You Gotta Fight For Your Right To Create

My brain is open.  It is open to all sorts of information and ideas, but it is far more evident that it is open; as in it is open spilling out of my ears and pooling on the floor.  There is just too much to keep track of all of the time.  I am combating it like a champ though.  I am drawing and taking it slow.  I am keeping up, but keeping myself at a good pace.  I've been making my coffee with a pour over.  I made myself lunch.  I did the laundry and picked up the house.  I have been more efficient with my lessons and grading, more prolific in my tiny doodles, and much more apt to have my nose in a book.  I have been working on watercolor studies and final pieces and every morning I create a watercolor bug.

 My phone is the devil.  I need to put it down.  It is just oh so easy to pick it up and check Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and repeat though.  Chasing a toddler around makes your brain feel like soup.  The release of the phone feels like a nice crusty bread to mop up the last of the broth.

It makes sense.  It is a fight to be able to create.  

In order to help myself both calm down and keep up the momentum of creating I've started to catalog all of the quiet moments I have with my son.  I've drawn just about everything that he has brought me or given me as a present, and also some of the moments that we share.  It has been a major help in attempting to be slow.  The world operates very quickly.  It is a fight to be slow and meticulous just as it is a fight to be creative.

I am not always winning this fight (see thoughts on smartphone above.) but I am feeling better about the it.  I am slowly trying to implement changes in my life to return myself to the creative entity that I once felt myself to be.  I am also realizing that for all of the time that I spent telling myself that I was working, I think I produce almost as much work now.  It is quite possible that it has more to do with the type of time you spend rather than the amount of time.  I've had several ex's try to express that to me before.

I've been fascinate about this idea of time, however.  There are periods of time where all I do is produce artwork and other times where in the past I have spent with my girlfriends or wife.  It does seem like this is one of the better instances of balance that I have ever mustered.  I feel as though I am making but not impeding progress.  Now all I need to do is line up a couple more shows for 2017.  Although, that might just break my balance that I've been trying to cultivate.

Peace

Mike

My Wife Is Sleeping Next to Me, The Story of Balance

Last week I was watching my wife's little brother.  I took the trucks off of an old skateboard of his and put them on a different deck.  The screws were next to impossible to get out, but after about a month of staring at them I determined that I was going to finish the project.  After drilling the screws out a bit I was able to finally get the trucks off of the old skateboard.  It was good to finish the project and even better adjusting the trucks to the lad's liking.

After he had tried his board for a bit, he suggested that I try.  I had not attempted to ride a skateboard in a while and even when I had attempted to ride a skateboard in the past I would never have described myself as good.  He grabbed my hands and rolled me along on the board for a while.  I am sure that this was a ridiculous sight to anyone happening on the 9 year old boy helping the large 33 year old man along on a skateboard.  It was amazing though.  Suddenly my feet seemed to better understand what was going on.  It was as if they had new, much better informed life.  I am grateful to the boy for teaching me balance.  To say that I was missing it only in the realm of skateboarding would be a lie, so I will not sit here pushing your leg.  Rather let me say that I realized that everything that I have been missing has been a result of poor balance.

I am eager to use this calm, because rally balance leads to calm, within the practice of my art and my daily life.  I already have felt much more relaxed and accepting of some of the changes that have been occurring within my life.  The next day I finished a piece that I had been working on for a bit and the day after that I started another.

 

The first was part of a new series that I thought of in reference to an old mail art piece that I sent and the second is a further development in a commission that has been taking me forever.  

I have a planner now.  Little Wife gifted me a daily organizer, one of the big ones that teachers used to use while I was in grade school, to me for my birthday.  It is slowly filling up.  I am feeling more organized.  The rest of the week has a lot of small tasks planned out and a series of large chunks of time devoted to finishing the commission that has been taking forever.  Organization is awesome and Little Wife is a savior.

Peace

-Mike