In Which I Consider My Money-Making Options

Zines Over The Years

I know it's time for me to start making some money with my knowledge and/or talent in the creative arena. I have spent so much on art supplies over the years, including instructional books of every kind, and I have definitely learned a lot and produced quite a bit of stuff...but I still wouldn't consider myself an accomplished artist in any medium, except, probably, the zine. I do consider myself somewhat an expert in zine publishing. That doesn't mean that I think I make some of the best zines ever content-wise or layout-wise, just that I have done it for a long time and therefore have insight into the whole process. But I don't know if people are interested enough in producing zines themselves to make it worthwhile to create an online zinemaking workshop. I am drawn to producing online classes because they are work up front, but the work ends and you at least have a finished product that does not need to be replenished, like an etsy store or something. But whether I offered zinemaking or art journaling or simple bookbinding workshops, there is still a learning curve for me in that area -  meaning I hardly know how to press the record button on the camera and know less than nothing about putting videos together. 

My Most Likely First Product - Handmade Books

So, while I do want to include workshops (both online and in-person) in my eventual repertoire of money-making activities, those irons are still heating up in the fire and not ready to flatten anything out yet. Which means that I need to return to handmade products, which stresses me out. Of course this whole idea of me in the marketplace stresses me out, but making products is something I have done in the past and I don't know whether I would be any better facing the challenges of doing that than I used to be - meaning, it was not a success when I have done it before. I did have people order things from me sometimes, but I never kept anything "in stock" and so I always had to run around like a chicken without a head to get the things made and mailed. Sometimes I got it done fast, but other times I didn't and so the people had to wait way too long for their stuff, which is not good business.

Brochures From My Previous Cottage Industries

I used to really like the whole "branding" process of coming up with a new cottage industry and making business cards, brochures etc. But that was the only part I was good at. Following through on my goods and/or services was always more difficult. Now I am resistant to doing any kind of business planning and branding because I equate it with my past failures in the actual running of the business. I have become overly cautious where in the past I was not cautious enough. I was setting up a website the other night because if all goes as planned, something I wrote will be published at a highly traveled Christian site, and I guess people need somewhere to "click" into from whatever little biographical blurb there is. And I really do think it would be missing an opportunity to not have some stuff available if there will be people who are somewhat likely to see it. But I am almost frozen in my proverbial tracks with resistance. Yes, I know the only way to beat resistance is to work through it, but I also know that this particular resistance was birthed in the soil of a depleted Personal Integrity Account. 

The PIA is a concept of Stephen Covey's that I have found to be true in my own life - just like relationships with others, we have a relationship with ourselves that we often (rightly or wrongly) see like a bank account. When we, for example, tell ourselves we are going to do something important to us and we actually DO IT, we make a deposit into the PIA, which makes us feel good and safe and willing to try other, maybe more risky things. If we make too many withdrawals from our own account, we don't trust ourselves and so are not as willing to take on new projects.  I know that over the years I have learned things from my past market failures that will help me to avoid future market failures...but my youthful indiscretions with a frequently overdrawn PIA make me question whether I should even try again.

But I know I will try again because  I always do. Unless, of course, I die of ebola before I get to it, which is probably still unlikely but more possible since the little pathogen is only about 20 miles from me (though if I were
               dying
                I would still regret
not doing this stuff)

Maybe Little Faudiglianis...

...Behind A Window Like This

One of my problems, though, is indecision about exactly what products to offer. Eventually I want to have a bookbinding kit, but that's honestly still in the early planning stages. The most logical thing for me to quickly stock a storefront with is handmade journals, but I know I have to avoid a severe assembly-line approach, as that was one of my downfalls in the past. I also want to somehow include my own art in some of them. I really want to do a lot of little paintings and bill them humorously as My Early Work, and I think some version of this small journal

  with an art card inside might fit the bill for that (made of pasta boxes with little plastic windows and so has the added green benefit of being recycled.)

Me and the Baby Who Will Eventually Leave Me Alone

I look at handmade books on etsy and stuff, and I think that some of my book designs are pretty unusual and/or aesthetically pleasing. I think that if people who buy homemade journals knew about my homemade journals, at least some would be purchased. But the whole marketing aspect of the thing is intimidating. But I can also see myself getting lost in "learning marketing" and once again not paying enough attention to producing the product. It's like a little tug-of-war between my inner middle manager and my inner factory worker. It's also just so much easier and fun to plan, and then instead of actually doing the work the plan requires, live in an alternate dimension in my head where I have this successful business (but I never really develop one in the real world due at least partly to fear and/or laziness). That's kinda what I have been doing for the past 20 years or so, but even apart from the ebola problem, I really don't have another 20 years to fritter away, and very soon I won't be able to get away with the "I have a baby who won't leave me alone" excuse.

