My Ideal Day

Here it is in a nutshell, my ideal day.

6:30am to 7am: Mom duties. Sandwich making, lecturing, checking in, hugging.

7am to 8am: Drink coffee and write, take notes, make lists, think. Ignore negative thoughts.

8am to 11am: Work without distraction. This means staying off the web. When the urge to get distracted hits, make note of said distraction to explore later. No Facebooking*

11am to 1pm: Break for exercise and nourishment, possible reading, knitting.

1pm to 4pm: Work without distraction and perform simultaneous afterschool check-in with the offsrping. Stay in chair.

4pm to 7pm: Take care of the business of being alive. Meal prep, house cleaning, animal care, errands, fire prep, odd jobs.

7pm to 10pm: Free time. Explore web distractions from earlier in the day, knit, sew, paint, whatever. Lay face down on couch. Snuggle with offspring and cat.

10pm: Time to lay this redhead down. Read.

Repeat from top daily to maintain mental, financial, and creative health. Seems pretty doable and it adds an hour to my billable time which is positive. I am hoping that by following this schedule I will have time to do the things I need to do while giving myself time to float and think and entertain all the other stuff that ricochets around in my spongy brain.

* More and more I see Facebook as a way we are being kept down and controlled by marketers. There is too much information available to us and we begin to think it's all important. It's not. I am finding that self directed study is more helpful and honestly healthful.

Study

I am. Trying. I am trying. I am studying. I am thinking. All these I am statements. I am confused. I am lost. I am tired. I am tired of I am. I am taking a bath on Friday morning and I am thinking of Winston Churchill who took baths every morning to sort himself out before his day. He painted too, to help ease the black dog of depression that followed him about his English life, his misunderstood to him at the time life. Let's assume that we all have this and decide never to speak of it again because it is neither productive nor interesting. It is dull and we don't have much time so why not just read happily in the bath and be glad our belly is not as huge as Winston's was and be pleased about our female genitalia soaking in the hot water and just feel good. Let's try that. I am drifting off from where I have been, where I came to 30yrs ago. This land called America. I am moving north in my mind at the moment, later my body will follow. I am noticing things about my womanhood, more now as it perches at the edge of one phase ready to sweep down into the next phase. I am noticing things about my place in my world and where I belong based on my DNA and the information absorbed by my cells when they were forming and growing. I am thinking about but not quite making the art I want to make but I am coming to it, rolling it around in my brain, in my mouth, my hands, my heart. Sitting in water on Friday morning reading about politics while listening to the radio from the north straddling phases and borders, roles, disciplines. Rise up. Leave the skin filled water behind and walk out into the gray day which lays before me. I am moving ahead and despite the periodic blindness that seeks to derail me all the signs are pointing to success whatever that is. I have always been lucky. I am not afraid of hard work and I like making progress so that is what I will do. Thank you for reminding me of what I already knew in the face of what is unknown.

Favorite Things

In the universe that is my life there are many pairs of black fleece gloves. I wear them in the fall and winter, I abhor cold hands. I have worn gloves twice this fall, last week was the first time and today was the second. I try to never smell the gloves, I know they stink because I pet the dog when I wear them and sometimes they get left damp in pockets of infrequently worn coats. I wash them in the washer and sometimes after the dryer has run I have to search for them as they can adhere themselves to a synthetic pant-leg with whom they have shared the journey from washer to dryer. I don't mind. Laundry is one of the things I like in addition to the simplicity and near disposable quality of black fleece gloves. I am trying to organize this universe that is my life and make piles of things I like and dislike and to take note of how particular things make me feel. I want to have logical answers to these persistent questions so that when someone says what do you like. I have an answer. I can say I like my black gloves. I have at least 4 pairs placed strategically around my house so that no matter what I am never without them, but I never smell them. Smelling is forbidden.

