Is of course one of mine. I buy things for a project in the heat of inspiration, then if I don’t actually do them right away, when I do want to do them, the supplies I need are just dropped wherever instead of organized someplace with all the other stuff I need.
Now there is a thing I want to do, and I have no idea where the things I need are. Grrrr.
Maybe I can say something insightful about art funk today. I’m not altogether sure it won’t wind up in full grousing mode like I did last night, though. (See post that I locked down. Except you can’t. You’re welcome.)
What is it about human nature that there are times you know that doing something — like making things, or taking a walk, or making something fresh and homemade to eat — will make you feel better, but you don’t? Or not doing something — like eating that second giant bowl of ice cream, getting into a Twitter pissing match, or reading comments on any news story pretty much anywhere on the internet — but you do?
Me either.
I really need and want to engage more fully with art projects throughout the week rather than half-ass them at the end — which I’m not doing all the time, mind you, but I have been putting off the multi-day projects and new skills to some degree and doing something quick or finishing up a project I’ve been inching along with. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I’d love to get engaged in something I can’t wait to come home to every night — and then have the energy to do something with it when I do get home.
Work is long hours plus a long commute these days, and lately it has been feeling thankless. It’s hard to hold onto the creative spark under those conditions, when all I want to do is eat dinner and zone out, and on weekends I also feel I should be cleaning All The Things or I have social plans.
I don’t know if this post is insightful or not. Not especially, that’s my suspicion. And not funny or entertaining either, which is worse.
But there you go.
I do have a project in mind, so I’ll be back later.
Tis totally beyond me why I should have a massive case of the blues today, but I do. Perhaps because I pinned a bunch of hopes on having lots of things done this weekend, and next to none of them were done (note the impressive use of passive tense in that last phrase). I need a day or two where I can get a massive running start on doing things I don’t necessarily want to do. If there’s somewhere I need to be in the middle of the day, it pretty much ensures I won’t get anything done before, and I’m not so likely to do so after, either. (Note lack of agency implied by phrasing here, too.)
Yesterday I did some volunteering that completely sucked dry any social energy I had. I’ve long thought of myself as shy, but as I’ve gotten older I think it’s more that I have a finite amount of social energy. In small groups or one-on-one, I can go for quite some time, but big parties where I don’t know many people deplete that energy faster, and going from one thing to another can mean I don’t get the recharge I need. So last weekend I was at Wiscon, where I did tons of socializing (though not as much as in previous years, as the art show prep kinda wore me out), and then I slammed right into the work week, then Saturday I made phone calls for a get-out-the-vote drive. This is completely outside my comfort zone. Three hours of that was enough to send me home to bed at 4 pm instead of to the party I’d been planning to hit. I told the campaign volunteers it wasn’t in my comfort zone, and they were awesome to coddle me and ply me with sweets and say I was doing great. Still, I think I’d rather have a root canal.
It’s interesting, considering Friday I did another volunteering gig, my Meals on Wheels run for the season (we have enough volunteers I don’t get to do more than 1 or 2 runs per season). I was having a morning that, to say the least, lacked in awesomeness, but I was looking forward to the meal deliveries. There you’re knocking on doors, but people are so glad to see you and the smiles you get are so genuine. It makes me happy that I am contributing to older people being able to live on their own, and to know someone checks on them every day (or nearly so). I don’t know if it gave me energy, but it gave me a mood lift, which I needed.
This doesn’t have much to do with creativity, except why I’m just thinking about getting started on something crafty. And I have no idea where my Velcro[TM] is. There was going to be a massive amount of clearing off spaces and organizing and decluttering, but I’ve been spending time with my funk and my laptop most of the day. I did go to a graduation party for an hour or so this morning, and did see the friends who tend to energize me, but I came back to sporadic fits of dishwasher loading, bill paying and piddling away the afternoon online.
I do have a project that’s a hair away from being finished, so I’ll get to it as soon as the cat gets off my arms. Just needed to talk about this energy stuff.
And maybe there is.
That feeling you get when you’re in the middle of a project (or six) and you think about it at random points during the day and how the minute you get home you’re going to dive right in. But by the time you get home, all the energy and urgency has been completely sucked away. I often blame it on my commute, but I ended up working from home yesterday due to an eye infection that needed another day of treatment before I wasn’t Eye Goo Mary in the workplace, and I STILL lost my energy.
Though maybe that was due to another factor. I did start something last night, a project that will involve cutting down the front of a tunic I’m making into something else. Instead of doing the sloppy free-hand thing, I measured to the halfway point all the way up from the hem, being super careful about it … and it doesn’t look even! ::shakes tiny fist at the Universe:: So that sapped my will to cut the thing and possibly botch it (also considering the whole eye thing makes me tired and cranky, not the best state of mind for doing irrevocable things). So I contented myself with getting out the seam ripper and undoing the crossover neckline so I can find the center at the neckline.
So I don’t quite know how to proceed. Just find the center at at the hem and power on up to the center at the neck, and ignore the little dots I carefully placed? Or cut along the dotted lines and ignore the ones that seem off-kilter?
I feel like I should rewatch that episode of Farscape with the alien dudes (everyone on the show is an alien, including the Earth guy, which is why I like it) who keep shouting, “WHY SO DIFFICULT?!”
Because dude. Why so difficult?!
Dangerous Crafts for Girls 