But the fact also remains that while I do want to have a successful cottage industry (and I believe my definition of success is pretty modest), I am also bound and determined not to fall into I'm A Failure mode or define My Very Worth As A Human Being by success or lack thereof. I really don't have much of a desire to make a name for myself these days, which also plays into my reluctance to brand. I used to love to label myself and at one point would have enjoyed passing out a business card with my name and some long label like Christian Voluntaryist Zinemaking Memoirist Painter. I would have taken that very seriously. Those labels are still accurate as far as that goes, but I don't have the kind of interest I once did in Being Known As This Type Of Very Cool Individual. At this point in my life I really would just like to earn some money and get people to keep and/or start appreciating art,  memoir and things made and/or written by hand - not necessarily by my hand and especially by their own hand, perhaps with my help and/or encouragement.

With that disclaimer, let's see if I can stock an etsy shop by the end of the year.

Spillwrite In Preparation For Taking A Month Offline

I don't know how much (or rather how little) time I have spent disconnected from the internet since I first got connected back in 1997. There have been a few times when we had a computer in the shop or something, but I doubt I've been offline for six months total in those seventeen years. I want to see if I am a lot more focused in the actual world if I spend less time in the virtual world (and I don't even think I spend an excessive amount of time online). I am wondering if my very brain is more fragmented because I know I always have the option to just "pop onto the internetz". In September I am going to work on growing some new neural pathways or restoring old ones by being mostly offline for the month. I'll chat with you on my phone if you miss me, but apart from adding content to my Art Journaling FB page, I won't be hanging out anywhere online; I won't be getting involved in discussions about whether Christians can (or rather may) smoke marijuana or be soldiers or whether there would be a creative renaissance if there were separation of School and State. I don't think that the internet is the ultimate cause of my focus problems, though - it just exacerbates and/or highlights the already colander-like state of my brain that has developed over the years of childrearing, which itself is exacerbated by my overly active and neurotic psychological makeup.

There are a few important things I have left undone in the past year which have been weighing on me, and so getting them out of the way will make my stylish yet affordable I'm A Failure backpack that much lighter. I am going to attempt to do a 30 Days Art Journal AND a Thirty Days Zine - the zine will necessitate using my desktop publishing program with a few short jaunts online for images. Those are both more tactile and truly recreational and, dare I say, "centering" activities for me, and I need to get myself re-centered and integrated or defragmented or whatever. I have been struggling with a lot of depression and discouragement lately, and I just can't find the hope springs eternal thing that used to reside under just a thin layer of cynicism. I would say that I am having an actual crisis of faith, which has only happened once before in all my years of being a Christian - and the first one was much milder. I don't expect I will ever be an apostate, but sometimes I'm concerned I might have a little bit of heretic in me. I am still working through a bunch of stuff related to my time in the Biblical Womanhood camp, because externally I still live the exact same life. In some ways I miss and want to restore a lot of what I was during that time, but simultaneously,  I often feel like I am experiencing the kind of malaise that was described in The Feminine Mystique. 

I know that mentally, I am trying to "have it all" in the 70s feminist sort of way - although I don't actually leave the homestead for a job, my desire is pulled between wanting to be a super focused and dedicated mother and wanting to spend hours writing or painting in my art studio every day, untethered to motherly responsibilities. That pretty much means that both art and mothering are shortchanged, which ramps up the volume on one of the long- running monologues in my head, the one that nags at me about my seeming lack of "productivity" in those areas (when in fact I have been quite productive in those areas over the years). So, the voice is a liar, and I think that, ironically, getting it to shut up will entail letting go of the need to be productive while also practicing focus in order to accomplish things.

I have a few different ways I want to try to focus during September...setting a timer for 20 or 30 minutes so I know a task will not last forever...thinking of myself as "at-work" in mother/homemaker mode from maybe 12-5...even (gasp) STOPPING and doing NOTHING when I am feeling overwhelmed...and most importantly keeping at the forefront of my mind the idea of Make Positive Effort For The Good. That allows for spontaneity in my life (which I need because I am easily bored and get rebellious if I feel constricted by a schedule) while still giving me some kind of guideline to follow when I am at a loss as to where my focus should be at any given time, and which encompasses even teeny tiny steps.

Anyway, you will see me online if you are in my Art Journaling/Bookbinding FB group, and you can send me FB messages if you want to get in touch with me this month, and you can get the Thirty Day Zine in October if you are interested to hear my inner ramblings about this experiment.

On Living More Zen-ishly

I want to be Zen. Probably not real Zen, since I don't know all that much about it, but my conception of Zen. Which is pretty much the polar opposite of the real me. I'm not scared of Zen as a Christian, like it is something that will pull me away from faith in Christ. I know that the aspects of Zen I am drawn to are consistent with what we hear in the Bible. There are all kinds of "shoulds" in the New Testament, telling us how people who believe the gospel ought to act, or rather will act more and more as they grow in faith. Those things are summarized in a way I can easily digest in the statement Make Positive Effort For The Good.

