Tag: creative life

:11/30:

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I want…

…to grow things.

…to knit with a kitten on my lap.

…to wear wool socks.

…to sew a dress.

…to draw my own herbal grimoire.

…to drink wine as the moon rises through the trees.

…to sit around a bonfire in the cold of winter with friends and family, roasting s’mores.

…to read a new book with rain pattering against the windows.

…to watch the original Dark Crystal, and hope the new series doesn’t ruin it all.

…to make every ornament for the tree next month.

…to curl up with my love in a cold, dark house under warm, thick blankets.

:8/30:

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At the beginning of the year I chose a word to be my focus: CREATE.

I wasn’t sure quite what I wanted to create. Was is a book? knitting projects? this blog? new habits? new hobbies?

Truth be told I am still not quite sure, but at the same time I am more certain.

I do not have specifics of what I want to create. I just want to be creating.

I think I spent most of my life not thinking of myself as a creative. I drew, but I was no artist. I knit, but I was no maker. I wrote, but I was no  writer.

I wanted to be all of those things, but how to chose? My interests would flit from one thing to another. I would get obsessed with a project, finish it, and decide I wanted to do something completely different next. Round and round my mind would go, never really focusing, never really settling.

Maybe it’s my age, maybe it’s just maturity (which is not necessarily tied to age), but I now feel like that’s perfectly OK. Who says a writer can’t be a musician (Stephen King) or an actor can’t be photographer (Viggo Mortensen) or a knitter can’t be an artist (Sina) or a writer can’t be a knitter (Penny Reid)?

I mean, could you imagine telling Da Vinci to stick to just one medium?

So why should I expect that of myself?

Why should I try to pigeonhole myself?

I am not doing this as some career shift (though it would be nice to find a way to make an income from my creating.) I’m doing this because something in the very heart of me demands I let it out, in all it’s various expressions.

 

:forty-three years ’round the sun:

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At times I find it hard to believe I am in my forties, married, and have two children (one of which is my size).

Today I turn forty-three.

I love my birthday, though I don’t actually celebrate it in the traditional sense. For me it is more of a personal new year. It is a day when I love to think back on the past year and my life in general. When I would love to sit in a cafe bookstore, surrounded by the things I love: books, a journal, a good pen, and coffee.

A day to reflect, and then an evening with my family is all I would need to make my birthday special.

I do not shy away from it, or hide it’s existence, or wish I was younger. I don’t see the point. I know others do, and they have their own reasons for doing so. To me, a birthday is a celebration of the unique person who is me. On that day, at that hour, a singular being was born into this world. A person who will bring their own creativity and wonder and beauty to existence.

And that is reason enough to celebrate.

Today, I will actually not get the chance to spend my birthday as I wish.

Instead, I will be driving all over town as a homeschool mom. Tonight I will get home late and in the dark to make dinner. But after that, when the kitchen is clean, I will break open a hard cider, cuddle on the couch with my husband, and toast to one more year ’round the sun.

:january 2018 zentangle challenge

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In the past my drawing efforts have been sporadic at best. I’ll do a big piece and then I won’t touch my pens for months. So, to go with my word for the year, I am doing a daily drawing challenge in my bullet journal this year. this is my first effort. Unfortunately, I did not start it until I came back from my trip to Florida, thus the crossed out days.

This month I am going to try a more free-form format. I may not always do zentangles, as I want to start doodling and drawing in other styles as well.

We’ll see how that works out.

:the right to make:

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When I was a child I loved to make things: stories, drawings, knitted scarves for my cabbage patch doll. All of it was play, the important work of childhood. It is the way in which children learn who they are and what they like. But, with age, comes responsibilities. Childhood things are left behind. I put my notebooks and sketchbooks away and concentrated on getting into college, getting a degree, and getting my first job. It was the sensible thing to do.

And then….

…then I awoke one day and found something was missing.

I was happily married. I enjoyed my job. I had good friends. We had a beautiful little girl and a boy on the way. Yet, there was something missing. I had already picked knitting back up. I would occationally write up a short story here and there. I kept a file of ideas on a USB key.

