For to have mix it up

From all over, but most specifically the illustrious Vylar Kaftan

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me!

My choice. For you.

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

* I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
* What I create will be with you in mind.
* It’ll be done sometime this year (2009).
* You have no clue what it’s going to be. It may be something written, some physical thing made, could be anything at all, but I will make it myself. It’s entirely my choice what it is. No quibbles, no refunds.
* I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

Normally there's a catch down here about "you have to pass it on to get anything", but... nah. No conditions.

If you comment make sure I'm going to be able to find your email address!

Self promotion!

Hallelujah. I hate to say that I don't have time for words right now (how'd it get so late so fast?!), but I do want to show you some pictures.

As I've mentioned before (and posted little bits of) I'm spending as much time as I can doing a story in watercolor illustrations.

Right now it updates twice daily at its blog (and twitter, if you're into that kind of thing) and it would please me immensely if you would follow it and tell me what an awesome job I'm doing. And if you really mean it, you can tell your friends, too. ;)

The first 9 paintings, comprising "day zero" of the story are up... by the time you read this the beginning of day one might be up, too!



The live, in their quiet way, on the wild southern frontier.
Lily and Wyett run wild in summer, curl up in winter, perennially in love.



One deceptively peaceful day, horsemen break the silence as they gallop
through the fields with news of chaos and battle in the northwest.


Click here to these again, and the next seven!

Goooooooooooooals

I believe in setting hard goals and working towards them.

Stating this belief out loud is a new thing for me, but being as focused on a goal as I am right now is a new thing for me, too.

I set a goal to pay off medical/credit card debt by mid-April, and I also set a goal to paint 300 illustrations by mid-April. The two go hand in hand, as I'm hoping the latter will be the means to the former.

The numbers don't really work out as I have 280 illustrations to go and 66 days remaining. I'd have to do more than four paintings each and every day, and right now I do four on an average day, but there are days (like today) when going to town with The Hosts is a healthy thing to do, and I don't meet my quota.

Even so, even knowing that my goal is pie-in-the-sky unreachable, I cannot bring myself to officially compromise that 300 number. Perhaps the struggle to reach it will make me stronger and better than I would be if I lowered it and gave myself more days off. While 300 sounds more impressive, I also think that the rhythm of a story 300 tweets* in length will feel more rounded than one 200 or 250 in length... despite the fact that this project is very light on plot and character development.

*I gave myself a 140 character limit for the text that goes along with each illustration and made a special twitter account for those bits of text, which go up at the same time as an illustration.

Saying this may be redundant, but today I discovered why I am so motivated to pursue these goals. Back when Reagan and I racked up this debt, it was from emergency room visits back in August to take care of an infection on my leg. He was working, I was... drawing. I am motivated past the point of being pulled down by self-consciousness because I feel I've struck upon a way to use what I was doing then (art) to pull my own weight and take responsibility for the "problems" I caused.

I think Reagan would approve. And that motivates me, too. Before he left I didn't tell him about this, just asked some cryptic questions and alluded to a "secret". Some hints get dropped into letters, but for the most part I plan to shock and awe him with super artistic awesomeness when I see him in April. And impress him with how many push ups I can do, too.

Glee

Phase One is over for me.

By way of my mom, I heard from Reagan. He sent my letters to her address, she scanned them and emailed them to me. In my letters/sketches/diary to him, I included my current address several times in several places, so hopefully he won't lose it.

Phase one is over.

Just last night as I wrote to him I ranted a little about "can I PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE hear from you?" more getting out my own emotions than pleading with him. By the time I penned those words, his letter was already in the system, totally out of his control.

Not that the rhythm of my day was perfect before I heard from him, but the adrenaline and fallout made it impossible to get back in the groove. Although I did get back in a sketching groove, which was nice. With all the painting I do, the loose stuff doesn't happen as often anymore.

This blog is turning into what my LJ was, and my LJ is mostly abandoned. LAME.

