Dreaming

A very busy week. I had spring break from school, but spent half the week looking for work, and fortunately, the second half of the week working. I did a 5 day freelance job that was really fun and helped me remember
what it is I am actually good at. Unfortunately, it is not very likely that I will be able to continue working freelance, unless more jobs come in soon. On the other hand, I have accepted a seasonal job selling plants and other gardening items. this is not a bad job, little dress code, I am selling things I can feel good about, and I am not chained to a cube!! Life could be worse. And, the best of all, I am expecting 50 degrees tomorrow!!!! Yes, Yes, Yes!!!! I'm ready to dream of the shade of green trees and long, lazy summer days. It is coming soon!

Good Day Sunshine

Even though we are still on the receiving end of snow, at least we are also getting sunshine. This is the time of year when it is hard for me to be patient. Spring teases us and I am ready to walk barefoot, sit outside in my backyard, garden and grow colorful flowers. Instead, it is still too cold to be out without a coat, and the earth lies buried under white snow. So, I'll dream about gardening and play with colourful fabrics to keep my spirits up.
I am job interviewing, not always a painless task, but after almost a year of no job, I am ready to put my shoulder to the wheel again. Yesterday, i had a pleasant interview with a woman close to my age, and much of the time it was almost more like a conversation between friends rather than a job interview. Nice.
I am also on break from classes this week, which has given me a bit of time to think about what I want to do. I've begun work on a new writing project that i am pretty excited about, and unless I end up with a possible freelance job for the rest of this week, I'll be back in my studio stitching up new designs that I have been doodling all over my journal pages. There is nothing like a new pen (especially in a fun colour like turquoise or emerald green) to bring some energy into my journal pages. I've been enjoying it immensely. When I finish the prototypes of the new designs, I'll be sure to post them. In the meantime, I think I'll find some fresh flowers to put on my desk, and clear out some of the clutter that the cold weather has left in my brain. Think Spring!!

My Dolls are Listed

I've begun to stock my etsy store with my dolls. I have a few listed, and will continue to list more as I have time to do the photography, and finish up with new designs. It feels great to see them filling up my store. I love how colourful the fabrics are, and I still enjoy their faces (my favourite part of making the dolls I think). I hope yoou'll stop by and check them out.

Snow and Cold

We're still in the midst of snow and cold, I know, it is still winter. But this is the first winter in several years that has been 'normal'. I for one have become accustomed to warmer weather and less snow over the last few winters, and most especially, thaws and unseasonably warm weather ona regular basis in January and February.
This winter has been more like a 'real' winter, lots of snow, lots of cold,and in between, ice and more snow. On the other hand, being stuck indoors can be good for the work ethic and creative work. I've been writing quite a bit and enjoying time to read. I am preparing to teach my Visual Journaling workshop this Sunday, after a very busy Saturday that includes my Natural History class (4 and 1/2 hours in the morning), two birthday parties, one for a 50th, one for a 40th, and my youngest daughter's Kungfu demonstration with a large Chinese New Year feast and celebration afterwards. It should be fun, and excellent food also. Enjoy whatever is happening outside your window, whether it is cold and snowy or warm and sunny.

More cold weather in my neck of the woods, and this makes me want to stay in bed, drink cup after cup of tea and read the stack of books that have migrated to the side of my bed. Mornings feel too early (and really really cold) and evening comes quickly and is colder still. Every winter I wonder to myself about my choice to live somewhere that the temperature actually stays below zero for days on end. Fortunaely, the pay off is the fact that spring and summer, and even fall are so magnificent, they more than make up for the brief deep freeze that we endure most years. Around this time of year though, the skies are often grey, the snow that we have had is dirty and frozen into icy ruts and hills, and the heating bills are feeling monumental. I treasure the time to spend indoors daydreaming (one of my favorite activities I realize), and reading, writing or watching movies and tv. But after a few months of it, we're all abit squirrely and feeling the need to get out of our houses. Valentine's Day in climates like mine is made into a big deal, not so much because we are romantics, but because it is an excuse to dress up and get out for a few hours. I had my Valentine dinner with my sweetie on Saturday, steak and other lovely items, a red rose that managed to survive the twentyseven below zero windchill that night, and an irish coffee nightcap with good friends before we all said 'Goodnight" and hightailed it to our warm houses. Thank goodness for car heaters and gloves and boots.
Happy Valentine's Day to all of us, keep warm!

