Balloons

I am usually not the type of person to take on too many things at once. From past experience I find that I get overwhelmed and go into detachment/shut down mode.

This month I decided to challenge myself. With the success of reaching my goal for the craft show, I am on a slight empowerment high.

I figure that if I find myself overwhelmed by a few extra things going on in my life, what would happen if I added a few more? Maybe I would have less time to focus on getting anxiety ridden over the upcoming move and the family visit if I also made a commitment to write a novel in a month and create art every day? How about we throw a book club book in there too for good measure?

My reasoning is that no ONE thing will be able to get blown up so much that it seems overwhelming. I will have other commitments that need my attention too.

Spreading myself too thin? Maybe. But I feel the commitment to write and create a visual art every day will also be therapeutic, and when I feel a little overwhelmed? Slip into that good book for my book club.

We’re 7 days in and my sanity is still intact. I’ll check back in later providing they allow internet access at the “facility” I may be committed to by the end of the month.

 

Apple Juice anyone?

The craft show was this weekend. Even though I made one sale to a friend’s daughter, one to my partner at the show and one to a co-worker, I’m not really too upset about it. I had a goal to get these boxes done and all set for the craft show, and that’s what I did. I’ll be posting the rest of the boxes along with the wine cork magnets in my Etsy shop and go from there. I accomplished the goal I set out to do and will move forward from there. I think that maybe now I’m even more psyched about participating in nanowrimo this year. This is despite the fact that I have no earthly idea what I’ll write about and other people have their outlines already set in place.
My dad was in town this weekend. It was his first visit to Charlotte. Friday night he came down with a BAD case of iPhone envy, by Saturday afternoon he had one. He is amazingly impressed by everything it can do, I think he will really enjoy it. I decided that he is the perfect person to give my old Mac Powerbook (that I affectionately referred to as “Grandpa”) to. Joe rebuilt gramps today and I gave dad a quick tour of how to navigate on it. With any luck, we’ll end up with another Apple convert in the family. Dad is continuing on his great adventure tomorrow morning, next stop Tennessee. We set him up with a Mobile Me account and will utilize the “Find my Phone” feature to keep tabs on him over the next few weeks to make sure he stays out of trouble.

and..we’re live!

Thursday night I posted my first item in my Etsy shop. I’m thrilled to have met the deadline I set for myself amid the chaos that is my life these days. Today I will develop a merchandising layout for the craft fair and finish up a few Halloween boxes I started Friday night.

Intention

So I was thinking this morning of how the last time I wrote in my journal I was “putting it out there” in regards to our living situation. I wrote that I really didn’t want to move again unless we were moving to a part of town that would foster our creative spirits. Plus, I’ve personally wanted to live in a loft forevaah (that was not included in this journal entry).

The loft/artsy move is now scheduled for November.  I mean really, how weird is that? I stated my intention and now we’re gonna make it happen.  I have no doubt that this will be a positive move for us both. The last time we lived in the “creative” part of town was back in Florida and after talking about it, Joe and I realized that we were both in fact more creative than we are now.  I know that creativity comes from within, yada yada yada, but I also think that you should surround yourself with people that are constantly inspiring you and challenging you in some way to think out of the box and DO those projects you have been putting off.

This reminds me of an illustration by the wonderful Summer Pierre http://www.flickr.com/photos/summerpierre/3582009698/in/set-72157605794374734/ Visit Summer’s blog at www.SummerPierre.com

State your intention, you never know what could happen. Now I just need to make it happen with paying off bills too!

My two-sided brain

Yesterday I had to get all of the stuff bouncing around in my head out, and on paper. As life goes, there are going to be a lot of things going on at once in the next few months. I needed strategies and timelines for all of these. There was a time when I was one of the most organized people who you would know. Now, not so much. I try to remember too much and most of the time get distracted and everything goes to hell in a handbasket. I love organization, I love setting things up in an organized way. I just lack follow-thru anymore. This is in my personal life, at work I can’t function without it. My left and right brain are fighting for dominance these days.  On one hand, I need to be creative to finish things up for the craft fair. I also need to be organized to get ready for the move, the upcoming visit from the in-laws, and a few other matters. I think the two sides of my brain need to understand that they will be on schedules. It’s the only way this will work. I can’t have the creative side just jumping ono the scene all willy nilly and interrupting the organization needed to bring things to fruition. I also cant have my organized, practical side barging in while I’m spending time with creativity stifling every idea I have. Perhaps I should assign them names; creativity can be “Whimsy” and practicality can be…? I guess I will have to get back to that.

