Sound advice

1. If you want anything in this life, you must be prepared to work for it. You must be willing to put in as much effort as you expect a reward.

2. Failure is okay. Trying again is okay. Taking things one step at a time is OKAY.

3. Beginnings, middles, and ends all have the same potential to bring you joy.

4. Letting other people into your world is okay. While some people can't be trusted, others SHOULD be.

5. You are a beautiful and valuable person, and your true best friend is yourself. Other people only enhance the love you feel for yourself.

6. Allow yourself the pleasure of enjoying and relaxing in life. For as much hard work as you put in, your reward is sweeter and your relaxation more deep and meaningful.

7. Listen to the secret language of your soul. Love and accept the beautiful person you naturally are.

8. Give yourself over to emotion and creativity. Allow yourself to be swept up in the experience!

Important stuff to remember when you begin to feel like you've lost your way...

Evolution

I can be such an organized person that I overcompartmentalize. This goes here, that goes there. I may have overcompartmentalized my journaling a bit, and it's acting as a bit of a barrier against the flow of ideas and thoughts and streams of consciousness that I want.

In an effort to marry the concepts of my craft blog with my journaling, I think I'll write more on here, even if it doesn't seem to be about a specific work in progress. It would actually be about the work in progress of my creative journey as a whole.

If you're easily confused by the changing purpose of this blog, please don't be. I tend to do this alot with my journals. Each has to have a purpose, and sometimes the journal evolves past its purpose and I have to rename the purpose to keep it cohesive. Again, the compartmentalization. This can be a good thing. Sometimes I can use organization to incite much-needed chaos. It just depends on the day.

One of my latest entries in my art journal. Scan to come soon. (On my way out the door to work.)

"Almost sunrise at Crystal Beach. (Galveston) Tanya and I successfully built a fire and made smores. Now we're waiting for the sun to come up before we go hunting for seashells. The sand is cool on my feet. I love the feel of it, even though it means I'll be picking sand out of my toes for weeks. Although the beach is beautiful, the damage of Hurricane Ike is still evident all around us. Houses that Tanya says were here months ago and lined the streets are now gone, some now empty shells, others leaving no evidence they were ever there. Trees are permanently bent, showing their struggle to stay in the ground. There are no more dunes. But some houses still stand. People still live and work and persist."
4/5/2009

Some useless contemplation

I seem to have settled into the mess that is my spare room and my life. I've taken a break from many projects and plans because of a need to reorganize, and when life's gotten in the way of that reorganization, I've just let it all lie, let the dust settle, let the soft couch take my tired body and cradle it as I watch old episodes of Law and Order. I don't know if it's laziness or a forced acceptance of ennui.

My brain is still silently buzzing, and I still manage to get out my creative outbursts with short visits to my journal, cutouts and glue stick in hand... but I'm sure a vast wave is slowly building, coming closer and closer to the shore, ready to crash down upon all the innocent and unsuspecting sunbathers, maybe taking a few annoying children on their floaty rafts and giving them a satisfying faceplant in the harsh sand.....

What I meant to say was that I'm sure such little endeavors will do little to abate the inevitable overflowing of frustrated energy that always comes after a long period of nothingness. One creates, one makes, one experiences, throwing all into a feeling, an experience, an existence of doing. Eventually that flame burns out, having sucked up all the fuel and oxygen and bringing itself to a gasping, suffocating end. But there's always a little something that needs time to build up again, think new ideas and look at new viewpoints. That little something will slowly but definitely grow into the next avalanche of creation. And the cycle continues.

I've worried for some time that I've stretched myself too thin, branching out into so many different mediums of expression, but I think that when I do feel that mental ache from too many arms going in too many directions, thin and fragile like a spider's legs, these periods of calm, these eyes in the massive storm of my inspirational drive, are what help "bulk up" those thin projections. My connection to these different ideas and forms of expression just gets stronger, waiting to flex itself at the next incoming wave.

This is a bunch of useless, but enlightening contemplation.

Regeneration #135489321

So, it's been a much longer break from creating and sharing and journaling than originally anticipated, due mostly to a pretty damn hectic schedule with my summer semester, much more draining than I ever thought. If I've had time for any posting, it's been a quick Twitter update and that's it.



