Sketch #3

I think what I miss most during the winter seasons is the sunshine. It's not like I live far enough north that I have to endure complete days of darkness. I am, however, far enough north to notice a difference in how I feel from the diminished hours of daylight.
I have to apologize for the crappy scanning. It's been a long day and I'm just to tired to fix it tonight.

I should add that this sketch was partially inspired by this song...
(From the Alasdair Frasier and Natalie Haas album "In The Moment"...the album version is much better and without the extraneous bagpipes in the background. :S)

Sketch #2

It's supposed to get to -11F here tonight. Everybody gird yer loins.

This one is sort of a rough draft of a painting that I've had in my head for awhile. It's inspired by two musical compositions, "The Multiples of One" and "Blue Windows" by Joseph Curiale. Both are from his CD Awakening.

Sketch #1

Last week I heard a quote from Vincent Van Gogh...

"If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint', then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced".

Since then it's become my favorite quote.
(Next to the quote from Alan Alda - "When people are laughing, they're generally not killing one another".)

The more I thought about the quote, the more I thought about all of the stuff I've told myself that I couldn't do over the years. I began to wonder what words I could replace "paint" with.

I've never considered myself much of a sketcher. In fact, growing up, I didn't really consider myself much of an artist. Sure, I loved to make things and be creative, but the school "art" lessons that I had as a kid suggested that I wasn't really much of an artist and I definitely couldn't draw. So I grew up believing that...until I got to college. Among the many things that I took away from my college education was that I could draw and I could even paint...quite well as a matter of fact. I also discovered that I have an aptitude for color, detail and basic design concepts. Despite all of this, the little voice in my head persisted...rather, I allowed it to persist. For whatever reason, I haven't a clue.

Last week when I found out about this challenge, I thought to myself "there's no way that I could do that, I'm not good at sketching". And then, as if someone was trying to tell me something, I came across that quote.

So here I am, silencing that little voice in my head once and for all.

I wonder if I could list "Laundry" in the "Special Skills" section of my resume...

Whenever someone asks me whether or not they should entertain their desire to become a massage therapist, I ask them 2 questions:

Do you like doing laundry?
and
Do you like making your bed?

Most people answer "no" in some form or another to both questions, many expressing utter contempt for doing laundry. And many are surprised to find out that I usually 3 to 5 loads per day and sometimes more just for the business (that's with two therapists working full time and not including any of my personal laundry).

Due to the healthy dumping of snow over the weekend, our road was mostly impassible by this morning. Thanks to the pickup, I made it into town for work, but anyone trying to get to/from our place without 4WD was going to be screwed. This meant calling all of my clients to make sure they had the means to get here and rescheduling the ones who didn't...which turned out to be all of them.

After I had finished rescheduling my clients for the day I decided to spend some time catching up with some stuff that I had gotten a little behind on, including the laundry. So, I walked around the corner into my massage room and discovered that the Matterhorn had been moved onto my table.

We normally don't let the laundry get that backed up but with the holidays and family obligations and illness, it just did. Fortunately, if the past six years of being a massage therapist has taught me anything, it's how to fold laundry. So thanks to my awesome ninja-like laundry skills I was able to make short work of it.

And that's what I did with my day...well, one thing I did with my day.
(And for those interested, here's what it looked outside today after it had stopped snowing.)

Over the weekend I did a lot of housekeeping on my computer. I went to defrag it and apparently only 2% of the hard drive was available. Defrag needs 15% to function properly, so I went through and deleted a ton of stuff and got rid of a couple of programs that I no longer use and moved a bunch of stuff onto flash drives. In the end I managed to free up roughly 5% of space. The Pavilion is pushing 5 years now, so I guess it's time to upgrade.

Last night I found myself going through my iTunes library and listening to a bunch of songs that I hadn't heard in awhile. Most of them are more low-key and others are edgier than what I've been listening to lately, but I found them oddly inspiring, which is perfect because I'm in desperate need of inspiration these days. I ended up compiling an awesome play list of this great music and I've been enjoying it all day. Maybe I'll even share it later.

In regards to needing inspiration, today starts the 100 days of sketching. I'll make another post later when I get the sketch finished. I definitely think the first sketch deserves its own post.

Until then, here's one from the play list...

In Which I Crawl Out From Under My Rock...

The rest of 2010 finished in a blur. I turned 29, there was the 60th anniversary of the drive-in, I became a Laughter Yoga leader and met a lot of great folks in the process, my iTunes library expanded, I discovered Daft Punk and Phoenix and Justice and a bunch of other really awesome music/bands/groups/musicians/whathaveyou, ate a fair amount of sushi, tried Vietnamese food for the first time, had some amazing authentic chai, danced in the aisles of a Trader Joes, laughed as much if not more than I cried, watched a lot of movies, discovered Just Dance 2, re-discovered the joys of reading, knitted...a lot...real good, and started breaking in my first pair of Vibrams.

There were trips to Los Angeles and Albuquerque. There were important milestones reached and funerals and births. There was a really long tram ride, a really sad goodbye, a good amount of really funny cards, Avenue Q, Eclipse (which really wasn't all that great, but I still saw 4 times...mostly because we showed it at the drive-in), and The Deathly Hallows Part 1 (which really was that great, in my humble opinion). There was a Jackson Browne concert with my dad, something that is/will always be one of my favorite memories of spending time with him. Drinks were drank (though not as many of them as you might think), goals were accomplished...some of them anyway, and we lost a very dear furry member of the family.

Now onto 2011...

It seems like business as usual. Really, 2010 seemed like business as usual, but now that I look back on it, maybe it wasn't so much that way. Or perhaps the highlights just become lost in the noise of the daily grind.