The coin has been tossed

Joe and I decided to put in an application to rent a loft today. Now we wait until tomorrow to see if we will be accepted. We both are not counting on this happening, but we are hoping it will. What is it that makes the place you’ve been living for the past 10 months so unappealing all of a sudden? It won’t be HORRIBLE to stay where we are. It’s a decent enough place, even if we don’t have a washer and dryer. I guess it’s just the feeling of rejection. “Sorry, you can’t have this nice big loft with w/d hookups, you must stay where you are and continue to sleep on the couch.” Our current complex refuses to give us the market rate because it is supposed to “entice people to move to the complex”, but we will get $100 off the December rent. I’m doing my best to come to terms with the fact that we might be in our apartment for a very long time, and it’s not such a bad thing.

decisions decisions or our lives as gypsies

Yes, it’s that time of year again. No, not Halloween or the “holidays are upon us”; it’s time to decide what sort of living situation fits our lifestyle.  This year we are looking at the possibility of renting a loft or a small house, or maybe an apartment in a fourplex. Why do we want to move again? One reason is with the fact that we miss our washer and dryer. We have a fairly new washer and dryer along with a few other pieces of furniture in storage and really hate having to “plan” on doing laundry.  Then there’s the issue of how we basically sleep on the couch now because our greyhound can no longer go up and down the stairs and he has made his feelings about being left alone downstairs at night quite clear.  Oh, and the real winner of how our current complex wants us to renew our lease for the same price we are paying now, which is $130 more per month than new tenants.

After spending 7 hours riding around the QC today, we may have more confusion than decision. Are we “loft” people? The prospect is cool, but are we too old for this? How about those high ceilings-are we going to go broke trying to stay warm?  They are located further away, so that means more gas to get to work, but then again we can cancel the gym membership and use the facilities at the loft building, plus there’s a pool and free wifi.  Maybe we should rent a house, it would be nice to have a yard, bit then we go back to paying for water and lawn maint. How about a fourplex? No yard, we saw a few close by-what are the odds one will be for rent when we move in 2 1/2 months? I hate the thought of moving again, the actual act of moving totally sucks. But as we try to establish our housing identity we seem to do it quite often.

to loft or not to loft?

Disconnect

Do you ever feel like you have somehow become totally disconnected from your friends? I used to have plans to actually do things. Lately it seems like everyone has their own things going on and I am left wondering what happened. At least that’s what this week’s pitty party has been about. Yes, I do have the tendency to withdraw from people at times, and yes I can be a slight recluse too. But that never seemed to bother anyone before. What’s odd is that I’m feeling disconnected from friends that don’t even know each other. Or do they?? Maybe they’ve socially networked themselves and decided I’m just too odd and are hanging out with each other behind my back; my friends have become friends and it’s all over for me. Or maybe it’s a sign that I keep my group of friends so small that when people actually have things to do, I feel abandoned. Perhaps this is the universes’ way of telling me to go forth and make friends, it’s OK.

Here we go again

I am attempting to revive my blog again. The “paddles” have been pulled out and I am applying them to my keyboard now.  I haven’t blogged (other than Twitter micro-blogging) for about a year. The reason? I didn’t feel that I had anything worth putting out in the world. I still might not have anything worthy of mass consumption or space on the interwebs, but what the hell.

I thought about why I even wanted to blog. Sure I wanted a place to share my art projects, but mostly I want to let other people like me know that there are others like them out there. Not every girl wants to spend her weekends shopping and going out to dinner. Some want to sit at home and get glue under their nails, paper clippings all over the floor and ink on their fingers. They find delight in that thrift store/garage sale score and browse through art supply stores all glassy-eyed with endless possibilities.

So for those of you that scour the internet to find like minded “tribe” members, go ahead and add one more to your list.  And check back often because this is bound to be entertaining at times.