Social Networking Ban: Day One

Posted on by

I’m doing pretty well, so far. I just peeked once, since a poet whose work I rather like just accepted my friend invitation on Facebook. I do have his blog address, but I suspect I should leave that for next week’s reading, also.

This morning I have handled business phone calls; pulled weeds from the other half of the backyard garden, planted the last of the wildflower seeds, and watered it all; and put a load of bedding into the washing machine.

I believe that the desperate need to get away from reading social networking sites has a lot to do with loss of focus. Needing space in my own head for my own thoughts.

So far, so good!

At long last, silence

Posted on by

I am taking a break from “social media” in the manner of The Artist’s Way “reading deprivation week.” Oddly enough, I intend to spend a lot of that time working on my various web pages and my business and personal blogs—just not getting involved in reading other people’s work for a while. Fraying a bit around the edges, I am.

As my energy level has continued to rise, I have been getting stuff done. My office is cleaned and straightened, and I’ve only half a dozen boxes of papers left to sort through and shred. Found that the vacuum cleaner that supposedly didn’t work, actually works quite well when compared to the one that I had been trying to use. Swapped them out and did my office and hallway. Wednesday is my half-day, and I shall celebrate by clearing the living room floor and getting that vacuumed out, too.

That may seem like an odd sort of an artist’s date, but…

For a long time I paid a woman to come in and do my cleaning for me, and we’d gotten to know each other pretty well. Then she started having some problems in her life, family members ill, and then a death in the family. She quit showing up. I found out earlier this year that she died shortly after the last time I’d talked with her on the phone. As my health improves, I am able to assume more of that work myself. I do so appreciate the years that we knew each other.

New Photo on Main Page

Posted on by

There is a new photograph on the Opening Page of the site that shows recent flooding of the Red River (middle of July 2011). We’ve had fair-sized storms in this area of North Dakota-Minnesota in recent weeks. A news story locally indicated we got an inch to two inches of rain last night, mostly within 20 minutes. Lots of street flooding. Such fun!

Catch-Up

Posted on by

I seem to have been busy elsewhere, this summer. I’ve taken lots of photographs, cut down almost all of the hollyhocks in both side gardens due to a fungus infection that is (I hope and suspect) specific to hollyhocks and the mallow/false mallow plants, and written nothing at all. I have lots of new photos on display at Postcard Art and Red Bubble.

One fun thing has been trying out Google+, which I find I like because of the ability to use the set-up as a Facebook/Twitter reading list as well as for sending posts to selected groups (Circles) of people I want to communicate with.

Our landline telephone problems are at least temporarily solved. Squirrels were eating through the phone cables, about a telephone pole south of us. Last week, they got all the way through, and we lost phone and Internet service; there is now a replacement line yielding good service. The neighborhood squirrels need shorter chew toys.

Drifting at the beginning of the month

Posted on by

As the year enters its third quarter, I find myself thinking that I should start reorganizing my life to meet my current interests and activity patterns. I am spending a lot more time than I used to on externals, these days, than  I have for many years. It might be nice actually to make decisions in advance, rather than drifting into outcomes without weighing the pros and cons.

Where did the month go?

Posted on by

I was certain, until this week, that there were many more days to come in June. Time has been galloping by, and I’ve been thinking about other things. First, I should post the “Review and Reflections” that I wrote after reading (a lot of) the ARC for Welcome to Bordertown. I promptly pre-ordered an e-copy and read the whole book when it was released.

As time passes, I am finding that the range of my interests and activities are broadening, as available time and resources are dwindling. Case in point: My current reading consists of the Harry Potter series, first time through, and I’m on book 3; SF novels by L. E. Modesitt, Jr., rereads all, and I’m in the middle of Gravity Dreams; and the first time through The Origins of Political Order: Vol. I (I understand that there will be a Vol. II at some point), by Francis Fukuyama. I’m also reading a book on how to write and teach haiku (new to me) and a book on the various forms of poetry (believe I read, decades ago, a previous edition). You should see my “to be read stack”! Broadening. Definitely.

