Work this Week

I had an epiphany recently about how I work, or rather how I want to work. I had been feeling like I was waiting for something to happen in order for me to move my own creative process forward. I had made a list earlier this year in my notebook "be the thing you want to be" and "enjoy what you are doing" were two directives I had written down.  The thing I want to be is boundlessly creative and to follow it where it takes me. Make and do without worry. "Enjoy what you are doing", had a question mark after it. I was asking myself the question. I used to separate my activities and my time, everything was either work or not-work. Not-work played second fiddle to work and I wasted days feeling pissed off instead of inspired. Well I feel done with that notion.
 
So if work looks like painting type on a wooden cabinet in my carport all week I have decided that is valid. If it means sewing a suit of clothes to attend an event, then it is valid. If it means designing elaborate promotional pieces teaching a curious public how to deal with graphic designers, then it is valid. If it means feeling joyful all day, then it is valid.

So in the interest of total authenticity and integration between my multiple creative selves and wanting to work the way I enjoy working every day, I embarked on an unusual project for the Bellingham Farmers Market. I volunteered to freshen up the market's information booth and signage. The first phase was to reinforce, scrape, and paint the base cabinet. With a fresh smooth surface to work on I transferred the projected type onto the cabinet, and tomorrow I will fill in the all the letters. When that is all done I am sewing some bunting flags to hang above the piece and below the overhead sign. The flags will be up-cycled from tea towels made for our 20th Season last year.

It's been glorious in the afternoons for working outdoors and we keep getting little glimpses of the enlightenment that comes with summer and personal evolution.

P.S. I could not have done this project without my partner in crime, he took the pictures too.

Mood swings.

Holy cow, almost a month since my last post. Time flies and not in a good way always. In some ways I am just hanging on by a thread but in most ways I am a hardy Fir tree, sturdy and deeply rooted in my routine which feeds all my needs, creatively anyway. Spring is arriving like baby teeth, coming up and receding, sometimes all in the same day. I am rebuilding things, re-making myself, coming back out of the shell I put myself in now and then only to realize that while I love shell life I love the bigger world too. What I want to know is if all this positivity is due to the weather or if I am generating it myself. I haven't felt this good in years, maybe ever but I was a bit surprised when I noticed other people were feeling super good too and it was sunny and we all got outside. Am I responding to mass hysteria brought on by the pollen rich air? I prefer to think I am the master of my moods and that the sunshine just makes it all more pleasant rather than the other way around. I want to think I can control how I feel about things. I think I can, I think I can, I feel like I am.