Goals for the year:
*Organization. I'm forever working on organization. I blame it on the ADD and Dyslexia, but placing blame doesn't fix anything. Good news, I am making progress.
*Exercise.
*Bolster the Finances.
*Finish as many existing knitting projects as possible. Several of these just need to be frogged or finished (sewn together, ends woven in, etc.). This year I shall make finishing projects my bitch.
*Avoiding insanity. Sometimes this one seems easier said than done.

Projects for the year (thus far):
*LSG11ty - In which 11 knitting/crochet/spinning projects are finished by December 31st, 2011. I've finished one and a half so far. (Pics later as they're both gifts.)
*Pay it Forward - Sending 5 hand-made items to 5 people who agree to also send 5 hand-made items to 5 other people. I know it sounds like a chain letter...but I prefer to think of it as an organized random act of kindness.
*100 Sketches in 100 Days - Pretty self-explanatory, I think. I don't think they have to be all sketches, just something created each day. I was a little nervous about this at first, but now I'm kinda excited. I'll be posting my creations on the blog each day. (If this doesn't get me in the blogging habit, then I don't know what will.)
*Project Origami - In which I endeavor to master the art of paper folding. My goal is to be able to successfully create kusudamas. Flowers and other items are on my list too. I'm doing this completely on my own.

Trips this year are TBD. However, ABQ and the west coast are yet again on my list.

Right, so I'm on my way...

Here's some Phoenix. Enjoy.

In which our heroine finds herself defeating the laziness and finally getting a post published...

I was going through some computer files today and ran across 10 or so note pad files with various tiles that all had the word "blog" in it. Good intentions don't get posts published.

So here I am, determined to publish something...anything...really.




Right, so...how are you? Good? Good.



Yup...



Alright enough of the awkward silence. I have things to post, that will most definitely get posted, er...soon. One of which is my first published knitting pattern...woot! (I'm assuming publishing it to my blog counts as "publishing".)

All of this falls into the category of "get your sh*t together". And by that I mean organization, tying up lose ends and doing various activities...such as cleaning...that improve my space and my life in a manner that allows the creative juices to flow more readily and allows me to functionally be more of an "adult". (It also will supposedly make daily tasks such as sleeping and book work more efficient and enjoyable.) I'm all for that.

So yeah...

Stay tuned for next week's episode where we find our heroine learning about imaging software, CSS and how not to lose her car keys.

The Master List

When I worked in the costume shop at SDSU, we had something called the master list...it was a list of every single little bleeping thing that needed to be done in order to finish getting the show up from a costuming point of view. It included everything from making garments to sewing on buttons to trimming threads to purchasing pantyhose and other necessities to doing laundry...ironing...transporting...cleaning...etc...ad nauseum. The list literally had everything little thing, no matter how tiny, that needed to be done.

Each one of the departments had their own list. Ours was usually in a notebook or on a legal pad in the middle of the main table...or on several sheets of paper taped to the wall. When we got closer to production time, we would all go into work and just get as much done from the list as we possibly could. Some of it was ongoing...some of it took literally seconds to accomplish...some of the list items would take days to complete...and to top it all off, the list never stopped growing. Every day, as things would get crossed off, inevitably, a bunch of new stuff would get added. The list itself would sometimes be completely re-written several times before it was all over with.

Eventually, it would start to get smaller...little by little it would begin to shrink. It was a sign that we were almost there...almost done...that soon the madness would be over and we'd all be able to relax a little...and perhaps sleep a little too.

The great thing about the list is that stuff got done. It was right there in front of us. It was all priority and we all knew it. It streamlined management around the costume shop and helped us to work more cohesively with (relatively) little bitching and only a few things thrown at each other from across the room.

I'm a big fan of lists.

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. I think they're actually kinda dumb. It's a socially accepted convention whereupon one picks an item or two (or three or so) from a list of highly generalized, predetermined things that one is supposed to do to make one better. (Lose 10lbs, stop smoking, exercise more, etc.).

So this year, I made myself a list.

Rather, I should say, I'm making myself a list.

Well, both.

I've identified about 4 different "major" things I would like to accomplish this year...they're specific.

And now I've started making myself a big fat old master list of things I need/want to get done.

And it truly is a big fat list. Within about 20 minutes, I've been able to fill a notebook page front and back. Some of the list is on going...stuff that I will never truly get "finished" (eg, "practice yoga", "blog", "meditate", etc.), some of it is stuff that I've been meaning to do for awhile and have been avoiding it...or just haven't gotten around to it...probably the first of the two. Some of it is stuff that I can get done with a flick of my wrist...or magic wand...if I can ever find the stupid thing. (Yes, "clean my room" is on the list.) The more important/time sensitive items are marked with an asterisk...meaning either "do these items first" or "get this done now!". (Just like with the master list in the costume shop, there are several things on there that I'd rather do first...but aren't necessarily the most important items on the list.)

Either way, the point is to give organization to the chaos and therefore provide some direction. I've found myself sitting at my computer in the evenings, knowing I have about a billion things to do. Many times I just sit there and stare at facebook or look stuff up on the internet. I hate that. It's wasting time. But it's because I literally don't know what to do next.

Haha! Guess what...now there's a list!

2009 is not going to go down in my history book as my favorite year. Probably, it will go down as my most challenging year. It will also go down as a year whose events changed me...perhaps changed me the most.

I'm a different person from it all...like it or not.

Either way, I'm the only person who can do something about it. I'm the only person who can change my life and change me for the better.

So, I've decided that 2010 is going to be my best year yet. 2009 is over...all of that crap is over. Now we're in a new year with new possibilities and opportunities and it's going to be great. It already is great and it just keeps getting better and better!

...And now I've got a list to prove it...so take that! :)