May 2025 in Daily Purchase Drawings

aka: I wanna remember to remember to forget you forgot me and other musings from the waiting room of a Jiffy Lube on a Wednesday morning.

I don’t know where May went, but at least I have almost a full month of drawings that remind me it happened.

I always tell myself I’m drawing these things to remember so that I won’t forget. When life speeds up, as it did this past month, I often have songs looping quietly in the back of my brain. One of my favorite, yet not-so-favorite, anxiety anthems is “A Different City” by Modest Mouse, from their 2000 album, The Moon and Antarctica. There's a line that plays on repeat:

"I wanna remember to remember to forget you forgot me."

Which is… kind of how I feel whenever I try to explain why I’ve been drawing something I buy every day for almost 20 years.

That lyric is so tangled up in memory and contradiction…someone trying, and trying, to let go of someone who’s already moved on. It’s this endless, obsessive emotional labor that never quite resolves.

My drawing project feels like the opposite of that. I’m not trying to forget. I’m trying to remember. Not a person who forgot me, but the little things we’re supposed to toss aside. I draw them so they don’t just disappear. So I can look back someday and say: I was here. This mattered. Even if only for a moment.

There’s something kind of absurd, and honestly, kind of beautiful, about choosing to hold on to what’s meant to be forgotten. My drawings aren’t declarations of importance. I like to think that they are gestures of care. They ask:
What if we gave the overlooked a little attention?
Where is all of this going?
Where are these drawings ending up?

Or… am I just being a giant weirdo because 2026 is around the corner, and 20 years of this feels REALLY BIG?

Do I make a book?
Do I want to make a book?
Does anyone care?
Does anyone need to care?

Over time, this growing collection has become more than just a list of things I bought. It’s a record of who I was, what I needed, what I thought I needed, what I returned to, what I let go. It’s not really about consumption. It’s about attention, memory, and the quiet desire to find meaning in a world that rushes right past us.

Just like this last month.
ZOOOOOM. WHAT HAPPENED TO MAY???
I don’t know. Let me check the drawings.

Oh hey—it was a pretty great month.
Thanks for reminding me, Daily Purchase Drawings.
And thank you for reading.
🌀
KBB

P.S.: This was quickly written during the hour and a half I spent waiting to get my front brake pads replaced. Yes, Jiffy Lube at 33rd and Sandy was my unexpected 90-minute writing residency. And yes, those brake pads will be my Daily Purchase Drawing for Wednesday, May 28th, 2025.