I've been writing alot recently. I am taking 2 writing classes, one in creative nonfiction and memoir, and the other called 'Writers as Readers". Both are fun, lots of reading and lots of writing. At times, the assignments begin to overlap a little. I've written several peices now about my childhood and growing up. It is astounding how the memories keep coming once I've tugged at the thread. I had never thought much about writing nonfiction and am now finding that I am really enjoying it. This is good, since I have another 2 months of classes left, and quite a bit more writing to do for them. This is a peice I wrote to describe my relationship with reading and writing.



The first book I remember
reading had a main character
named Nell.
She was a farm horse,
I was not amused.
I read everything I could get my hands on.
I read everywhere.
I read in the bathroom,
I read when I was supposed to be doing dishes,
I read hidden under my bed,
I took books out past the flowerbeds
into the wild plum brush and read.
Whatever I read,
I lived, breathed, played and dreamed.
Books were portals into other worlds
that I could escape into.
Books took me places that I had never
imagined existed.
Then, I began to write.
I wrote poems, stories, plays, books, newspapers
I wrote journals and diaries.
I wrote things that I could never say to anyone.
I wrote words that I didn’t know I knew.
I wrote about people I had never known
and places I had never been.
I wrote about worlds and art and love and living
and passion.
I wrote because I couldn’t NOT write.
Most of my childhood, my writing
and reading were seen as frivolous
and relatively unimportant by those
around me.
When I decided to be a writer
I felt as though I were staking my flag
on an undiscovered planet.
I also felt as though I had only a limited
amount of oxygen to survive.
In my early twenties,
a dream came true,
I began work at a small
publishing press.
I spent my days reading terrible
poetry sent in by 90 year old women
and ex-truck driving men.
I had to write back to them and tell them
we would not be publishing their
precious poems.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to tell them how
awful they were.
I spent my evenings trying to keep up with
alcoholic poets and writers twice my age
and tangled in the dysfunctional lives of
blocked artists.
I became a sounding board and a mirror.
I became a shadow self to diseased writers.
Eventually, I began to disappear.
During the peak of this craziness,
as I split up with my boyfriend and all
sanity fell away,
I announced to anyone who would listen that there was no future
for the printed word
and I quit my job and went to
film school.
I stopped writing.
I began to work and think and dream in visual images
and sound.
I felt as though I were swimming, submerged, drowning
and reborn.
I took photographs, made films and
created sound pieces.
I continued only to write in my notebooks.
Years passed,
I married,
had 2 children,
divorced, remarried, had 2 more children,
worked in the commercial film industry
and then
when the crossroads of Hollywood
and family appeared,
I chose my family.
I handed my camera to my husband
(who became a professional photographer in 6 months)
and juggled children and a job in a food co-op.
I stopped thinking of image making
as creative expression, it had
become a way to earn a living.
Eventually, I returned to the commercial photography
industry as a producer and stylist
and made more money than I had ever made before.
I spent this money
on books, notebooks and pens.
I began to lust after words, to yearn
for stories. I tried to write a novel
in a month,
and failed.
I tried again and failed again.
In between, I began to dabble in characters
and settings,
I began to imagine in words instead
of visual images.
I felt as though I were 75 years old
and trying to roller skate again. I could remember
the sensation of flying through a short story or poem,
of gliding through notebook after notebook of imaginative
writing,
but I needed to relearn
the craft, the effort, the work
involved in the process.
Now, I have managed to write
4 rough drafts of novels,
I have tacked a creative writing minor
onto the tail end of my filmmaking degree.
I am writing everyday.
I think my wings
are getting stronger.

Working in my studio yesterday, I am beginning some new designs for dolls and other artwork. This is a peice I finished last year, it had been started a few years ago and sat in peices, unfinished, unrealized for a long time. I loved the shape of the wood that I had used for the body, it was a peice of driftwood I found up on the north shore (Land Superior), and carried around in my car for dome time, waiting for inspiration to hit. Then, I made the basic body shape, thinking of the Sedna legends from the Arctic areas. She was a girl who ended up being dumped in the ocean, and eventually became the deep sea goddess. When she combs her hair, she releases the animals for the hunters to hunt. The face I had sculpted when I was testing different materials.
After trying a few other ideas for a head, I attatched this mask-like face, and stuck the feathers into the holes I had sculpted around the edge. It is odd how things come together somethimes that I hadn't meant to put together, but had been working on at the same time. If I hadn't had a deadline (it appeared briefly in a show last winter), I know this wouldn't have gotten finished. Deadlines are so useful, even when we fight against them. I am working at setting deadlines for myself inrelation to other parts of my life. School has been good for me to become adjusted to writing deadlines in my calendar, and pushing myself to meet them.

