Bold moves

The last thing I will do tonight is fetch a glass of water for Reagan.

The last thing I will do tonight before closing down my laptop to begin the ritual of going to bed is close all these tabs and mark everything in my feed reader as "read".

This isn't because I'm running out of free scrawling space in my scratchbook (though I am, and it distresses me), but because all those brains out there in blogland are way too sexy. I'm falling hard for you and we need boundaries before this relationship destroys me. It's not you, it's me.

Really. Running out of room in my rough and cozy hand bound book of random paper. What kind of wisdom can I fit into 14 pages! and where will the thoughts go when those are done with? I suppose I could use the backs of the pages which were earmarked for sketches... No laughing. This is a real threat.

I'm getting punchy and posting very late. Another occasion of pushing myself despite lacking a clear reason to. (Other than cramming before taking drastic measures.) But this is a tired topic that I've just come round to again with a different solution to try. Like ants (except my interrelation with blogs has the potential to be beneficial!)

In the past couple days I've shaken my self in slow motion and wondered why I do this nightly posting. When was the last time I gave the practice a critical eye and demanded I account for this will to update daily and to include art as often as possible, ideally every night. The first shake came from a bona fide art blogger (or several) examining their own relationship with the form, and how the practice had become a downer. I looked in the mirror and wondered if I was being disingenuous to myself by "forcing" such regular posts.

Right now this is flow for me, not forcing. Large or small, I like recording things every day and doing my best to have something creative to show... a proof of self-concept.

Another, even less happy, part of the shake when I stumbled over the mention of "professional blogging". This infirm form of writing has become the new journalism, a new norm with a low barrier to entry. I like parts of the theory and the practice, but there are aspects about a lack of quality control that rub me wrong. Ironic, i know, to criticize blogging on a blog. A Blogger blog, no less.

Quality control only comes into play when the discussion turns to the meta-form, though. At the day to day, personal level quality control comes in the form of one's own freedom to choose what to read and what not to read. Much easier to cut people out of a digital life than an analog one. Getting dangerously close to a long winded talk on meshing the two or keeping them utterly distinct.

I should have been bringing the topic around to drawing or daily practices instead, because--resorting to another stop-gap measure though it is--I'm sharing a different side of both today. Since the 23rd of August I've been depositing the first sketch of each day (often the first action of a given day) in one particular sketchbook, always with one particular pen. A blue one, because it matches the cover.



That's actually from this morning. :)

Now to turn down the volume on these tubes so I can hear myself think...