Having a second baby re-focused me on them. They were so little and they needed me. As they got bigger, I pursued other interests, both because I loved them and because I wanted a career. Still, in the back of my mind I continued to have the feeling something wasn’t quite right. Something was still missing.

My second career ended, and my focus turned to homeschooling. I spent a large part of the first year lost as we went through the deschooling process. So, I took up my knitting more seriously. I began to draw again. I started stepping away from Facebook political fights to chase hashtags on Instagram. I made my first poorly timed attempt at NaNoWriMo (we were moving.) I learned to spin. I started taking photos again.

Slowly my inner self woke up.

At first I felt a bit guilty, but then I realized I was showing my kids by example. I was teaching them to use the resources around them to teach themselves. I was teaching them to go after the things they wanted.

Last year I also started to come to the realization I wanted to make making my life’s work. I’ve come to believe that it is everyone’s life work. Creating is part of what it means to be human. We all do it in different ways, as scientists, as poets, as surgeons, as teachers, as sculptors.

I want to make every day for the rest of my life.

I want to write novels.

I want to take film photographs.

I want to knit sweaters.

I want to spin my own yarn.

I want to cook.

I want to play music.

I want to create.

 

 

 

:goals for 2018:

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So the first half of January is gone and I have my goals for 2018.

No, I won’t be sharing the entirety of them here, but I will be talking about a few. Mainly I’ll be sharing the ones having to do with crafting, homesteading, making, and writing.

Here are a few:

  • Write two full novels.
  • Blog every weekday.
  • Teach myself yoga.
  • Lots of road trips as a family.
  • Create every day.
  • Learn to sew.
  • Learn hand lettering.
  • Keep a Gratitude Journal, and write in it daily.
  • Study herbalism.
  • Finish the declutter I started last year. (so close!)

I made myself a GOALS Page and stuck it in the front of my planner. Every morning, after writing my Morning Pages, I read my goals and make my my lists based on what is really important to me.

 

 

:once upon a time…:

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…there was a very lucky nine year old girl (the one behind her sister) who travelled to distant lands and saw wondrous sights and wondered if she could one day grow up and go back to those distant lands to study the history of these ancient people.

Unfortunately, she was told to turn her attention away from such silly thoughts.

She was told that all that could be found was found.

She was told all that could be known was known.

She was told, it was foolish.

And so, she turned away from these foolish thoughts and silly dreams.

Decades later she watched documentary after documentary showing the new discoveries being made of those ancient people she had longed to study. This made the young woman she had grown up to be very sad, and so she vowed to listen to no one else about how and what to do with her dreams. Eventually, she met a man who felt the same way and encouraged her to follow her dreams, no matter how silly they may seem to others.

She never went back to that distant land, but she is living happily (ever after.)

:a bit of a ramble:

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Trying to come up with a topic every day for this uncategorized blog is not coming easily. For years I have read blogs from artists or homeschooling moms, baby blogs and CrossFit ones. I love having an insight into people’s everyday lives. It is one of the reasons I wanted to do this blog.

But there also seems to be this tremendous pressure to monetize blogs and make them look super curated and artistic.

I’m not sure that is me.

I just want to share a little bit about myself, and make connections with readers and bloggers.

My life is not super fancy. I don’t have a gorgeously decorated home. I live in a tiny 800 square foot cottage in the mountains. I’m a true homebody unless I’m traveling somewhere. I love to craft, but I’m not a guru in any one discipline. Probably because I love to do all the things, so I never get really good at any one thing. Hell, I’m a beginner or dabbler in almost all of the things I do.

I can guarantee anyone who comes here will mostly see ramblings about my day and photos when I remember to take them. They will see me write about fears and insecurities (a lot). They will read about my attempts to make art, both in writing and through textile and visual means.

And they will see me document the life I want to make for myself.

I am embarking on a journey into the Creative Life.

It is a world I have watched, standing outside in the cold, with my nose pressed against the glass, and longing for the warmth within. I would tell myself that was for other people, people who were “good at it.” Even as I tell my kids that they have to start and make mistakes before they could develop the skills they wanted, I never let myself hear my own advice.

It has only taken forty-two years to give myself permission to live that creativity.