In Natalie Goldberg's book Writing Down The Bones, she talks a lot about Katagiri Roshi, her teacher in Zen. She would moan and complain to him more than you would expect a zen student to do (and as a fellow Jew, I can relate), and once when she was depressed and miserable he simply told her to make positive effort for the good. I like that statement because it encompasses all the Biblical commands while also 1) helping to decide exactly what the heck you should do right now when there are probably many choices and 2) acknowledging that sometimes positive effort might be a very small thing, which helps when you tend towards depression, some kind of physical limitation or live with a lot of children. When you consider in each moment what action would be a positive effort for the good, you might choose to read to the child who has been pestering you to read, you might fold laundry, or you might make coffee and sit for 10 minutes in silence while you drink it - that counts because it is a positive effort for the good to avoid being put in the padded room.

I think this idea also assumes the practice of mindfulness, which is paying attention to the present moment and not judging it. That includes the stuff going on inside. In both the self-help culture and the Christian culture, there is this inability to have compassion for ourselves and others because we are always judging everything and everyone in comparison to some lofty ideal. Some people think acceptance means giving in to mediocrity or compromising your ideals. Ideals are good, but in practice they are always unattainable because we live in a fallen world and as you approach them, they always recede into the distance. Even if you are the type who has huge Radical-like goals for your life and a lot of physical energy, you are still only a finite person in the present moment - and in addition to eradicating the slave trade in your lifetime you also likely have to eat, do some kind of necessary work and/or interact with family and occasionally stay in bed with the stomach flu. Mindfulness is being where you are right now, feeling what you are feeling right now, accepting what you can do right now and not seeing the present moment as an enemy to be defeated so you can get on with whatever it is you would rather be doing or should be doing or would rather be feeling.

Here is an example from my own life. I always have a lot to do. I have all the household chores, all the childrearing with everything that entails, creative projects I want to work on. In addition to that, I am a naturally internal person, a thinker and someone with a lot of emotional baggage. When I look at any given moment, do I usually just make a positive effort for the good, no matter how small? No, I get swept away by my thoughts and emotions, which sometimes prevents me from doing anything, but most often just makes whatever I choose to do harder. Believe me, washing the dishes is a lot more pleasant if you just wash the dishes instead of washing them while beating yourself up about past failures, imagining future tragedies or personal glories or resenting people who should be doing the dishes instead of you. Of course, we all have thoughts and emotions constantly, but when you are mindful you are simply observing them along with whatever else is going on. So you simply become a person who is washing dishes and also having frustrated or resentful or sorrowful feelings. You accept that and don't turn it into an occasion to bash anyone (yourself included) OR an occasion to abandon the dishes.

I think the idea of accepting even the rocky and/or murky and/or downright horrifying parts of our inner landscape makes a lot of Christians uncomfortable. We don't want to admit what a mess we actually are. Or we think that accepting something means we are satisfied with it. But it really fits right in with taking God's word at face value, His word that tells us we absolutely cannot make the trek out of that dangerous and ugly place unless someone takes us by the hand and leads us out. Mindfulness, rather than being a kind of apathy, allows you to have clarity about things so you can determine how, practically, you can make positive effort towards the good in all of life.

I recently heard Pastor Tullian say that we need to look at the imperatives in the Bible (basically, God's law...how we should act, think, etc.) through the lens of the Great Indicative - the fact that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It's only when we do this that we can freely work to make positive effort for the good, because it allows us to stop obsessing over How We Are Doing - a favorite pastime for most of us, and one so time-consuming and discouraging that we don't usually have time or eneergy for anything else.

Christians Are The New Idiots?

Okay, I know I a lot of my Christian friends probably think I push the envelope of Christian propriety because I watch what can only be called "gritty" television. My most recent foray into the land of fictionalized fallen humanity is the Netflix original series Orange Is The New Black. It is based on the memoir of a nice, upper-middle class woman who finds herself in a women's prison for transporting drug money. It has all the features you might expect - sex between inmates, semi-coercive sex between inmates and prison employees, strong language and the requisite Crazy Christian. And she’s what I want to talk about. Or rather, I want to talk about why it is so difficult to find a media portrayal of either 1) a normal Christian or 2) actual Christian beliefs.

The Christian in the show is a meth addict who is in the prison because she killed someone at an abortion clinic - not because she was protesting abortion, but because while she was having one, a clinic employee “disrespected” her by commenting that she had been there five times already. She was not a Christian at this time. You know when she “became” a Christian? When a “Christian” law firm approached her and wanted to take on her case, because now she had all kinds of “Christian” fans who thought she was “defending the unborn” with her rifle.

Once she is in the prison she is constantly going on about the evil lesbians everywhere and telling everyone that she is God’s prophet and surrounding herself with a bunch of minions who play along with her so-called healing powers. You won’t be surprised to learn that she is not all that popular, nor does she ever proclaim anything resembling the actual gospel. The main character, Piper, somehow gets on our prophet's bad side (not hard to do) and in order to make peace, she says a prayer that satisfies the Crazy Christian enough to think Piper now warrants baptism. So, they clean out the muck sink in the laundry room to use for dunkin'  the former evil sinner right into God’s Kingdom. When the attractive blonde sees the murky waters of her salvation, she backs out and finally shares what she really thinks.