The break probably would have been longer, but dear Jude has inadvertently caused me to come out of hiding. She spoke such lovely words on recycling and renewal, that it made me think of my Diet quilt and how it represents such a renewal, in many senses. It uses such beautiful scraps, giving them new life, and it is also a symbol of renewal all by itself. Even though my diligence in working on it is equal to my diligence in my diet, and that is not very diligent indeed, I can still say it's a tangible force in my search for a new body and a new life. Every time I look at it, the small quilt is a reminder of what I want and how I can achieve it.

I found little moments to continue working on the piece while waiting for my homework to print, and just those few stolen minutes helped me find unexpected inspiration and direction. I have more specific ideas about how this piece will reflect my current journey. I see a vision of sixteen eyes, each one seeing something different and new. I see the possibility of teeth and noses and lips and limbs and torsos and possibly a corset or two. (Because if I'm reflecting how I want to look, why not reflect what I want to wear?)



I'm thinking right now of how a feeling of stagnation followed by a renewal of goals and desires is an ongoing up-and-down motion in my life, and I wonder how many other artists experience this as well. Certainly all people who give themselves over to their own inner muse and seek to create meaningful and worthwhile things must continually go through an ebb and flow of this kind. One cannot always be carried away by the creative spirit, forever taken away from conventional thinking. Regular and important (grownup) stuff would never get done. Though I can partially blame this recent recycling of intent on Jude, I worry that I may sound repetitive with constant rejoicing of a coming flood of creation and the following melancholy when the energy's all spent until the next wave hits. But perhaps the sense of the words refreshing and renewal cannot be felt unless there is something old to renew and refresh in the first place, and new inevitably becomes old, which must then be renewed again.

I think I've just fallen into a philosophical catch-22. Perhaps I should give up making sense of it and go to bed.

I've made up my goodie bags and sent them off. I have pictures in my head and a regenerated sense of what I want. I am the next Doctor Who. I have also just realized that there are only twelve eyes on that doodle. I guess the other four are hidden.

Somewhere between red, green, and bananas

Need to clean today. We're getting a king sized bed to replace our queen because Dane likes to sleep either in the middle of the bed, or horizontally, and the cats take up whatever room is left.

The piece I'm working on, the Diet Quilt for lack of a better term, is waiting for me to add a soft quilter's flannel backing to it to give it some substance before I start any hand-quilting or surface embellishment. Once I removed the paper from the backs of the squares, I realized just how thin some of the fabrics were. I'm going to incorporate some of the soft wool sweater pieces, and I'll see what interesting little tidbits I can find in the box of scraps that dear Mary has sent me.

I'm also drinking a lot of tea, first because it's on my diet, and second because I'm saving the used tea bags and drying them out. There's a lovely project that teaches how to use the teabag paper in the latest Quilting Arts magazine (which also has an article in it by the lovely Denise Aumick, whose blog, Wild Thread Studio Art Quilts, is listed to the side.)

It seems whenever I have free time to work on a project, I feel almost paralyzed and can't actually start. And then when I'm trying to sleep or I'm in the middle of something else, ideas hit me hard and I long to run to the spare room and either get started right away, or find my journal and sketch out the idea. Invariably, I always seem to be away from my journal at these times, so perhaps I should strap that thing to my head. It can be a very stylish hat.

I did get Teesha Moore's Journal Book Set (found here) and it has such lovely full-color representations of some of her very beautiful journal pages. I expect to get lots of inspiration from them, and possibly come up with some techniques as well to achieve similar ends. I feel that one very effective way to learn is to study, emulate, and create a version of beautiful work to get a handle on techniques and styles. By no means am I condoning stealing another person's work or infringing on any type of idea-ganking. However, I do feel that you need someone to be a role model before you can be one yourself.

Here is Lando being silly.


Untitled from Cindibee on Vimeo.

Break from non reality

I really hate that I'm about to start this off with a huge bunch of text, and no pictures. I feel so guilty, because I haven't worked on anything other than some personal journaling and therefore have nothing to share. This week, as usual, has been like many other weeks over the last month or so. The stress of this semester and the intense pressure I feel (and I most likely put on myself) has led to a rather interesting point. I am beginning to feel true apathy. And I can't sleep. Or I sleep too much. Time to change up the brain drug dosage for the first time in 3 years.

