Creative Every Day

My Mug! And other stories…

January 19th, 2007

Yay! I was so excited to get my mug in the mail today and I was even more thrilled to see it covered with kitties! Thank you, thank you, Bella! Here it is with some orange ginger mint tea and honey on top of a journal from last year's Artist's Way journey in which I drew a picture of myself leaving my job. I drew it nearly a year to the time I will actually leave my job and I found it today on my first day not at my regular job (the start of working part time at my nanny job and part time working on my art and the end of March is the end of the nanny job. I'm so excited.)  It was so funny to see this picture of what I truly wanted, to just walk away. In the drawing I have myself saying, "See ya!"

This is a time of big transitions and yesterday feeling on the edge of something big and new, I was super anxious. Yes, I'm excited about this new adventure. I'm also wildly nervous which leads to this vicious cycle of being frozen in place. However, today was a great day. I knew that I didn't want to just flounder around all day, so I decided to schedule out my day. I laid it all out in time segments of a half hour, including time for breaks, stretching a walk to the bank and checking email, with other chunks devoted to business tasks and research and of course a big chunk for art making. The schedule isn't meant to be absolutely rigid. If something comes up, I'm prepared to switch things around, there are just some things that have to get done today and some things that can be pushed. But it was extremely helpful for me to put time limits on things because sometimes I get sucked into one thing for far too long and my brain numbs out, but with this schedule I was able to say, ok, half hour is up, time to move on. This really worked for me today, we'll see how it goes next week when I have two days to do this.

There were interruptions of course, a really weird phone call and later a visit from the plumber and of course there were periodic kitty visits as I spread art supplies out on the floor of my office for an art picnic. But I managed to get back into the groove and at the end of the day I felt really good about what I had accomplished. I need to celebrate the small victories otherwise it all seems so overwhelming. There is SO much to do. Ack! But I am really trying to keep a positive outlook about it all because the alternative is so draining (been there, done that.)

Ah, by the way, an art picnic is my name for laying out an old blanket on the floor with floor cushions and then surrounding myself with art supplies (collage materials, paint, water, papers, glues, pens, stamps, brushes, music and tea), and creating. It allows me to really spread out and relax and give a sense of play to what I'm doing.

Just back from a nice dinner with the fiansor. We laughed so much! At the end of the meal we used the paper wrapper that the chopsticks came in as a prop to use in funny ways (bert's unibrow, the karate kid's headband, a snaggle tooth, a cigar, etc...) and then the fiansor ate my fortune. Really. He was doing one of those silly tricks were he'd normally make it look like he ate it, but was just pretending. I kept saying, "wow, that was amazing, it looked so real!" And then he admitted, as he gulped some water, that he did really eat it and it was a bad idea. On the walk home he pointed to the sign attached to a light that said, "pedestrians crossing when flashing," and he said, "imagine if there was someone who flashed people when pedestrians were going to cross?" Hehehe. Today I 'm grateful for:

1. working on my art at home today.
2. my new mug!
3. the plumber fixing our shower so we have hot water again! hoorah!
4. podcast of npr's wait, wait don't tell me.
5. art picnics.