Piper: I cannot get behind some supreme being who weighs in on the Tony Awards while a million people get whacked with machetes. I don't believe a billion Indians are going to hell, I don't think we get cancer to learn life lessons, and I don't believe that people die young because God needs another angel. I think it's just bullshit, and on some level, I think we all know that. I mean, don't you?

Crazy Christian’s Minion:  The angel thing does seem kind of desperate.

Crazy Christian: I thought you was a Christian.

Minion: I am, but I got some questions.

Piper: Look, I understand that religion makes it easier to deal with all of the random shitty things that happen to us. And I wish I could get on that ride, I'm sure I would be happier. But I can't. Feelings aren't enough. I need it to be real.

In all my years as a Christian, I have never met another believer who 1) thought shooting abortion providers was “doing God’s work”  2) called themselves a prophet and/or 3) thought they had healing powers. But I have talked to numerous non-believers who do equate Christianity with these doctrinally unsound fringe elements and absolutely do not know what the gospel is. They do ask important questions like, well, why do people get whacked with machetes if God is supposed to be good. But why haven’t they heard that our faith is not based on feelings? Who told them dead children become angels? Why don’t they know that people get cancer because we live in a fallen world full of fallen people, and so we can all expect to eventually receive that paycheck - the wages of sin, which is death.

There are so many problems with both the Crazy Christian character and Piper’s understanding of the Christian faith. Are Christians really portraying the gospel as something it isn’t, or are non-Christian creatives suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1). I suspect it is a combination of both. Someone doesn’t have to believe in the Christian doctrine to present it correctly - well-known atheist Christopher Hitchens proves that. It’s disappointing (but not surprising, I suppose) that people who can produce an otherwise thoughtful show would fall into depicting caricature Christians (and this is not the only one to do so). But shame on us if we are lending ourselves to being caricatured.

What is the reason for the hope that is in you? How would you answer Piper?

Learning to Focus and Work "Little and Often"

I have been spending a lot of time at the Sustainably Creative site. the proprietor is a man about my age who has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and so obviously has a lot of fatigue and other symtoms which translates into not a lot of energy. He has courses and podcasts and short ebooks about learning to fit creative creative work into a life with the kind of physical limitations he has. I don't have any kind of physical issues, unless you count Brain Cell Depletion Caused By Five Children Who Have Never Been To School, but I do have limited time and energy because I have a lot of people who need to be fed and listened to and a lot of messes that need to be cleaned up and a lot of keeping-it-togethering I have to do as an introvert living a life better suited to extroversion.

My last post here was a run-down of all the stuff I like doing and want to have time for, but what I tend to do is wait for the big chunks of time to come along to do any work, and instead spend the small bits of time being resentful about how rarely that happens instead of just doing some little thing during those brief moments. I also realized recently that my ability to focus is pretty much shot. That is caused by a combination of my life circumstances (which have not allowed me to finish more than 20 thoughts in as many years) and all the voluntary distractions that most of us struggle with, especially in this age of instant communication and unending topics that need to be explored right now via the search engine of your choice. See, as I write this I am reminded that a friend mentioned a new search engine to me yesterday, and my first inclination is to just open another tab and real quick-like look that baby up. But I have a timer set here for 20 minutes (the amount of time Mr. Nobbs recommends for short focused working) and by golly, I am not going to follow the little bluebird of distraction.

When I had only one kid and was still involved in the whole Perfect Wife and Mother and Homeschooler Club, I had the Managers Of Their Homes book. This is a system made for large homeschooling families that teaches you to break your day into 20-minute blocks of time so you can Fit It All In. That sucked. It was just another way to overplan and overschedule and it made me depressed. I am way more into Mr. Nobbs' thought process, that it's okay to just have one thing to do each day, even just one 20 minute block of focused time working not on what needs to be done or should be done, but on what Your Important Work is, as defined by you. Since I am not as limited in my energy as he is, I think I could probably fit in more than one 20 minute period most days - but there are days when I couldn't even do that. He is also big on self-compassion and self-care, another idea I have been drawn to over the past few years, as I have been learning to toss aside my whole lifetime of unreachable personal expectations and tendencies toward constant self-improvement and productivity. I am tired and worn out from all that and I don't want to and can't keep it up mentally or physically anymore.

Second 20 Minutes Begins

Mr. Nobbs reminds us that working "little and often" can add up to a lot of completed work over the years. I think I might get brave and make a video tour of all the work I have after 20 years of working. I admit that my style of work has alternated between the little and often and the rare binge...but either way, whether I am working consistently for a while or have a 3-week binge of work, I have never made a "habit" of doing my creative work and I still have proof that always going back to it gets results. In a way, Mr. Nobbs' stuff reminds me of an artist's version of Stephen Covey's first 3 habits:

1) Be Proactive
2) Begin With The End In Mind and
3) Put First Things First.