I cross my fingers that tomorrow will go better, that my back will let me sleep quickly and that I will sleep well. Tomorrow is very important.

My heart is racing

I'm excited. It's time to go to bed.

This isn't an act I look forward to all day, I hardly look forward to it at all. I dread going to bed. I hate sleep. The exciting part is tomorrow.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow! I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait! Another 16 hours to pack with writing and drawing and reading and discovery! I'll do yoga and feel great. I'll cook something very tasty! There will be much exuberance.


I measure each day in small victories. No, I drew hardly anything today and painted zilch, but I did a wonderful session of yoga, successfully scanned watercolor paintings, and did a load of laundry. The laundry is actually the biggest deal. I don't know why it took more courage to brave the basement and test out the washer than to hijack the scanner and related software, but it did.

Most "tomorrow"s excite me (and not just for the abstract reason of being one day closer to seeing Reagan) for the promise they bring, but this tomorrow, Thursday, is a big deal because I will be adding a daily update ofLily and Wyett to my routine. More juggling!

This is not sarcasm. I actually feel very good. And, of course, occasionally feel bad for feeling so good, but not as much as I did last week.

Fnard

ARG, I want to be asleep, but I'm not.

Very productive day, but found out the scanner here is... um... no more, so I'll either need to figure out a good way to photograph my art, or take it to kinkos for $canning. The biggest problem with photographing it is that I suck at watercolors, so they're not flat. Boo and/or hiss.

I want to write, but there's no time if I want to get up when my alarm goes off.

But, yeah, I painted another 4 scenes (five if you count the one that was awful and I redid) and a thing that will become a banner if I don't make a better one by the time I start a blog.

Cooked beans. They're okay.

Washed dishes, did yoga.

Did pretty well with the whole "Produce/Consume/Promote" mantra, except for not getting past the production stage.

Not. Enough. Hours.

2 minutes to fall asleep. wish me luck.

I am being punished

Yes, it's a punishment to sit here on my bed, full of tea and cookies, frittering about the internet.

At least it started out that way, but then I got into it and now it's punishment to force myself to go to bed. :P

oh man

I didn't know it was so late. But PHOTOPOST.

Today was awesomely productive. Here's a sneak peek at the project I hope will occupy (but not consume) my time.



Magical sink of joyful happiness and blissful dish-washing



Isabelle and the workstation in my room.



Blurry Moxie on my bed. I make it every day. She's why.



And a blurry Reagan on a very windy day before he left.

(Catching Up) Washing Dishes

(A post from yesterday that was delayed by an evening of unexpected socializing)

Each full day I've been here, I've paid a bit of my "rent" by doing the dishes. It's strange, but I kinda like it.

There's no dishwasher here, so everything has to be done by hand. It's a blessing and a curse that A+H have few dishes; there is never more than a small sinkful and things don't get a chance to encrust, but they need to be done every day. But, as I said, I don't mind.

The first day I did dishes, I set my mp3 player to shuffle and attacked the chore full tilt. I can't even remember what I was listening to, but it made things go quickly as I lived in my ears while scrubbing dishes, tidying up counters, and wiping the stove clean.

The second day, the house was empty (except for dogs) and I didn't take my mp3 player. Instead I chased myself through circles in my mind and enjoyed the view out the window into the cold and sunny backyard. Dipping my hands in the hot water was a nice change from the nippiness of the weather here. (To be honest, it's often below freezing and I didn't come quite prepared for being outside in these conditions.)

The third day I did dishes Hannah was in the room working on book binding, but I had my headphones on. After I finished, I apologized for the (mild) racket (dishes colliding as I dropped them, or forced them into the tiny drying rack) as I left the room. Hannah just laughed, saying that a clean kitchen is worth any racket.

Although that first day I ran into the problem of not wanting to cook in a dirty kitchen because it's more enjoyable to work in a clean space... but once the effort has been made to clean the kitchen, I don't want to cook because doing so would cause things to be messy again.


