P365 - Day 244 - 1/2 way in, I mean 2/3!

I was going to do this post as my ‘half-way through the 365 photos’ post, but other things got in the way, and I never quite made it. So here we are, it’s my ‘2/3 way through the year’ post.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog lately. Why I’m doing it, whether I’m writing it for any particular audience and whether there’s any point to it.

When I started I had a vague idea about what I wanted to do, and that was for it to be a place where I could put my 365 ‘photo a day’ project. And if you’ve read my ‘to not blog . . . or to blog?’ page, you’ll know that I wanted it be a place to help me remember the past, live in the present and design my future.

Well that’s a lot to expect from a blog.

I think it does a pretty good job of serving as a reminder of what I’ve done every day this year - the present becomes the past. As well as that, I’ve done some trips down memory lane, and I’ve started to create a future for myself through my Happiness Project commitments – although over the last couple of months that’s fallen by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

But the main focus of my blog is the photos. On most days, the writing follows from them. Some days the writing is a description of something I’ve done that day, and other days it might just be a sentence or two explaining the photo. Some days the photos lend themselves to a more detailed examination about some part of me – perhaps being introverted and shy, or some of my long-lost dreams, or my struggles with decluttering my house or setting up my garden, or dealing with my demons . . .

All of that involves sharing myself and my family to some degree or another. Sometimes I simply want to show family members something that Juniordwarf has done, or keep them up to date with our life. Occasionally I have a particular person or people in mind when I’m writing about things we might have discussed previously, and some days I want to let off a bit of steam. It all depends, for the most part, on the photo - although there are times I've wanted to write about something in particular, so I've taken a photo to suit that topic.

Not everyone will ‘get’ every post, and that’s fine.

When I began blogging, I didn’t know much about blogs, so my understanding about what a blog *should* be came from reading other people’s blogs. I read some wonderful blogs, some by people I know fairly well, but mostly by people I’ve never – or only briefly – met but have gotten to know through the Internet.

There is such a huge range of blogs out there, and different people share different things. Some are totally up-front about who they and their families are, and others use noms-de-plume for themselves and aliases for their family members (speaking of which, I have the most wonderful pen-name under which my novels shall be published . . .).

Some people blog about particular aspects of their life – scrapbooking, gardening, iphoneography – and others are much more of a mixture. Some use their blogs as outlets to let off steam and to share the ups and down of their daily life and the particular challenges they face. Some people blog about ‘hot topics’ at the moment. Some just share photos. Some post whatever they want to post at the time. Most are a combination of many things.

Some of the topics I’ve written about I might not have if I hadn’t seen other people already writing about the same or similar issues. So reading other people’s blogs has helped me to feel more relaxed about sharing some things.

At the same time there’s a couple of my posts that I cringe thinking about how I commented on an issue because other people commented on it, but it really had little relevance to my photo of the day. It wasn’t really in keeping with what I saw my blog as being about, but I let myself be influenced by other people, who write different types of blogs.

But I don't care, because I like to think that this whole blogging year has been a learning experience for me. I started out being influenced by what I was reading – because I really didn’t have a clue what I was doing - but I think I’ve started to develop my own online personality now. I’m figuring out what works for me and what doesn’t; what I feel comfortable with and what I don’t.

It’s a lot of work – to take a photo every single day and write something about it – and is fairly time-consuming. It’s been a fun project and I’ve really enjoyed doing it. There have only been a couple of days where I’ve thought it was too hard and I didn’t want to do it. There have been a few days where I haven’t had a clue what to take a photo of, but for the most part, there’s been at least one thing that’s stood out for the day.

I’m leaning towards thinking I might not continue the Project 365 approach next year, but I’m not sure. I still have a third of a year to decide.

In the mean time, I’m pretty comfortable doing what I’m doing with this blog. I don’t like to categorise it as any particular type of blog. It’s just my blog and my Project 365.

Now I’ve written the post, what on earth am I going to take a photo of to illustrate it?

Well, that was pretty obvious, wasn't it!

P365 - Day 209 - pen amnesty

A few weeks ago, the wonderful people at NoteMaker  announced a Pen Amnesty, where you could trade in your ugliest, dodgiest pen for a shiny new one from their online store.