In fact he uses the illustration of the jar with rocks that Mr. Covey uses in his book

...the point being that if you want to get big rocks into a jar (the jar being your life, I suppose) you have to put them in first...before all the pebbles and sand.

Unfortunately, most of us have filled up our Jar of Life with the little rocks, and even if they are the pretty polished ones they are not all that satisfying after a while if they are just busywork, or even if they represent good important work that should be done, but not necessarily by you.

I do know that a lot of my anxiety and depression stems from my inability to focus (not necessarily on art stuff either...I don't even want to start doing ANYTHING most of the time because the inevitable distractions depress me before they even happen) and also from all the stupid pebbles that are in my jar. And I am not even a busy person by American Mother Standards. I want to dump out the jar and put some of the big rocks in.


Third 20 Minutes Begins

One of the things that really resonates with me at the Sustainably Creative site is the idea that rest is important for healing. For the past several months I have been thinking, "I need a vacation", but that didn't seem to really get across what I was feeling. But in the last few weeks, even before I found that site, I was starting to understand my situation as a need for healing. Healing from all the pressure I have always put on myself, healing for my tired mind and body. I am a person who honestly does not know how to relax. I am 44 years old, and I doubt if I have truly relaxed for 44 hours during those years. That is why I have always loved to sleep, because that is the only time that I actually stop and don't do anything but, well, exist. And hopefully have interesting dreams. You can understand why I fell in mad love with the television a few years ago, because I discovered that it was True Relaxation that came with Intellectual Stimulation (meaning I could totally rest while I was watching, but it still gave me food for thought afterwards).

Another thing that I am guilty of doing - which gets in the way of both resting and working in a truly productive way - is unnecessary planning and/or "getting things ready" to work. I am not talking about things like mise en place while you are cooking, but rather deciding to straighten up the art supplies instead of using them during the precious half-hour the kids are out in the pool. Mr. Nobbs talks about how important it is to make sure that your setup for working is conducive to just jumping in. I think that my work area usually is ready to use, but what is that inner THING that whispers, "You can start after you have done this small thing that appears to be related to the real task but actually isn't."? Not sure if that is fear of failure or what. I know that it's pretty much a universal situation we artistic types deal with. But then there is the very real need to not work sometimes...either you really have no energy or you are in a percolating period. It's can be hard to discern if you are getting all procrastinate-y in the bad sense, or whether your subconscious mind is being productive for you, ruminating on recent experiences, ideas, etc. with the full intention of making them available to you as creative fodder at some point.

Fourth (and Hopefully Final) 20 Minutes Begins

I am not thinking that I will necessarily be able to regularly finish things in 20 minutes, although an awesome artist recently started a 20-minute painting project and those look great. But there are some things I could finish in 20 minutes. In fact, for the past few weeks I have been setting the time for 20 minutes when I start anything, even something annoying like kitchen work, because when I focus and just work through that time, even if I hate what I am doing I know I can manage to do it for 20 measly minutes, plus I am usually surprised by how much I got done in 20 minutes.

My problem with this short focus period idea is that I have a lot of things I want to do and I never know if I should pick one and work on it (even in these 20 minute snatches of time) until it's completed, or whether I should (gasp) PLAN to do art journaling one week, painting the next, zinemaking the next, etc. I don't want to spend any of the 20 minutes deciding what to do. Of course, even if I have a plan I am always free to ditch it and work on another thing. But I am serious, this kind of question about something can literally paralyze me so I don't do anything at all. The main reason I didn't continue the Bible copywork project I started years ago was because I did not know how I would bind the work, whether I should work on individual sheets and store them in a box, etc. I just stopped because of that little problem and have never started it up again. I know I do need to take some time (20 minutes here and there, hahaha) to consider the big picture and how the projects I want to eventually complete can break down into small steps that won't make the itty bitty 20 minutes cower in fear and despair under the huge looming shadow the project casts.

Mr. Nobbs also talks about the importance of making your intention public, and I am not so sure how I feel about that one. There was a time, back when I was a prolific blogger, when I would do that regularly. Sometimes it helped keep me motivated and sometimes I ditched whatever it was and I was left eating my words, which are sometimes tasty and can be nutritious if I allow my consumption of them to teach me something. In her book Refuse To Choose (which goes well with these other ideas) Barbara Sher debunks the notion that it is somehow bad to start something and not finish it. That is practically an American mantra, that to quit something is to fail. It can be a negative thing if you quit something you truly enjoy to avoid hard work or because you are discouraged with being a beginner, but if you have started doing something and you have learned what you wanted to learn, or decided that the activity really doesn't interest you, or it does interest you but you don't have time for it...why spend the minutes of your life finishing something that serves no purpose for you?

Wow. I had four 20-minute periods to work with today. Cool.

I Only Blog When My Mind Is More Chaotic Than Usual

There once was a mind so chaotic.
At times it seemed almost despotic!
So a purge it did seek, with the freewrite technique,
Which prevented it turning psychotic.


