itesser ink: progress, uncensored

Or, as I wrote down on my blog post cheat sheet* while making brinner**: 2008.5

* there's actually a post that belongs between the last one and this one, but I'm getting fat and sassy and out of shape, even in these few days of not posting. It's an important one, so I will get around to it.

**brinner is making a snack of dinner food at an hour when most sane people are having breakfast. or sleeping.

New Year's Eve was a spectacular end to 2008 and beginning to 2009. New Year's Day was good, too, and I'll post about both soon. But this new flavor of limbo is bitter and awful and I want to beat my fists against the keyboard about it first.

It's difficult for met to accept the weight and grand importance of a changing calendar year under normal circumstances (I have more respect for winter solstice), but this year I'm embarking on a grand, life-changing adventure less than two weeks into January. I've come to see the 12th as the real beginning of my year, the time when everything will be shoved out of complacent patterns and open to a large-scale reordering of life. New state, new people, new living situation, new things to occupy my time...

Unfortunately, I'm not there yet, and I'm having a hard time calming down and focusing in the interim, or deciding how I want to structure the coming months.

Certain projects are coming to a close... most of them, in fact. My blue sketchbook is nearly full, my full-size sketchbook is nearly full, my moleskine and scratchbook are nearly full, too. Even if I didn't take a bit of hiatus on the posting of poems, I'd be winding down the project I initially started. And Scannies, the bread and butter of posting fodder, will go the way of the dodo, as the scanner will be left behind when I leave.

What, then, am I left with?

Before this moment, I wasn't aware just how stripped down my life will be come Jan 12. The physical cut-backs, they roll off me, but losing so many of the familiar things I spend time on really shakes me up. Not to mention the lack of husband that will accompany it.

One choice that remains is if I kick my internet leg out from under myself or not. (Warning! Familiar theme approaching!) I have a cozy den of RSS feeds that I immerse myself in when I want to find inspiration or lose myself. Two hundred-ten of them at last count. Well over half are visual in nature, whether flickr pools, the blogs of individual artist, or artist collectives. The remainder are... writers or groups of writers, with the occasional "things of interest" feed thrown in.

Without much pain or spitting I can cut it down to 45 feeds of required reading and viewing, but even doing that much I have to "lay off" blogs that I absolutely have benefited from--individuals, even! Despite how impersonal the internet is most of the time, it's not easy for me to dismiss someone's work, thoughts, and efforts. Playing favorites is hard. Phasing out anything with potential is hard.

I'm going to do it. For my own sanity, I have to go cold turkey on the 80% of the feeds I subscribe to. I'll save them all to a folder first, in case I discover the elixir of life and have the rest of eternity to trawl the internet for sparks of delicious thought. I'll do it quickly, holding my breath. Out of sight, out of mind, I'll contemplate the tip of the iceberg that remains within view, and eek out as much beauty from it as I can.

Hopefully this will mean less clutter, fewer things to stumble over as I try to find a clear direction and path for myself.

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