All you had to do is upload a picture of your offensive pen, and then you would get a redemption code either for a free pen Delfonics ballpoint pen or a 25 per cent cash rebate off any pen purchase, plus a free Rhodia notepad.

I have no shortage of dodgy, shabby pens lying around, so it wasn’t hard to find one that fitted the bill, and I dutifully entered the promotion.

This is one of my work pens. Note the snapped off clip and ink stains that rub off on my fingers.

Last week I redeemed my prize, and today my package of goodies from NoteMaker arrived. Here is my lovely new yellow pen, which goes beautifully with my stripy journal and is an absolute pleasure to write with, and my very flash notepad, complete with slip case.

So thank you NoteMaker. I do enjoy playing your games, and I’m looking forward to seeing what challenge you’ll come up with next time.

P365 - Day 188 - here I write (7/7/2011)

I went out at lunch time with my book, sat in the park and wrote.

I felt uncomfortable, exposed. It wasn’t calm or relaxing.

I had to leave.

P365 - Day 88 thinking offline

Way back in January, I was looking for the perfect notebook to use as a journal/planner for this year. I’d seen a couple of things I liked, but that weren’t quite right, so I put a call out on twitter to see if anyone had any suggestions.

The lovely Amy pointed me in the direction of Notemaker which has a divine range of notebooks, journals, pens, pencils and much much more. 

If you like that sort of thing go and have a look. I’ll wait . . .

. . . 

Well, as I wrote back then, after spending several hours admiring all the beautiful books online, I ended up using the cute stripy notebook that Lil Sis and Mr Tall got me for my birthday as my new notebook.

Fast forward a couple of months and I found out about Notemaker’s ‘Think Offline’ competition.

The idea is quite simple – turn off the computer, get out a pen and some paper and ‘scratch scribble, doodle, draw . . . a letter, a word, a picture’. Show them how you ‘think offline’.

So an entry could be anything from a word on a scrap of paper to a full blown drawing.

You might be aware that I find it incredibly difficult to ‘create’ something, and making a mark on a lovely piece of paper, or the first page of a new book is something that I’m very reluctant to do in case I make a mistake (more on this little issue coming up). But the fact that all this competition required was a letter or a word on a scrap of paper was not intimidating at all. It was something even I could do!

In the end I came up with a concept a bit grander than a single letter or a word, sketched the initial design in pencil (can’t go stuffing it up now, can I?) and then went to town with my beautiful brown pen. 

The third version is the one I was happy with, so this is my entry that I finished off this morning and mailed (you have to snail mail your entries – in the spirit of being offline) this afternoon.

My idea was pretty simple: a single letter, filled with symbols that start with that letter and then surrounded by words that start with that letter.

I quite like it.

And yes, I quite appreciate the irony of posting my offline project online ;)

P365 - Day 83 feeling kinda arty* (aka 'on art & writing' part 2) 24/03/2011

Part 1.

Writing is a major part of my work, and has been in pretty much all of the positions that I’ve held during public service jobs in various departments, both federal and state government.

But it’s not the type of writing I enjoyed as a child, so even though I get job satisfaction from finishing a report or discussion paper, writing for work doesn’t fulfil my desire to create.

I often joke that [ahem, cough] years in the public service has completely stifled my creativity and my ability to write anything other than bureaucratese. It also seems to have changed me from someone who prefers spontaneity to someone who kind of prefers routine. (If you are a Myers-Briggs aficionado, what I mean is I’ve moved along the Perception-Judgment spectrum from a strong P preference to a much weaker P preference, or even a weak J preference.) Although maybe that’s just something that would have happened anyway as I got older and gained more responsibility. It’s more fun to blame work though. People blame the government for everything else, so why not that?

So in a roundabout way, I am making my living from writing, just as I imagined I’d do when I was a child. An open plan office in a CBD office block is not the environment I’d imagined and certainly not the environment I prefer.

(Speaking of the environment I’d prefer, there is a tiny town in country NSW called Majors Creek.  When we lived in NSW, we used to love calling in to the pub any time we were in the area.

