itesser ink: progress, uncensored

Am here.

Am save.

Am happy. (in almost disturbingly high spirits)

Have headache. Jetlagged?



Last night I felt odd, like I didn't have enough words to describe what thing were like. Maybe most of my words are still in transit from CA. Or maybe I have to start over.

Labels: memo

My new motto is "Produce, Consume, Promote".

Just kidding. But I wish it could be.

Maybe it will be next week?

Reagan is leaving on Monday. I am leaving later on Monday. I won't see him for 12 weeks. I hope to spend a lot of that time in a cave of artful productivity; I have dreamed up three full time jobs for myself. In order of ambitiousness (from lowest to highest): Writing, Comicking, Watercoloring.

I am a very ambitious person.

But saying that I will be able to do any of these things is saying I will be able to make the next putt without even seeing where my ball is on the green.

I don't know why I just used a golf metaphor.

I realize I'm talking about the future and not the present or the past. I don't want to talk about the present because I'm very busy experiencing it. When I'm not talking about the future. Which I'm stopping.

Now.

Labels: memo

First, an addition to my last post:

Something that was a catalyst for dumping such a majority of my reading list was the sheer quantity of information offered by some of the art and design feeds. I had previously justified my subscriptions by saying, "I'm an artist, and I need lots of references to study style and composition and inspire my own development." And, true, those blogs were instrumental in helping me amass a visual library 40,000 images strong.

On the other hand, I'm like Mona in Figgs and Phantoms, knowing the contents of a library but nothing of its substance. My focus is so much on acquiring quantity I haven't put any time into grokking my collection or learning from it by adapting what's in there for my own art.

Unintended tangent: Ellen Raskin, author of Figgs and Phantoms (and The Westing Game, which I prefer) not only died the exact day before I was born, but also did the original cover art for another novel that made me who I am: L'Engle's Wrinkle in Time. I'd never claim in public that I was the heir to her spirit, but I might like to pretend it from time to time.


Intended tangent: In 2009 I'm going to try moving to a system of getting things done that does not put exact deadlines on personal goals. Instead of saying "accomplish X and Y every day", I want to structure time limits on my working hours each day. It's a subtle distinction to say "These are the things I have to do. I'm stopping work at n'o clock" instead of "These are the things I need to do by n'o clock", but I think it might work for me. I think it'll give me more freedom to relax when I'm having a bad creative day.

Those are my thoughts.

Labels: bonus post, memo, meta

Somewhere in my brain there's an imp that thinks that as long as I post faithfully, every day sharing a poem, some drawings, and some interesting thoughts, that the internet loves me. (In spite of myself, I am interested in the fact that my self esteem is tied more to posting [quality] than to getting feedback thereon.)

That imp tells me that I am loved and respected less when I take off days from blogging, or fail to post art and words and poetry. My rational mind does not understand the imp.

I cried today. It was the first time I shed tears about Reagan's impending departure. My rational mind does not understand that, either. My rational mind does understand that it's past midnight on December 31, which means we're down to 13 days.

December 31, 2008 is also exactly 3 years from the first day I met Reagan for the first time, and the first day I became a real person to him.

Non-sequitur: I am going to banish the imp for a while, posting only what and when I feel like it. Blogging is in my blood, and writing is an integral part of who I am. Most certainly I will still be journaling over the next week-and-six-days, both here and at Boot & Beyond, but I am going to do my best to live in the moment and not pressure myself to be perfectly faithful to my posting ideals.

I'll just have to hope that you all still love me anyways. :)

L&L
Annie

ps: and if you can forgive that, can you forgive me falling behind in keeping up with my reading list, too? -.-

Labels: blogging, excuses, memo, memories

Today is 2112. And winter solstice.

Live appropriately.

Labels: bonus post, memo

Pre-post shout-out to Katie Cook. It's her birthday! Besides being an amazing artist, she's a wonderfully sweet and nerdy gal.

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After an early morning scare of "can he go tomorrow?"*, I spent the day blissfully escaping into tv, drawing, and Bradbury's quirky prose.

(*the answer was "no, there are still obligations to be concluded)

Yes, I'm 24, a fan of sci-fi and literature, and I've never read Fahrenheit 451 before. If it's any defense, I have read Something Wicked This Way Comes.

