Taking Stock, Talking Shop (with Myself)

Today is a day of questions. I think that regeneration requires that you ask a bunch of questions - of yourself, of others, of the universe. I've written about the loss of my uncle and my favorite high school teacher in the past month, and it has gotten me to turn inward. First as part of a grieving process, and then as a process of rebirth and regeneration. So, today, I want to share some questions that I've been thinking about and that I think are instructive for everyday life. Importantly, major life events don't necessarily need to prompt reflective thought, so take these down even if all you're doing today is watching daytime television and potentially going to work!

How do I look at the world - as a narrative or a sequence of events?

What inspires me?

What situations make me feel the most secure/happy/solid? What situations feel comfortable, but not necessarily amazing? What situations absolutely suck?

Who or what adds value and meaning to my life? (the secret to this one is to break it down by looking at situations in which you feel the most content/satisfied and working backwards from there)

What do I actively want to pursue? What do I want to let fall away? How do I go about it?

Once you've started ruminating a little bit, check out some lessons on how to get there and make it happen!

Personal Artifacts

I haven't been writing much for this blog in the past week. I've been making grocery lists and plans to write and essays on women writers in the early modern period and notes on hormones. I've been using my words in other contexts - writing and talking out feelings in order to heal. But I haven't posted much here because all of that background writing is the preamble, the extraneous detail before the heart of the material emerges.

I often hate that stage of writing - it's not a draft, it's somewhere before the draft even starts. It's the notes and the ideas floating about that must get captured in some mundane tasks. It makes me sane, but not inspired. In the good times, it feels less necessary. In the bad, however, it's all that there is.

I wanted to address the writing that we do in our everyday lives that feels like nothing more than making endless to-do lists. It's still a form of writing and a form of expression, oddly enough, and it will be the stuff that tells historians most about these eras once they have passed. In some ways, being a historian of your own life is the best way to gain material for creative projects or to heal yourself. I've been looking back on some of the writing I did in high school and the memories just come flooding back. It's not always fun, but it's interesting to look at your own lists and wonder "what in the heck did I need that for?" until you finally stumble upon an answer.

I recommend looking back at old journals and files whenever you're confused on where to start something. Whether that "something" is an art project or a reflection on how to better your life outlook, these are the things that get overlooked, but can often be the most indicative of inspiration.

At the very least, they can give you a good laugh.

Check out some other reflections on perspective.

Write or Die: NaNoWriMo 2011

I haven't been very creative as of late.

My blog has shriveled to a post a week, I have not committed myself to daily creative time, and my energy has been slowly flagging as the temperatures dip lower and lower here in NYC.

So you may be wondering how I will possibly write 50,000 words for National Novel Writing Month (NaNo) this year. And to that I say: you and I both! But I think that giving myself a good kick in the pants because of a formal event might be a good start to getting back towards normalcy. If there was ever a jumpstart to writing, NaNo would be that spark. And so, today, off I go into the vast wilderness that is novel-writing. Ideas after the jump!

CED Roundup: Bears, Knitting, and Growing Ideas

My Creative Every Day hopes this week were somewhat diminished as I found that I had a lot of ideas, but nowhere to go with them - thus, next week's goal will be implementing those ideas and seeing how it all turns out. The pictures this week reflect my new sweaterdress project at different stages of its completion, my urge to draw bears, and some design changes to The Cowation logo in order to fit with the Facebook parameters - speaking of which, you can now Like The Cowation on Facebook, as I have set up a new Page for it!

 Thurs: All the blog ideas I had when I was interlinking archived posts for days on The Cowation.

 Fri: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at just an itty bitty rib area of 16 rows. Working my way on up to 19". 

 "There was little in this world that kept her attention so much as the strange boxes that projected to these humans images of themselves. They were square and often large, spreading from wall to wall in some of the rooms she had seen. They came with control boxes or with sensors that would accept data disks and present whole new worlds to their viewers... Without the boxes, the humans were alone and unconnected, unlike most other animals."

"She found it difficult to watch the autopsies in progress. After spending countless hours encoding their information into the system, holding conversations with them, feeling empathy for their successes and failures, to see an individual human lain out on a table made her shudder. She knew that her cover profession as an investigator made it necessary, but it was never her favorite part of it."

Sat: I worked a bit more on the serial fiction story; above are two more excerpts from the upcoming work.

 

Sun: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at 11.5" - motoring on towards 19".

Mon: I did some re-designing for the Facebook Page of my button and splash.

Tues: I originally wanted to draw a person, but it evolved into this clown bear in a box. Also, the lens flare is starting to grate on me - I must do better with lighting.

Weds: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at 16" - working my way to 19"!

Check out some more drawings of bears in my collaborative comic The Bearniverse.
Take a look at previous Creative Every Day posts.

Travels in JDishia

I remember back in the day... wait - I'm not that old!
But truly, when I was younger, I was always in imagination land. I created an entire world out of just the stuff around me, and my friends did the same. We were always in ice caves (playing ice N64, of course, with games crafted by Chels out of pure ice blocks) or swimming around the Saharan desert. I realized, yesterday, as I was writing my Memoirian Highlights, that I really miss that world. It was so flashy! So real! When I went to sleep, I knew that I could be there... Now that we're stuck in the natural world, I have been slumped over a desk to try and figure out where we're going with everything.
Moviemakers and writers inspire me because they haven't lost that world; when I write, I return to it, but now I believe it's time to buck that world in an online fashion! So now, I introduce the new episodic structure of Travels in JDishia - another of my hare-brained schemes of keeping this blog as a television channel rather than a movie.
When I was young, I almost created a website based off of my imaginary island [or country, depending on the year] of JDishia. JD was one of my elementary school nicknames (no real reason for the 'D' after Britney left, that's why I became 'J') and I had such an inspired idea about the entire thing! I wanted to create my own language and food and culture... little did I know that computer failure completely destroys all dreams and hopes.
So, returning to my naiive past and conjuring it up in this present seems like an opportune way to move my personal writing forward and say 'to heck with you chains of monstrous school!'
Anyway, the first episode will come either tonight or tomorrow, when I'm less freaked out about missing class.

Check out some more posts featuring my photography.