I am determined to be in shape this year to start riding my bicycle again, we have found odor-free, nontoxic chemicals for cleaning my (new) revolver, and I am trying out a low-impact gardening technique, this year, that involves clearly marking where the flowers and vegetables are planted, but merely keeping the weeds and grass closely trimmed, in hopes that this year the garden soil will not turn to dust and blow away, carrying the seeds with it. My only fear is that having ordered my wildflower seeds so late, American Meadows will delay shipment until an “appropriate” time of the year, leaving me flowerless. I am dreadfully allergic to tree pollen, and only a lesser extent to grass pollen, and so, as I have learned over the years, preparing the garden before the middle to end of June is beyond me. Next year, if that nice fellow who asked me to write a resume and advertising for yard work jobs for him should still be around, I will hire him right off at the end of April and have a semi-formal garden again. The woman who lives across the back fence from me (Oh! She just came outside! I hope she’s not lighting a fire in her outdoor fireplace, again! I don’t want to spend the rest of the evening in the basement, just so I can breathe!) has a beautifully laid-out garden that looks as though it has some sort of mesh on the ground between the plants to keep weeds from springing up. (She’s just laid down green mesh over the tops of the plants, too, and gone back indoors. Hmmm…I wonder, why the mesh?)

I’m getting on the exercise bike nearly every day, although I only did 2 miles, tonight, and my energy level is up. This is a good thing. When I read my mother’s blog and take a look at all that she accomplishes in the course of a day, I feel too exhausted to move. Surely I won’t have that much energy when I’m 89 years old.

At any rate, I figure I have less than a year left to decide what in my life can be trimmed back or eliminated without significant loss, so that I can get back to the things I really want to get back to, but which have dropped by the wayside. What feeds and clothes us? What feeds our souls? What helps to keep us human? What involves us meaningfully in the lives of others?

Thoughts on a Rainy Weekend

Posted on by

There has been some talk recently concerning expectations encouraged by The Artist’s Way and the failure of synchronicity to meet our day-to-day needs for such vital necessities adequate as food, clothing, and shelter. That is, doing what we love does not guarantee that the money will follow.

This is a truth. What we produce as we do what we love will not always find an audience or buying public. It is the same problem as with looking for great literature among the thousands of titles of self-published books. Even the best work can be overlooked or buried in the flood of dross. It doesn’t mean that my or your work isn’t any good. It may simply not have found its audience or the group of buyers who really want or need what we create. Or…it may simply be undifferentiated from other products or not so creative or attractive as we had thought or hoped.

Perhaps the true benefit of doing what we love and letting the money follow may be that doing so broadens our horizons, our experience, and our willingness to embrace new ideas and paths and possibilities. Yesterday I picked up the 2010 edition of Richard Bolles’ book What Color Is Your Parachute, in which he laid out possible courses of action for recent college graduates who simply cannot find a job in the current job market, or who were last hired and first fired when the bottom fell out of the economy before they had the chance to gain enough on-the-job experience to make them desirable to prospective employers in the midst of economic uncertainties and dismal mid-term forecasts.

Find a temporary job doing anything, he suggested, even something you hate, so that you can continue to eat. If possible and you are on good terms with family, move back home, so that you can save some money working that temporary job and be better able financially to take advantage of an opportunity for something better when it does come along. Thanks to Barack Obama’s (hopefully ongoing) healthcare reforms, young people can stay on their parents’ health insurance policies longer. Bolles also suggested checking out alternative sources of insurance including Freelancers Union (of which I am a member, still, I believe).

I think that this is good advice. I somewhat regret for myself and for some others I know that physical roadblocks prevent following this advice as fully as we might like or as completely as survival might suggest as prudent.

The core that I see in this, though, is that there are many different venues in which our unique creative flairs can be of benefit and in which we can settle in for a little while to gain new skills, form additional networks, and taste of new outlets for our creative urges and new and different expressions of artistic expression and ingenuity. There are as many ways to give back to this world as there are ways in which people can receive and thrive upon what we can offer them.

For example, I can write poems that inspire and short stories that entertain and essays that provide encouragement. What other means are at my disposal to inspire, entertain, and encourage the people around me? In the course of my day, I can listen to the people with whom I come into contact, offering respect, attention, and honest, positive responses. Because a common thread among creative activities is the identification, portrayal, and sharing of beauty and of what is up-building for others.

So, I may not be building skyscrapers or writing million-dollar best sellers, but I can interact with people in the course of doing my work, encouraging them to recognize, explore, expand and employ their own talents and abilities. A different sort of writing…a different sort of creativity, but just as enjoyable as finding a publisher for a favorite essay or poem. Not recognized as artistic, but still a utilization of my creativity and a worthwhile application of my artistic skills.

Simplifying Life

Posted on by

In truth, I am not sure it’s really a simplification. When purchasing a second netbook computer, I decided that I needed one with no work and no household management files on it. Also, no email client! I wanted something that I can take with me wherever I go. Possible uses include

  • Reading e-books
  • Watching Netflix movies
  • Writing
  • Blogging
  • Web-surfing
  • Morning (or, in my case, Evening) Pages à la The Artist’s Way

It is not easy to refrain from “doing something productive.” I do feel the need to be able to shift gears. Not thinking, but instead doing, slips in all to easily.