Thankfully, the chaos is not combined with nasty hormonal moodiness. Although it might be if I take more than a few days to finish this post, and we absolutely want to avoid mixing the two. Bad hormones plus an overloaded mind is my middle-class American equivalent of a Whedonesque-type scenario like unintentionally transporting yourself into a demon dimension because you stupidly read aloud the Sanscrit writing on that old amulet you found at a yard sale. The current cranial pandemonium is caused by the horde of ideas and projects that long ago applied for visas into the outside world, but have been kept waiting like folks in a bread line in the former Soviet Union. They are getting impatient. They are getting pissed. In fact, they are about to riot. As a benevolent dictator, I do want to prevent that. But also, since I am a dictator, they cannot leave without my permission. Herein is my proclamation that will set them free. Go forth, Ideas and Projects! Affect the world in a positive way! Make money! Inspire people! Get OUT of my freaking head! Okay, after all that drama you might be wondering what these ideas and projects are. You may know (if you have slogged through my thoughts for any length of time) that I am absolutely terrified of goal-setting, or making resolutions, or trying to plan any kind of scheduled time to do anything. You may also know that despite that fear, I am a total self-improvement junkie. I realize that's kinda oxymoronic. But I must make a disclaimer and say that this is absolutely Not a Manifesto About What I Will Do and When I Will Do It and When It Will Be Done. This is simply giving freedom to the Mindstuff, and if/how it eventually manifests itself in the tangible realm remains to be seen.

As always, the Mindstuff consists of things I want to do/accomplish either soon or eventually, but about which I either procrastinate and/or literally have only a small amount of time for at this stage of my life. Sometimes I am surprised at how much art, writing, etc. I have actually produced over the past 20 years, because I have never been any better at time management than I am now. Even when I had fewer kids and fewer other grownup responsibilities I still wasted time and allowed fear to distract me. Now I'm more afraid that I will drop dead before I can do the things I really want to do. But I  think that God might have finally given me the make-a-craft gift set that will bring into focus the para-domestic side of my life. Shall we open the box and see what it contains?

Paper, lots of different kinds
Computer
Paint, pencils, inks and related art supplies
Books to cut up or scan from
Cutting tools, stapler, needles, embroidery floss, ribbon
Instructional books

Insert reads: Hours of Creative Fun!!! Just add words of all kinds, psychological angst, spiritual meanderings and self-deprecating and sarcastic humor.

Hey, this is the same type of stuff I have been using for almost 20 years! But hopefully since it is the God Stuff and not some cheap Dick Blick knockoff, it will have some kind of irresistible power over me.

Given these supplies, I see that I am supposed to keep making zines, hand-binding books, doing art journaling and learning how to paint...and I sense that I am supposed to add in teaching workshops and writing at least one book. But let's be honest, for most of my life I have been a dabbler and spent a lot more time reading about these very hands-on things than actually practicing them. I hate to say it, but I believe I need to make myself some kind of course of study (for lack of a better term) mostly on the art end of things. My Rebel-O-Meter is beeping like crazy just thinking about it. But there is no way I am going to learn how to, say, mix colors without actually doing the exercises in the color book. Zine making is really the only thing on my list that I think I have "down", as far as being technically competent.

Note: We have entered the demon dimension to which I alluded in the first paragraph. Abandon hope of avoiding snark, all ye who enter here. Actually, my late-evening latte and the fact that Husband has removed all children from the vicinity may allow me to remain in the not-so-evil antechamber long enough to finish this in a more or less pleasant fashion.

So, onto my thoughts about what a smart person would do to improve in these areas, while not at all assuming I am a smart person. I set no actual goals. When I write like this, to focus or clarify things in my mind, it is probably more like I am using the very new-age concept of setting an intention, without the new-age gobbledygook. I remind myself what is important to me so that I can have an idea of what to do when it is time to "do the next thing". I have a tendency to be scattered, in case you haven't realized that yet. Remember, if any of this gets done in 2013, it is a victory. Also remember that most of this will not be new to any of the uh, 15 or so people who read this blog.

Zinemaking: I have not made a zine since 2007 (the 100 page extravaganza Eclectic Domestic/Bohemian Housewife, which will hopefully appear in digital format this year sometime). Six years is a long time to go between zines, and I have started working on one a few times, but I always gave up. I originally thought my next one would have the same title as this blog, No Spring Chicken. But that is the name for my Midlife-Crisis Self, who thankfully appears to have left the building. I am now Midlife Mama, who is much less miserable than that chicken person. But I just couldn't nail down any kind of focus for a zine, which was stressing me out. But then I realized that it's my zine and it doesn't have to have a focus besides well, me and what I want to put in it at any given moment. So I made a cover with the title Midlife Mama Presents: No Rhyme or Reason. That means it will be a good format to chronicle/practice all the stuff that I am trying to integrate into my life at this time.I want to include some things that scare me, like at least one comic and some self-portraits that are less-than-flattering. I also want to include some handmade mixed-media thing, probably some handpainted tag journal books or something.