Overall I feel like I'm integrating well into life here... at least as well as can be said for only being on the fourth day of my trip. (Donut of Misery says I am 5% done with my stay, and 4% done with my time away from Reagan.)

Integrating may be a strange word for the situation, but I'm somewhere between guest and tenant. I have autonomy (no obligation for them to keep me entertained or for me to always be hanging out), and yet I am invited along for errands, calling on friends, and to break bread. It's very comfortable for me, although not similar to any situation in my past.

I want (and try) to be a good house-citizen. Besides doing the dishes gladly, I want to be on good, easy terms with the people and dogs and avoid anything like the "stucco tower" feeling I had in Upland. Keeping the door to my room open and spending time in other parts of the house goes a long way to help this cause.

But tonight will have temperatures in the single digits (Fahrenheit), and the room I'm staying in is the warmest in the house. Selfishly (perhaps), I'm spending a lot of the cold days in my room with the door closed to preserve warmth.

Luckily most of my painting will be done on the flat, open, well-lit surface of the kitchen table.

Second guesses

Initially, I pulled back from the artistic endeavor I was about to approach. Getting ready to test how some ink would react to watercolors, I changed my mind and came to write instead.

I either pulled back because I suddenly wanted dedicated watercolor "dishes" (so I wouldn't be putting paint-water in anything that didn't belong to me), or because I didn't want to draw the horse. Horses are hard.

But the horse argument is a cop-out, and I could use the abandoned mug in the bathroom without fear.

Instead of pulling paints and paper back out, though, I'm here, writing.

I have mixed feelings about blogging right now, especially as extensively as I've done in the past. The motivations and rewards are entirely internal, as usual, but neither side is huge right now. Contributing factors include a) backlog, b) talking (out loud) about my day more, and c) writing things I want to say here in letters to Reagan.

In truth, right now it's one long letter on three sheets with four greetings, two closures, and a lot of drawings thrown in. True to form, I put lots of arrows and notes all over it and wrote in chunks that don't have to be read in a linear fashion, some of them sideways.

There are some things I only talk to Reagan about, and writing down things I usually say out loud seems to take words away from the things I would normally write about. Or something.

Talking about it makes me miss him.

T-E-double N-E-double S-double E

Am here.

Am save.

Am happy. (in almost disturbingly high spirits)

Have headache. Jetlagged?



Last night I felt odd, like I didn't have enough words to describe what thing were like. Maybe most of my words are still in transit from CA. Or maybe I have to start over.

Four minutes

Before I have to wake Reagan for our last day together.

I actually don't know if I can fill it. The four minutes, not the day. I'll fill the day quite well, thankyouverymuch.

All the writing I have interest in doing right now is specifically related to him leaving, so I put it on the other blog, but like I said in the last post, most of my time and effort are spent living in the now.

So this is redundant.

Except to say that I am aware of the things I'm leaving out of my current day-to-day life.

Time's up.

New Motto

My new motto is "Produce, Consume, Promote".

Just kidding. But I wish it could be.

Maybe it will be next week?

Reagan is leaving on Monday. I am leaving later on Monday. I won't see him for 12 weeks. I hope to spend a lot of that time in a cave of artful productivity; I have dreamed up three full time jobs for myself. In order of ambitiousness (from lowest to highest): Writing, Comicking, Watercoloring.

I am a very ambitious person.

But saying that I will be able to do any of these things is saying I will be able to make the next putt without even seeing where my ball is on the green.

I don't know why I just used a golf metaphor.

I realize I'm talking about the future and not the present or the past. I don't want to talk about the present because I'm very busy experiencing it. When I'm not talking about the future. Which I'm stopping.

Now.

Addendum and Tangent

First, an addition to my last post:

Something that was a catalyst for dumping such a majority of my reading list was the sheer quantity of information offered by some of the art and design feeds. I had previously justified my subscriptions by saying, "I'm an artist, and I need lots of references to study style and composition and inspire my own development." And, true, those blogs were instrumental in helping me amass a visual library 40,000 images strong.