Warm and Cool

I took the car in to get fixed yesterday afternoon. I strapped my bike to the rack in the carport only to discover that the cat piss covered faux Persian rug I have stored in the roof trusses was hitting it, making it impossible to back out. I took the bike off doing my best not to let my frustration over take me and backed the car out sans bike. In the back of my mind I was thinking I should put water in the car but I was sort of beyond giving a shit. I got the bike on the car and even tightened the rack, interestingly I do give a shit about my bike falling off the car. I drove with confidence along my bumpy gravel driveway. At the car place I was prepared to wait for the work to be done but decided to stick with my original plan of riding home. I had a mission in mind to photograph some Rosehips for a poster I am about to begin working on. Some friends live along the way and I considered stopping in but decided I wasn't up for the distraction of conversation so I rode on and was pleased to find some Rosehips at the side of the road. A free opportunity to do my work without the complication of human interaction is appealing. I parked the bike and climbed up the bank and took a few photographs. I like the Rosehip. They are smooth red orange and I have a vague but pleasant memory of eating Rosehip syrup as a kid. I took a few photographs on the way home of the hills and fields now stripped of their corn. The marriage of warm and cool air leaving a translucent veil over the landscape made me wish I could paint.

I walked the dog earlier in the day, my 3 mile walking meditation, and on our way home she wanted to go down to the creek for her habitual drink but lately I have decided not to let her do it. The creek is low after 2 months without rain and I wonder if the salmon will be able to make it up to spawn, I also worry about parasites that might present after the long spell of warm weather. The edge of the road is shaded and wet so instead of drinking from the creek the dog walks there purposefully and seems to enjoy the feeling of the wet grass on her legs and belly. I half expect her to lick the wet blades.

I spent the afternoon in my office and around 5:30 went into the house to prepare for the evening. The dinner hour is challenging for me. I feel sort of alone in my tasks of making supper, getting the fire ready and remembering to bring in supplies from my studio so that I might get something done in the evening. I made a quick trip next door to get some veggies from my neighbor and when I got back, much to my surprise Pearl offered to cut up all the veggies for the stirfry I was making. This simple act made me so happy that the whole mood of the evening changed for me and I was able to work a little on a painting I had been neglecting. I am still not working on the Smithers piece although I tried this morning. I don't know why I am making it and what I am trying to say. Then this morning while surfing the web I found a lame little DIY blog post about making a chalkboard and written on it was "think less, do more". No shit. Anyway not sure what the fate of this piece is. I feel more interested in understanding what I like to do and what I want to make, it seems odd that at this stage of my life I don't have these answers.

Goddam Cool

This hat is my next project. Not sure if I am going to get my Smithers piece finished. Inertia and fear have struck again and today my car needs work which is troubling as I have no money. Alas I want to shake off all these modern problems and strive to get the piece made. Quit resisting as it were because this blog is so much more interesting when I am posting work rather than complaints. It helps to say it out loud sometimes. Thanks for being there.

Direction

I am lost in a forest of thoughts and ideas and they all look alike and after a time I realize I have been going in a circle because I am passing the same un-acted upon ideas and having the same negative conversations about why they exist and why I can't make them happen. I looked for a picture of myself today in a trunk in an effort to free myself from the concentric circles I grind into the ground and before I found what I was looking for I found what I needed.

This was the journal my mother took with her to Greece the September before she died. I made it and another one for myself so we would have some small books to document our travels. She was already very sick by then and so she only wrote in it a few times. I wasn't startled as I might have been that the last date she recorded nearly matched today's date. I took it as a sign. It is my discovery so I can attach my own meaning to it. My mother has stayed connected to me even though she is no longer here breathing the air, growing old, she faces no complications and so she has time to encourage me as she always did. I am struggling as I always do and now with the additional weight and confusion of peri-menopause which seems like a dragon I must fight with all the time that breathes fire onto my anxiety level and sparks it ablaze driving me deeper into the woods. I choose to take these small discoveries as moments of salvation where my mother reaches out and taps me on the shoulder and encourages me to move ahead and because I am a dutiful daughter, I do. I try to think of one thing at a time in order to get out of the forest of my mind that I so often get lost in.