I have a friend who is also a zinemaker (so grateful I found her!!!!!) and she feels the same way I do about the importance of keeping paper alive in this age of Digital Everything. So, we are going to start a zine distro (distribution site) to promote zines made by Christians. If hers and mine are the only ones that are ever on there, so be it. But we both hope to start infecting people with a virus whose main symptom is an unquenchable desire to create personal publications on paper, or PPP. There is no known cure once you are infected, but it is not easily transmittable, so we have our work cut out for us if we want the infection to spread. I published a How-To-Make-A-Zine zine a few years ago, and I think I will probably make a revised and expanded edition which can be distributed with the virus inside, bwahahahahahaahahah! The joys of being a mad scientist!!!!!

Art Journaling Workshops/Book: This is not the same project exactly, but I need to take a lot of the same steps to prepare. I have sooooooo many books dedicated to bookmaking, art journaling, written journaling exercises, etc. I want to go through all those books and choose projects or techniques that appeal to me and play with them until I can do them well...then I can branch out and change them up, and determine which ones I want to use for "exercises" when teaching. I think I may make a bound book with two or three of these signatures to use for experiments, and if I like it I will send it to Art Journaling Magazine. I will need to not be attached to the book to mail it off - even though they send your work back to you, it can take up to a year and well, who knows what might happen.

When I teach workshops I want to inspire people to make art without fear and judgment, and also to engage with their own lives in that same way. Any kind of "techniques" or art instruction I might give would be secondary.

There are very few art journalers featured in books or magazines who don't seem to be constantly Focusing On The Positive. You know, pages created around your favorite inspirational word or quote, etc. That gets old and boring to me - maybe because my life has certainly not been one long inspirational quote.

I do use them occasionally, though:

But I lean more towards what I consider to be non-nihilistic pessimism:

Most of the time I avoid quotes anyway, and just let it all out in my stream-of-consciousness non-legible way:

My point is not to bash optimism or encourage people to give up trying to find inspiration in an often non-inspirational world...I don't really have a point except to say that I want people who have only seen the cute kittens type of art journaling to know that it is perfectly fine if your personal journaling animal is more scaly than fluffy and has disgustingly bad breath.

I also want my zine to contain a 4 or 8 page mini-prototype of My Future Book which can also be used as a workshop handout. I can't realistically expect to be able to teach workshops for at least 2 years, until Baby is 4ish. Historically, the kids have been about that age when they have been willing to let me go for 6+ hours. 

Natalie Goldberg says that if you want to be a writer, simply write for two full years with no thought of making the writing into anything (novel, memoir, etc)  - so I guess it doesn't seem unreasonable that it could take two years for me to be in any state of readiness to teach. I think the process of writing my book will kill the proverbial flying animal with the proverbial hard object, because well, books like this are workshops wherein the teacher addresses you via the printed page. The book will have a memoir-ish quality that would be missing in the live workshops (because I will be including my own journal writing), but apart from that, when I have a book, I will also have a workshop.

The Really Scary One - Drawing and Painting

This is the scary one because I am truly a beginner in this area, and that is just frustrating. I do have a moderate natural talent for drawing, but it is not that impressive. And when I try to add shading to a line drawing or (gasp) use color in an actual painting, it goes from "not that impressive" all the way down to "decidedly unimpressive". But I want to be able to draw so I can sometimes use my own illustrations in my zines and stuff, and I want to be able to paint because I want to have my own art on the walls of my home.

I do have one painting hanging up already, and I like it, but it's still very amateurish. I think what is good about it was a happy conflagration of accidents.Those definitely have their place in art, but I would prefer if they occurred on top of some kind of technical competency. So, to become technically competent, I have to practice, and my Inner Perfectionist hates to practice, since, well, she wants everything she does to be perfect all the time. I'm not embarrassed or ashamed for people to see my imperfect work, but I really am just lazy and don't want to put the time in, despite mentally assenting to the platitude that It's All About The Journey.

So, what I need to do is keep a sketchbook/paintbook, made with the same Teesha Moore watercolor signatures I mentioned in the art journaling section.  I got a book on color that has a lot of exercises in it, and I guess I have to actually do them. I also want to just draw things from my everyday life, since that is what I want to use drawing for, to add a different element to my ongoing obsession to chronicle my life.  I should expand my horizons and do something besides mapping out my inner landscape. I really should have a Master's degree in cartography by now. (I just stopped and did this sketch of my coffee cup sitting on the piano. My life can honestly be measured out in coffespoons. Not a bad drawing...shading is off but that's what we expected, yes?)

I have soooooooo many cut-off-the-book book covers that I planned to use for paintings and I just need to start doing that (I have used a few of them to make covers for hand-bound books). One reason I avoid painting on them is because I want to paint large, but large canvases are expensive. I have a few large canvases (one with a super-awful painting on it..right now I can hear it whispering, "Gesso over me" in a pathetic raspy tone. Its figurative eyes are begging me to put it out of its misery.) I should probably allow myself to paint on a large canvas as a "reward" for doing color work and stuff in the practice book or on the bookboards, which are probably about 8 x 10.