On the other hand, I'm like Mona in Figgs and Phantoms, knowing the contents of a library but nothing of its substance. My focus is so much on acquiring quantity I haven't put any time into grokking my collection or learning from it by adapting what's in there for my own art.

Unintended tangent: Ellen Raskin, author of Figgs and Phantoms (and The Westing Game, which I prefer) not only died the exact day before I was born, but also did the original cover art for another novel that made me who I am: L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time. I'd never claim in public that I was the heir to her spirit, but I might like to pretend it from time to time.


Intended tangent: In 2009 I'm going to try moving to a system of getting things done that does not put exact deadlines on personal goals. Instead of saying "accomplish X and Y every day", I want to structure time limits on my working hours each day. It's a subtle distinction to say "These are the things I have to do. I'm stopping work at n'o clock" instead of "These are the things I need to do by n'o clock", but I think it might work for me. I think it'll give me more freedom to relax when I'm having a bad creative day.

Those are my thoughts.

Limbo, Revisited

Or, as I wrote down on my blog post cheat sheet* while making brinner**: 2008.5

* there's actually a post that belongs between the last one and this one, but I'm getting fat and sassy and out of shape, even in these few days of not posting. It's an important one, so I will get around to it.

**brinner is making a snack of dinner food at an hour when most sane people are having breakfast. or sleeping.

New Year's Eve was a spectacular end to 2008 and beginning to 2009. New Year's Day was good, too, and I'll post about both soon. But this new flavor of limbo is bitter and awful and I want to beat my fists against the keyboard about it first.

It's difficult for met to accept the weight and grand importance of a changing calendar year under normal circumstances (I have more respect for winter solstice), but this year I'm embarking on a grand, life-changing adventure less than two weeks into January. I've come to see the 12th as the real beginning of my year, the time when everything will be shoved out of complacent patterns and open to a large-scale reordering of life. New state, new people, new living situation, new things to occupy my time...

Unfortunately, I'm not there yet, and I'm having a hard time calming down and focusing in the interim, or deciding how I want to structure the coming months.

Certain projects are coming to a close... most of them, in fact. My blue sketchbook is nearly full, my full-size sketchbook is nearly full, my moleskine and scratchbook are nearly full, too. Even if I didn't take a bit of hiatus on the posting of poems, I'd be winding down the project I initially started. And Scannies, the bread and butter of posting fodder, will go the way of the dodo, as the scanner will be left behind when I leave.

What, then, am I left with?

Before this moment, I wasn't aware just how stripped down my life will be come Jan 12. The physical cut-backs, they roll off me, but losing so many of the familiar things I spend time on really shakes me up. Not to mention the lack of husband that will accompany it.

One choice that remains is if I kick my internet leg out from under myself or not. (Warning! Familiar theme approaching!) I have a cozy den of RSS feeds that I immerse myself in when I want to find inspiration or lose myself. Two hundred-ten of them at last count. Well over half are visual in nature, whether flickr pools, the blogs of individual artist, or artist collectives. The remainder are... writers or groups of writers, with the occasional "things of interest" feed thrown in.

Without much pain or spitting I can cut it down to 45 feeds of required reading and viewing, but even doing that much I have to "lay off" blogs that I absolutely have benefited from--individuals, even! Despite how impersonal the internet is most of the time, it's not easy for me to dismiss someone's work, thoughts, and efforts. Playing favorites is hard. Phasing out anything with potential is hard.

I'm going to do it. For my own sanity, I have to go cold turkey on the 80% of the feeds I subscribe to. I'll save them all to a folder first, in case I discover the elixir of life and have the rest of eternity to trawl the internet for sparks of delicious thought. I'll do it quickly, holding my breath. Out of sight, out of mind, I'll contemplate the tip of the iceberg that remains within view, and eek out as much beauty from it as I can.

Hopefully this will mean less clutter, fewer things to stumble over as I try to find a clear direction and path for myself.