It is the deepest dark of winter, but light is beginning to be visible on the horizon and I am feeling the slightest of stirrings within. After too much time wasted looking for a 'regular' job, I have come to the understanding that my future is heading in a different direction. I am putting together a patchwork of freelance and contract work to keep the money coming in as I finish my degree. I feel excited, but nervous about this path, but I am willing to trust that it can work. Now, I begin to take the things I have learned over the years about business and marketing and promotion and apply them to myself. It helps for me to think about how to create the life (including work) that I am interested in living instead of adjusting to the life that I have stumbled upon. In the face of sorting this out, I realize that I am willing to do almost anything (including temp work) to make this happen. Good, if I have the passion and the interest, then it is a matter of combining these with my skills and vision. And, of course, the basics of hard work and patience.

I am back in the studio, making more dolls, and designing new doll and puppet designs. I have so many ideas running around in my head, it is a matter of patience to get them down on paper (quick sketches in my journal usually) and then to make the prototypes in fabric. I love starting new projects, that has always been true for me. My problem tends to be not finishing projects that I began with great enthusiam. I am concentrating on finishing up unfinished business in my life, I suppose thinking about eventually starting fresh again. How appealling that is, to start with a blank slate!
Family situations and the tumultuous wonder of raising teenagers has taken up a lot of my attention recently. It may be calming down enough that I can begin to put my own creative work back on the front burner. I am no wanting to wish these last few years with my children away, but I do long for less dramatic mornings. On the bright side though, we are in the midst of a stretch of goregous fall weather, sunny and blue skies and the leaves just begining to change. There is enough of a crispness in the air that one can not doubt that we are in fall and winter is around the corner. I treated myself to a caramel apple yesterday, what delightful memories came flooding back from my childhood.

A busy summer that took up most of my attention, and I kept meaning to post, yet put it off. I think that in my effort to see this summer as a time to recreate myself in the face of transitions, I scared myself off a bit, feeling uncertain as to where I was going to go with this 're-creation' of my life, not wanting to do it 'wrong', or screw it up, especially since I seem intent on going public with it.
So, I've given myself a pep talk about just going for it, and now I've pulled up my courage enough to push myself back toward regular posting again.
In the works right now for me, are still job searching/freelance networking, a new grandson (my first grandchild!), I am returning to writing a novel that I put aside for awhile, trying to sort out how I wanted to approach it (somewhat like my life I think). I have also gone back to teaching, something I used to do many years ago. I am offering classes again at my studio, a visual journalling class and a mixed media class creating archetype cards. I am looking forward to visual work in my studio again, it has been awhile since I have given myself permission to play. It is about time I remember that it is a matter of giving myself permission, there is no one else I need to ask.
Oh, and I am back in scho0l, 1/2 time this semester, finally finishing up my degree, and completing a minor in creative writing. I guess that is what is on the top of my mind now, good to be back.

Yesterday my husband called me and told me he had bought me a sailboat. It was something that I toyed with as I approached my 50th birthday this past winter. I felt like I wanted to get myself something that felt like an indulgence, but that endured, and pushed me out of my comfort zone in a good way. Living here in the land of ten thousand lakes, a small sail boat that I could put into the water on my own, and goof around with either by myself or with a friend or two seemed like an ideal thing. I looked around at used boats, but then my job disappeared, I stopped thinking about it, and decided it might have to wait until I am more fully employed, or at least more stable economically.
But, with some extra money he garnered through the sale of his share of an airplane, he went on line and purchased exactly what I was looking for, and has said he will pay to have the hitch put on my car to tow it. I am almost speechless, after 17 years together, such a loving, and caring gesture. It feels wonderful to be seen, when I feel as though I go through much of my life not completely visible.
Tomorrow morning we drive out to pick it up, and if the weather is good, perhaps it will be a weekend on the water for us. This summer is beginning to look even better than I had imagined it could!