These times are the hardest on me, because I don't like messing with constants in my life. I fear induced change more than natural change over time. That is, at least subconsciously, I'd rather let things stay in their current kindof-okay state, rather than risk bringing about the next personal apocalypse by screwing around.

But yet, I'll be taking two summer semester classes, Anatomy and Physiology I & II, and those are intense classes on a normal basis, let alone adding in the compact schedule of summer, and I hate the feeling I've had every day lately where I walk into my sewing room, stare at all the in-progress projects scattered throughout the room, and then just walk out again. My mind speaks gently, noninvasively, almost timidly about the things I want to accomplish that day, that week, that month, and it's oh so easy to ignore. My fear and anxiety kick in and it's much harder to convince myself to just create for creation's sake.

I suppose the reason why I'm sharing this is because of the Sufferings part of the title of my blog and what it represents. I've always been crafty, creative, good with my hands and able to think of new ideas, but I so often have lacked the self confidence to create without crippling inhibition. I've tried to change that over the last year or more, especially since I met my husband Dane, a kind and wonderful man who makes me feel so much more worthy and beautiful than I ever have on my own, and who supports me absolutely, even if he doesn't understand my need to collect fabric obsessively, sketch out the most random and absurd ideas, or make strange little things like robot paper dolls.

Since Dane has uplifted me so much, I've been on something akin to a personal crusade to alleviate some of the pressure I put on myself and to not only develop my own style of art, but let it form fluidly, and accept what it naturally becomes. Not a small feat for someone with as much anxiety and need for perfection as I have. So that's pretty much the suffering part of my "art" or whatever you want to call this constant nudging urge to create. I've been suffering under my own restrictions, worries, high standards, and I've also been struggling to shake off these feelings, with varying amounts of failure or success. I aspire to be better.

And over the last month, it's been so much harder than ever before because school has been sucking out my soul. It's absolutely worth it, with my test grades accurately reflecting the obsessive amount of time I spend on my schoolwork, but it's also intensely exhausting, and seems to have such a blanketing feeling. It covers everything else with a layer of guilt if I do anything other than live, speak, and breathe college.

So, bear with me please. I'm going to be getting my energy back as soon as I can. Doctors have to be called, dosages have to be fiddled with, but for a much quicker start to fix me up, I think I'll spend this weekend shedding some extra weight and guilt, and taking some extra time to start to reacquaint myself with the person who I have been, and continue to want to be.

To visualize the beginning, you must visualize the end

I'm working on a top-secret project (that may or may not have all, partial, or nothing to do with the above image....). This will not be the highest priority project (i.e. I could be working on this a looooong time because I'm a horrible procrastinator) but I want it to be an ongoing 'thing that sits there in the corner and I have to keep moving it until I get fed up enough to work on it' type of thing. Did that make sense? I'll be starting this Oh So Mysterious project probably sometime really soon, depending on outside factors. Boy, I really am keeping this vague, aren't I.... Well, it's a present for a friend's birthday which is tomorrow, and once she knows about it, then I'll post about it here.

In the meantime... here are some New Year's Resolutions for 2008.

This year, I will greatly reduce the amount of extra project-less fabric purchases, as I should be acquiring a large amount of my dead grandmother's stash.

This year I will attempt to try and use my current fabric stash instead of just looking at it.

This year, I will be more diligent about working on projects daily and keeping progress going on such projects, so as to prevent my Ongoing Projects box from overflowing, and maybe even reducing the contents of said box.

This year, I will keep my work area more organized, or I will at the very least keep things off the floor. And I will vacuum cat hair off the rug more frequently, because three cats, two of which are longhaired, leave a lot of linty residue. (Never wanted to know that about me, did you?)

This year I will count my art, and the progression of, a major priority, topped only by friends and family, school, and my husband. This should make me feel more guilty about procrastinating (in an ideal world).

I have a lot of unrelated resolutions, but they're a bit more boring, things like "I will do the dishes instead of whining to Dane that he needs to do them", so I'll leave them out.