I have fallen out of routine with a lot of things. I thought I was doing pretty well staying on a varied creative routine for years really and then a few things happened that completely shot that high flying creative plane down to the ground.
First, I received a massive (for me) grant last year that was focused mainly on administrative tasks that support my outward facing creative endeavours. Because of my disabilities, I have a very limited amount of time that I can dedicate to work activities. Due to this, I intentionally try to make my work activities as therapeutic as possible so I can extend this time as much as possible. I wrote this grant to fund activities that I really struggle doing, almost none of which were therapeutic. It took me the entire year allotted to the grant to complete this work and it was mentally grueling and depleted most of the time I use toward creative pursuits. I have another post that is about the grant specifically so I won’t rehash any of that but I learned that I cannot do that to myself again, not even for motivational purposes, or to get funding for things I can’t normally fund. I am disabled and I need to accommodate for that or eventually I won’t be able to do anything at all because I will make myself ill.
Second, after the grant report was completed I had a new challenge. My partner and I had to find a new tax accountant. I won’t get into the details but this was a whole mess that absorbed my limited available time after the grant months. My partner has his own business and our tax accounting is no small thing so this was not fun. I work a few hours a month for him normally to manage these sorts of things but this transition was a beast.
In January, I found out I received another grant. This one was for a pollinator/rain garden from the State of Minnesota’s Lawns to Legumes program. I will write about the garden details in a separate post but suffice it to say that this garden kept me busy the rest of the time until I write to you today.
I managed to keep up my writing routine at the library until the snow melted at the end of April. After that was gone, I had to buckle down and slam out the pollinator garden. This garden was no joke. It absorbed most of my lawn, used 25 black chokeberry shrubs and 72 perennials. I hauled 3 yards of dirt mulch and ended up buying bags of dirt and mixing my homemade compost in to finish it because road restrictions came off so late that I couldn’t wait for dirt to be delivered (necessary because our red clay soil requires amendments). But it is mostly done now (no garden is ever totally done in my world because I am always adding and moving things).
After that, I promised myself that I will not do anything that has a deadline. This next year is for re-aligning my creativity, exploring new things and experimenting with making new things. Of course, because I am me, I do have a list of things I want to try. I do better with some structure. This list will undoubtedly change and evolve as I work through things because I find that with the act of doing and making, more ideas develop and I want to try even more things.
I will simply jot down my list of ideas here. Nothing is set in stone. If anything bogs me down, I will move on…but here is what I would like to try:
Re-upholster the chaise lounge chair in my sewing room. I’ve made slip covers before but have never done actual upholstery. I am quite excited about this project. The chair is gross from kids and pets. The original fabric is a beige microfiber. I bought some hot pink corded velour fabric and a black and white stripe dobby fabric and have been studying techniques and learning what tools I need. I won’t have to buy much more than a pneumatic stapler because I can borrow everything else. Some things I want to try are making self-fabric buttons and piping, neither of which the current chair has. This will definitely be a winter project.
Use AI to finish my organization book. I will continue editing and redrafting my organization book…but now that artificial intelligence is available, I will play with it to help me through the parts where I get stuck. For example, I need to create a variety of sample daily schedules and I want to see what it suggests. Maybe it will be garbage or maybe it will help more ideas flow. Either way, it is a technology that is only going to grow and I want to learn how to use it in my work.
Fabric sculpture. I want to create a series of experimental shapes or figures using neutral fabrics. I bought a variety of white and off-white textiles and a variety of starches and stiffeners to play with. I will probably begin this pretty soon while the weather is still nice to make a mess outside.
Something I’ve wanted to do for a long time is publish my own series of journals. I do a LOT of journaling and it would be great to have some ready made worksheets in book form with daily prompts for:
mental health
nature
organization
goal setting
Make fabric flowers for wreaths and vases. This is kind of similar to fabric sculpture but probably more along the lines of sewing than sculpture. I love creating flower arrangements and wreaths and planters. It would be really cool if I could incorporate some fabric flowers to supplement when I am short on dried and fresh materials. I see this as a late fall or winter activity.
Paint 15 days of feelings. I just read Sarai Walker’s The Cherry Robbers. In this novel, the main character receives an assignment in an art class to create a painting using one color depicting a feeling that someone makes you feel. While I don’t think I will be THAT specific in how I approach this project, it was enough to inspire me to tackle something similar. I hope this may be a worthy abstract series to work on while I am undergoing some brain treatments in August. It will help me through the month of August and be a free flowing form of journaling my treatment progress. Why 15 days? I foresee working on this every other day during the month. Maybe more, maybe less. We will see how it goes!