"He used to try to climb the string"

Rooting through old photos for something I can't remember, I was feeling the dryness of my body's fuel tank that comes with leopard crawling through Summer and approaching the stacked deadlines that start in October and end on Dec 22nd.

Why this year has been a particular slog is the same reason it has been a slog for everyone, however changes particular to my field are; the closing of my EU market in December 2023, because of new shipping laws, and the American market bidding the world an Irish Goodbye when their lives suddenly grew more expensive to run. 50% of my orders go to America, so it has been a tricky one to tough out with any degree of hope for the future.

I can't remember what photo I was trying to find, but I ran across the packaging of a Lehman Climbing Monkey that I bought for a toy release some years ago. The monkey climbs a string. That's it. It climbs a short string over and over and over again because, as life would have it, it always slides back to the bottom.

Feeling hollow save for a nugget of pure, permanent ache that I haven't been able to shift, I thought "what if the monkey just stopped?" and "what does career suicide look like for a monkey on a string?" and I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

It's all I think about. 

Candice Tripp Artist Bio

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