I feel as though I have been on a long voyage this weekend. I spent much of my time thinking, journalling and in general trying to sort out where I want to attempt to steer my future. With my employment future suspended, at least temporarily, I find myself under the illusion that I have more "control" over my life than usual. Instead, over the last few weeks, I find myself more a creature of habit than I might want to admit. I still escape in the same ways I always have, I do not (or at least have not yet) enthusiastically embrace a vigorous exercise plan, nor spend hours in my studio.
So I have been asking myself, what is it I truly want to do, not what do I need to do, or what should I do, but what do I want to do? It is amazing how intimidating this question is. I wish I were still 7 years old, back then I know that this question was not difficult to answer. But now, at the weathered old age of 50, it seems like a trick question riddled with trapdoors and other unpleasant boobytraps and surprises. I have managed to make a list for myself that I have written in my journal, and now intend to use as a touchstone everyday this week. I will be interested to see how many of the things I 'think' I want to do are what I end up doing.
I want to swim, walk, read, write everyday, finish my resume, plant more in my garden, write letters to people I owe letters to, get into my studio and just play (don't do anything specific, just respond to the materials), spend time with my kids while they are out of school and before their summer programs begin, draw, take photographs, try out some new recipes.
Here's to a week of experimentation. There is no time like the present!

I am in the midst of shifting from working fulltime (7:30 am-4:30 pm Monday through friday) to freelancing, creating a work lifestyle that is hopefully a better fit with the other parts of my life (active mothering of 2 at teenagers, as well as my own creative endeavours). It has been an interesting challenge fro me to find how to structure my 'work' days. At times I act as though I am on vacation, which I do feel I deserve as I took almost no days off for the last seven years. But most days I make a detailed list in my journal of all my 'to-dos' and if I find myself at the end of the day without having accomplished most of the list, I feel lazy and unproductive. It is a switch in my thinking that I am going to work on this week, to see that the nap I ended up taking today (unplanned and not on my list), might have been necessary for me to get to the other things that are on my list. I think about putting some of these items on the list ahead of time, so I can cross them off as righteously as I cross off dishes or giving the cat his antibiotics. So, naps, staring dreamily out the window, noodling around in my studio, talking to a friend on the phone, a second cup of tea while leafing through a magazine, I need to remember that these are needed also, and deserve as much room in my life as the laundry and the calls for arrangements to show my portfolio or rewriting my resume. All in good time, all in a days' work.

I finally got an image onto my header, and began playing around with the colours for my header and dates. I realize for many people these are very basic changes they are capable of making on their blogs, but for me it is a learning curve that I am proud to be tackling. I figure that I'll play around with the basic options for another few days, and then I plan on 'unveiling' my blog by sending the link out to my friends and email contacts. I am still getting used to writing on a more regular basis, and figuring out what it is I want to write about and share in such a public forum. I am envious of those who began early in the blogging world, and therefore were less self-aware as those of us just jumping in now. But, regardless of my belated start, I am looking forward to this experience.
Rain and grey skies here in the midwest combined with a headcold that I caught from my daughter make me want to crawl back into bed with a good book, but I've promised myself I'll get out and accomplish at least some of the items on my list before giving in to the weather, my stuffy nose and sore throat.

A beautiful day in the northern plains, I meet a friend and take a walk around the local park. There was a time when that was an excursion that would take preparation and tremendous efforts. Now, with 2 children grown and out of the house, and the last two in middle and high school, I can tie my shoes, and throw on a jacket and be out the door in one minute. It almost reminds me of the sense of freedom I had when I moved into my first apartment. It took me awhile to remember that I didn't have to tell anyone where I was going (much less ask permission). Having my children grow up brings back so many memories of when I was a newly hatched adult. The feeling of unlimited horizons ahead of me, and no one to tell me what I should or shouldn't do. Stay up all night, eat a whole avocado for lunch, drink cheap wine, and throw up in my own toilet (not to mention cleaning it up later). All the good and bad and in between choices that I have made so far have brought me to this point in my life. It is an interesting place to be, and in general I am happy to say I have no regrets. Today, the sun shines in a cool blue sky, and I have a to do list of my own making, to follow or ignore as I choose. May you be as lucky as I feel today!

After a brief (well, maybe not so brief) time away, I am finding time and interest in returning to the idea of my own blog. Fortunately, as I been wrestling with other parts of my life, blogger has gone through some changes so I am going to be able to customize the look of my blog more easily (I am told). This week I intend to do a full redesign which I am hoping will also make me invested enough to want to return on a regular basis and use this blog as I initially intended to use it (more than once a year?) Now, I am sorting through images, considering color combinations and other design elements to be unveiled in the coming days. Good fortune to all of you as well!

I've been toying with the idea of starting a blog, and today, as I sat down at my computer, I suddenly found myself, in an attempt to make a comment on a blog that I read, creating a blog. So, this is how it happens! Not much forethought, no planning, just dive in and see if I can swim. Okay, I'm in, and so far the water is fine.