The little photo I was looking for will be used in a piece I am making for a show in my hometown at a gallery that my mother was involved with for years. The piece is about who we are based on where we came from. I grew up in a northern town beneath a beautiful mountain with a sparkly blue glacier and everyday it watched me. If I can make the piece and get it off on time I think I will be making some progress in knowing the way out of the darkness I often find myself in.

Falling in

September 5th. I feel a bit contracted but I also feel kind of stoked. I'm worried about money but I also feel like there is endless potential work if I just flip the switch. My mood is up but I feel nervous about that too because it changes so quickly but mostly I have been trending up into that good place where I feel both happy and calm, if I can battle the anxiety I will have achieved a trifecta of sorts. The days are shortening at both ends but it's most noticeable in the morning when I awake in the darkness. My mid morning walks have been refreshing and warm once I get out to the road where there is more sun. There are spider's webs everywhere and yesterday I picked an albino woolley bear off my car tire in an effort not to squash it. The edges of the road are dry and crunchy and when I go to feed the hens there are more leaves down, they are mostly green but getting yellower by the day. Have finally begun to sleep better after a long stint of not being able to achieve that deep state of unconsciousness. It wears me down so and weakens my mind, I feel frayed and bare after a while. As you can see by the start date of this post I have been a bit slack. On the other hand I have been working and the kid is back at school and the routine has been good despite the first day when I felt like I was falling into a big pit of sameness. A week or so has passed and my happy state seems to be taking hold. I can honestly say I am looking forward to fall.

Missed connections.

The annual back to school BBQ and re-orientation event happened today at the high school. We're new there, new to High School. I barely know my way around the building. I am not in the minority of parents who actually attended this high school ahead of their kids. The place is new but the faces are all the same, the moms mostly, some dads come to the event that is sort of informal and awkward. The students are instructed to sit up front in the auditorium while the adults are scattered everywhere in little clumps mostly close to the edges of the rows for quick exiting. We arrive late and sit smack in the middle of a row. The lights are bright and it feels like we have wandered into a grocery store at midnight after being out in a bar. I feel out of place as usual but try to listen to what the tan man who must be the principal is saying. He's funny and direct with the kids and that feels good and my discomfort momentarily subsides. Then, it's over and it is time to go outside to have a free hamburger on a white bun that I know I will regret eating later. I lose Mark immediately upon getting up to leave and I try to make eye contact with a few of the other moms. We don't have much to say to each other, at least I feel at a loss to say much beyond spewing something about how strange it all is but I stop myself, those are not the lines for this particular skit and we're all having slightly different experiences. I smile to the left I smile to the right and slowly move toward the smoke of the BBQ that is now filling the entry hall.

Outside, I decide to sit down and let the hamburger line die down while another mom moves past me. She looked a little lost so I said "Hi" and she came over. I think she would have sat there and said absolutely nothing if I had not asked a few questions and even then she did not inquire about my summer, my plans for fall, my garden. At these times I feel like I am in a haze, the twighlight zone where everything is stretchy and perspectives are angled. I move away and get in the food line near my kid who wants to act like I am not there but I give her the "don't even begin to give me any of that; I can act completely different at school bullshit" look and then I begin chatting with another mom who attended the high school and is having the strange experience of being there as an adult. She's maybe 31. I take it she wasn't the best student back then. Oh well I think, I got the hell out of my own little town and have missed out on that fate. We have a positive but brief exchange about time and remembering to breathe and I feel like that might have been the most real exchange I have had the entire time I have interacted with all these mom types. I get my burger, Mark has a second and we eat and leave.

I come away feeling conflicted. I don't really want anything from them, not friendship, I don't need to be invited to their homes, I am happy to be invisible but something tells me I am not entirely. I am helpful when I can be, I engage when I must, I am aware of what is happening within the little community but it's my choice to stay outside the circle of familiarity so maybe I should just be grateful to them for respecting my privacy. Although, I do know I am a good listener and a pretty good friend and so it's sad that none of them ever tried to buddy up with me, but then again I probably haven't been putting out the right signals and my dance-card is pretty full. Next.