As I was taking care of some chores downstairs I was bemoaning (to myself) the fact that I don't have as much time to devote to poetry as I would like. After reading a few of the entries in the Daily Routines blog, I fussed about being keen to master both writing and art, but whenever I devote hours to the former, the back of my mind tells me I could be spending them on the latter. I was specifically thinking about poetry, and how it's been quite a while since I've been inspired enough to have a new poem flow out of me.

Then I made sandwiches, tidied up the kitchen, then came upstairs and fluidly wrote a couple dozen lines. Oh, the gifts of irony.

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Obligatory paragraph pondering my social relationships. Today is one of the days I feel like an alien when thinking about my friends.

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For some odd reason I really like the idea of titling poems with days of the week, months of the year, and times of day. Maybe it ties into my tendency to use poetry as a form of diary, but with mood, emotion, events, and details, I like placing them in a chronological context, even if it doesn't tie into an ongoing timeline.

I think it might be similar to this phenomenon: Recently I read or heard someone talking about going to visit a foreign country. (It kills me that I can't remember the source of this anecdote.) Upon their return, friends asked "What is Country X like?" and the traveler would reply "I don't know", as he could only speak to his own experiences in the country, which could not offer a reliable picture of what Country X is like.

The connection is that by titling a poem "Early November" when nothing in the poem explicitly implies early November, I'm casting the contents of the poem in an early-November sort of light. I'm not saying what "early November" is, just my experiences there. Then.

Even though I don't have a deeply personal relationship with seasons, or week-patterns, or even day-patterns, I like using those markers. Mentally, I'm perhaps one step and one leap from developing a concise plan and description for a (chapbook?) project using only hours, days, and months for tiles.

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I am enamored with the lines inside my tea mug. While they do indicate that it's time for my ceramic chalice to be washed, they're also clues to my drinking habits: evenly spaced rings marking the resting water level between each round of sips. The stains are darker near the top; more heat and resting time when the tea-level is high. When I'm down to the last third, sometimes the tea isn't even lukewarm, and I lose interest.

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Dammit. Long post. I guess I'm back to normal? Unfortunately the net is not being normal. *is afraid to attempt posting*

Daily poem and art to come in a separate post so I can close firefox to play with digital paints.

Labels: bonus post, details, memo, poetry

I've written a full post's worth of thoughts about my past few days in subject lines alone... in my head. Unfortunately, these happen in fleeting splinters at fleeting moments when the idea isn't quite worth seeking out the means to write it down.

The site got small updates. On the front page I added two note, but only one link. The other change, noted on the front page, is the title of this blog, which I've changed to "progress, uncensored". It's a title that doesn't override the original purpose of the blog: to note changes on my site, but is a more encompassing descriptor. The main new point I want to encompass is the fact that I'm going to post pages from my sketchbook more. Hopefully every day, but more like every time Reagan has the chance to scan doodles from said sketchbook.

As long as a year ago, I was struggling with my focus in life. There were several things I wanted to be, and I wanted to be all of them very well and very soon. I love my game design brain, i love my crafty brain, I love my writing brain, and I love my drawing brain. Four things I wanted to pursue. But going after all of them at the same time stressed me out, and the stress combined with lack of focus made progress grind to a halt

The past few weeks, even more notably the past few days, I've dropped myself out of the normal hustle of trying to accomplish so very much. Some parts were intentional, some were unintentional, and some were motivated by my wonderful husband, but what matters is that in the "end" (so far as the journey to the point where you are currently at is over, even if the traveling has just begun) I've come to a sweet spot.

Life right now resounds well as my time is focused on cooking, house-making, and drawing. Plus a little bit of yoga. Oh, and a few hours of stiff-job working here and there. I've finally become serious about being an artist.

All my ideas are still captured and stored, like fireflies in jars, in a place where they are useful for lighting my way, and writing happens from time to time, but I'm happiest bowing my head to sketchbook, and forging into that wilderness.

Posting here will happen more often as I build momentum and (hopefully) skill, and while I can't expect accolades and comments each time I post, especially because I'm not doing anything impressive yet, even the smallest bits of encouragement and constructive criticism go a long way. Plus, when I am doing big things, you'll be able to say you knew me when. ;D

Labels: memo