested still and instead of having a bunch of regret by not
doing it, I decided to be proactive. It took me less then a day to
find someone to teach me at a full shop.

I'm going to try it out, if I don't like it, great. If I do, I'm going to do it."



I was going to include more of this email but, that would just be me loosing my spleen for some measure of satisfaction and frankly, I probably wouldn't feel satisfied anyway. I just wanted to be civil with her, just want to know she's alright. I can't stress enough that I don't want to harm her but, I'm not going to set up regrets for myself.

So far I love letterpress. I've met and reconnected with so many awesome people. I've begun exploring my visually creative side that's lain dormant for so very long. It's nice to think in pictures again, good to compose images in my brain and try to render them.

I think Aimee is going to go through running the Vandercook with me soon and I'm so excited for that. I'm going to the shop this Wednesday from noon to four and then moving the rest of my stuff in all night, a pretty big day all told. I'm going to go to bed that night with a smile on face and sleep the sleep of a satisfied man.

Thanks for listening to me bitch.
Love,
Dan