The Final Frontier - To Sell or Not To Sell?

I have had a few online shops over the years, and they have always been failures...or rather, I have been a failure as a business person. I say that with all the self-love in the world. I just wasn't prepared to have any kind of business. I rarely got orders out on time, plus I was selling things I didn't enjoy making (handmade cards and rag dolls).

I also sold my zines, but even with those, I often wouldn't have enough copies printed, it would take me days to get to the copy place, sometimes I offered a "package" that included a small handmade item, and boom! the customer wouldn't get their order for a month. And no matter how much you like a thing, that kind of sucky customer service is a deal-breaker. (This is not a zine I sold, but one I made for a swap...but it is an example of how my zines look.)


 Despite that poor track record, I still think I will eventually want to offer things for sale again...an online workshop, handbound books and art journals, even paintings if people like them. I don't relate to my past business names anymore, so I would need to think of a new name. And I would have to have an actual inventory so I don't run around frantically like the headless chicken of yore, trying and inevitably failing to get orders made and shipped in a few days' time. At least I learned something from my past experience as a bad businessperson, and I absolutely trust that I would not take this step unless and until I am prepared both practically and mentally.

Anyway, I think that's everything...can you see why my mind was so cluttered? 

20 Minute Timed Writing - "My Ideal Self"

I am not going to share all my timed writings, and this one is probably more focused than most of them are. This is totally unedited and was handwritten with a burgundy gel pen in a college-ruled notebook I bought in a five-pack at Sam's Club. I think it usually takes about 20 minutes before you manage to get below the surface. Natalie Goldberg recommends you don't re-read the timed writings for a few weeks. When you go back and read them you will ideally be less judgmental of yourself and you will be able to see words, phrases, ideas that can be expanded or even beautiful sentences that are full of real-ness.

My ideal self eats no more than 150 grams of carbs most days. She always has several books going - some difficult and challenging, others for pleasure. She reads modern classics. My ideal self reads out loud to her younger children and tries to inspire her older children to read good books. My ideal self works out with weights three days a week, does cardio one day, or better yet, does 10 minutes on the rebounder every day. She fits other uncategorizable workouts in on the other three days and takes one full rest day per week. She is not rigid about any of this but is mostly consistent. My ideal self does twenty minutes of freewriting like this every day. She belongs to a writing group that meets at a coffee house once a month. My Ideal self has two days every month "off" from family duties. If needed, she uses one day to catch up on household duties but ideally she uses two 45-minute maintenance times each day to keep things orderly enough that she can use those days as retreats for reading, writing, art journaling, prayer, etc. My ideal self is patient. She feels annoyed just as much as my actual self but has trained herself to smile instead of growling and snapping. She is not fake when she does this, but she doesn't always want to be a reactionary. She wants to respond instead of react and she wants to respond positively even to negative situations - positively in that she wants to be at peace with all people as much as it depends on her and not part of the problem but part of the solution. My ideal self creates most days. She makes a few art journal pages a week, she works on plans for her future as a workshop instructor, she puts together prototypes for her future book.My ideal self cooks a full meal three times a week and eats a big salad every day. My ideal self takes her multivitamins, her calcium and she looks out for the health of her family without being naggy. She manages to get across not-so-positive emotions and work through tense situations without being sarcastic or naggy or mopey or otherwise ineffectual. She takes a self-portrait once a week. My ideal self keeps up on her digital photos, ideally printing them out regularly, but at the very least backing them up so they will not be lost. My ideal self does not assume the worst about everything, she does not let things that happened in the past make her feel jaded because she thinks she will know how it will all turn out. She is able to walk away from escalating arguments without acting all superior about it. My ideal self listens to world music on a regular basis and she plays the guitar. My ideal self my ideal self my ideal self does not have to write the same thing over and over. She continues to make paper zines even though paper is so out of favor and she reads poetry in the hope that she will someday get it. My ideal self prays for everyone she knows on a regular basis and she makes some kind of creative prayer journal. My ideal self has at least one 3x4 foot painting of her own hanging on the wall of her house. My ideal self my ideal self my ideal self doesn't exist obviously but since I am afraid to even try to plan or make any kind of resolution again (since I have failed at keeping them so many times) I thought that writing about my ideal self would maybe give me some guidance or motivation. My ideal self is not emotionally protective of herself. She is able to love others even through her own pain about unmet needs. My ideal self does not leave her clothes all over the dressing room floor. My ideal self doesn't exist and that's okay. My ideal self would not be a perfect person even if she did exist, but she would be less discouraged about life, more trusting of God and more expansive and loving towards other people. My ideal self is compassionate. She walks through the library and sees a young black man reading a comic book and his lips move, and she loves him and does not think he should be reading a real book. My ideal self is not snippy and is not guarded all the time. My ideal self my ideal self does not check message boards like Happy Eaters and Video Fitness just because she can. She checks things like that at night and in the morning with her coffee. My ideal self mails something artistic to someone every two weeks and she does not go shopping without a list. She even has a food budget.