It can start from basically nothing. The way a cashier greets me, whether it’s too chipper or too sullen. Running out of eggs when I’m in the mood for an omlette. Having a hard time getting the hangers to cooperate. Or, it can be big. Runnig out of gas on a bridge. Thinking I have $800 in the bank when I have $60, and I don’t get paid for two more weeks.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m too attached to to-do lists. Aren’t I supposed to let the creativity flow through me and inform my actions? However, more detrimentally, I’m too attached to hanging out, couch potato-ing, Internet surfing, and general doing-nothing-ness. So I’m trying this out: Giving myself a list of three projects I’d like to complete by bedtime on Sunday night, and being happy if I complete just one.
For the week:
Clean out the guest bedroom, organizing everything into storage, projects, and Goodwill.
Make a collage.
Buy gray paint for the bedroom dresser project.
When I want to buy something, instead, I find a project to do in my house. Clean the guest bedroom. Pack a few boxes of crap to go to Goodwill. De-clutter the garage. Start collaging with all the scraps I’ve been collecting. Do a wedding project. Write. Read a book. Watch a movie. These are things I can do. So much more satisfying than buying yet another thing. Won’t you join me please?
What I want to do tonight: Organize my craft room, make bulletin boards out of picture frames to replace the big eyesore of an empty inspiration board that currently takes up wall of said craft room, cuddle with the boy and the dog, read “The Kennedys,” journal, and drift off to sleep around 11 p.m.
What I’ll probably end up doing tonight instead: Spend 2 hours cooking a pizza that involves caramelized onions and roasted garlic, kill myself for 40 minutes working out to Jillian Michaels, lay on the ground groaning for 15 minutes after said workout, eat the pizza, read wedding blogs until 1 in the morning and unwisely go to sleep at 1:30.
I need some priorities.
I find the line between charming and insufferable to be a very fine line when it comes to browsing the blogs of artsy crafty fashionable creative folks. I can’t explain myself why I save the ones I do and immediately recoil and click off others. Perhaps I’m on one side or the other of that fine line for others, too.
A. Parker Books, Sarasota, June 18, 2011
Passing through past scrapbooks.
Andrew, Lord of the Wedding Crafts.
The light coming through the window yesterday morning meant I had to snap it.
In the great tradition of Ferris Bueller think pieces.
