I went and visited Maureen's studio late this afternoon, and I bought this piece. I'm going to hang it over our bed (as soon as I order a frame and some plexi for it). The photograph doesn't do it justice - the writing is a quote from a poem by Rilke, and I really love it. I'm hoping that it will serve as inspiration. We talked for a while about the difficulties inherent in doing art while working full-time at a job, and how everyone we know feels pulled in ten different directions at once. If I made a list of all of the things I need/want to have time for, it would probably frighten me. However, the need to do at least some of them is urgent and has to be met somehow, so I will continue to put one foot in front of the other.
Saturday night I started mucking out the stable that used to be my studio (most other people would call it 'the room that's supposed to be your formal living room', but we abandoned that idea almost as soon as we moved in). I'm feeling overwhelmed by my utter lack of organization and my need to be doing things. The things I need to be doing involve a very long list of 'have-to' and 'want-to' items, but the bottom line is that I need to be doing more art and I need to be doing more writing.
In an inspired burst of insanity, I actually signed up for NaNoWriMo. I'm not interested in writing a novel so much as I am interested in proving to myself that I can produce verbiage at a faster rate than I am doing at present. If I can stick to some semblance of a pattern during November, I will at least have demonstrated that there's no reason why I can't write two or three decent pieces for Blogcritics per week. When Sci/Tech finally happens, I'm going to want to be posting much more than I'm doing now, so we'll see what happens.
The whole issue, of course, boils down to discipline, to having the will not to slack off when I get home in the evening, to not making excuses. Nike commercials want to make me barf as a rule, but that whole 'just do it' idea is basically what it comes down to.
In the meantime, I'll continue to clean the studio until I can find my work surface. I'll be seeing Maureen over the weekend at Open Studio, so perhaps I'll find some inspiration as well.
