January Recap
January was a big, full month this year! I wonder if writing about the struggle to find balance last month… actually helped me find some this month?
I hit the ground running with the monsters. This year I started using a colored pencil (way more fun than a boring old regular pencil!) to keep track of how I spent my workday, and it really helps me understand where my days go and how long things actually take. It’s so easy to look back at a “blank” week and feel like I “wasted” it. But I’m loving this new system of visual accountability.
I had my sketches done through #80, and when I finished painting #80, I hit a snag because I’d forgotten how to draw and also how to come up with ideas at all. I’ve always had a problem switching gears: usually it takes one day of unproductive sitting at my desk hating myself, followed by a day of youtube and napping in bed hating myself even more, and by the third day I’m so angry and fed up with myself I just start scribbling absolute garbage and… out of that comes the beginning of some sketches. At this point you’d think I know myself well enough to know this is going to happen, but it usually comes as a shock and an existential crisis ensues. Ah well, we all have our processes, right? One day I’d love it if mine could skip those first two days and all the grumbly feelings that come along with them. But I got some new sketches that I’m excited about! And I even painted #81 in the last two days of the month, for a total of 6 new paintings.
In other news, I’m finally taking a welding class this year! I think my curiosity seed was planted all the way back in my first year at Burning Man (2007, if we’re counting) where I saw someone welding a project late one night and thought “ooh, that looks like fun!”
The PCC Course Catalog showed up with a front page feature and lots of good reviews on the wonderful welding teacher. She is pretty wonderful! The class culture is so helpful and collaborative. My first day really working in the studio I learned plasma cutting, grinding, and welding and it felt like three whole days crammed into three hours. It’s exhilarating! For my practice project I made a little chair (on the left, my classmate made the rocking chair on the right).
I love journaling. These days I always look forward to a nice cup of coffee and writing two pages every morning. So this month I added some art journaling into my routine first thing. I was inspired by the daily 15 minute practice I did for Inktober, and honestly, doing anything for 15 minutes is so easy, it helps break some of the resistance my dumb mind sets up for me every night while I’m sleeping. It’s a “no-rules” place for mostly abstracts and experiments. Where I can get a bit wild, in contrast to working on the monsters which are much more thought-out and intentional. When I get stuck, sometimes I just draw small lines for the whole 15 minutes and dang it if I don’t always feel a little bit better after doing it, no matter how much I may fight starting it.
I’ve also started The Daily Stoic Journal this year (an impulse purchase after watching youtube bro-casts) (maybe next month I’ll dive into my favorite bro-casts and why the heck I am even watching them???) (also I’m a sucker for everything journaling, haha). It’s just a small prompt, morning and evening, for every day of the year, about how to live a little better. In the past I’ve been pretty resistant to stoic philosophy in general. But something about this season of my life, needing to let go of everything I can’t control, it’s finally been speaking to me and helping me through all the lumps and bumps. Well, obviously not all of them, I still have the occasional art tantrum. But it’s not about being perfect, it’s about slowly and steadfastly improving over time through thoughtful consideration of what’s important and in our control.