Every time we went there I imagined that it would be the perfect place to set up a creative writing hideaway. I imagined a small cottage, with polished wooden floors, floor to ceiling bookshelves to house my library, a window seat with a lift-up lid for reading in the sun (inside the window seat would be the entrance to a secret passageway, a la the Famous Five), a big cosy chair to curl up in when it got cold, a big old desk, a rather impressive computer with a mega screen so I could edit my photos. 

Outside would be the garden of my dreams (where oxalis never grows and snails are atomised as soon as they hit the border of my property), with a random interplanting of vegetables and flowers and a magnificent herb garden.)

But I digress . . .

Sitting in an open plan office at a grey formica desk up against a garish red partition that clashes stunningly with the orange speckled carpet, snippets of overheard conversations and phone calls . . . it’s definitely not my preferred environment.

I once heard someone say ‘a grey formica desk inspires grey formica ideas’. That quote always comes into my mind whenever I’m confronted with a grey formica desk (which, let’s face it, when you work for the government is pretty often).

So where does that leave me?

On the one hand I could say that I’m stuck in an uninspiring environment doing uninspiring work, wishing I was in my little dream cottage.

The problem with that is that I need a day job. The ‘starving artist’ stereotype might seem romantic and initially quite attractive, but if I really think about it, I quite like my lifestyle and there’s not much I’m really prepared to give up to pursue a vague dream of working (doing I know not what) in my little cottage.

(And to be fair to work, I have done some interesting things, been involved in some great projects and am always appreciative of them letting me design my own work hours to suit my family responsibilities. A lot of people don’t get to do that, so this is not a complaint about my work.)

But sleepydwarf, I hear you say, surely you have spare time? You don’t work 24/7. You seem to have enough time to write your blog. You take photos, you scrapbook. If you wanted to write or draw or something like that without giving up your day job, what’s stopping you?

If you really wanted to do this, you’d find a way. So why don’t you stop moaning about how much you wish you could do this stuff and go out and do it? Seriously! Get over yourself!

Um, yes. And you, my glorious inner voice, have just reminded me of yet another quote I picked up from somewhere – maybe a movie – where one character laments that he can’t play the piano (or whatever it was that the other character did brilliantly), and says to the character who can, ‘I wish I could do that’. To which the artist replies, ‘no you don’t. If you wanted to do it, you’d be doing it.’

Simple words, but so powerful. ‘If you really wanted to, you would.’

So does the fact that I don’t draw mean I don’t want to draw? Because I don’t sit down and write a story, does this mean I don’t really want to write? Is kidding myself that I have a creative block just another way of saying I really don’t want to do this?

Possibly.

I look at sketches that other people do, or paintings, or even doodles or beautiful handwriting, and I wish I could be as artistic as them.

‘I wish I could draw’. I don’t know how many times I’ve said that. Yet I never pick up a pen or a pencil.

So the other way of interpreting that quote is if I really want to draw (or write), I should just do it. Here and now. Who cares what it looks like? The very act of making marks on a piece of paper is drawing (or writing, if that’s what I want to do). Sure, I might not like the result. It might be terrible. In fact, I’m pretty sure it will be. But I don’t have to show it to anyone. It might be full of ‘mistakes’, but that’s how you learn – by doing it, making mistakes and learning from them.

But then if I don’t want to draw (or write) – if I’m only saying I want to because I think I should want to, or I wanted to a long time ago but I don’t any more - then I need to give myself permission to let go of the idea that I want to draw (or write, or both). If I don’t want to, I don’t want to - simple. And then I can stop wanting to.**

(You may need to read that paragraph again. I know I did.)

So with that in mind, I've been wondering which way I'll go.

Well today I did draw something. (No I'm not going to put it on here.)

I was at my mother's place and she has a rather large collection of pencils that belonged to my father, who, we have already established, did have some pretty good artistic skills. She also has - and I never knew this until today - an old wooden drawing board that belonged to her mother. She dates it at 1915 or thereabouts. When Juniordwarf wants to draw at my mum's place he uses the drawing board.

It's a thing of great beauty and history with pen marks and ink stains as testament to my grandmother's work.

So I couldn't help but line up a few old pencils on the board and take a photo, to remind me that there is talent in my family, and that yes, maybe I can do this.

* with apologies to Dave Graney.

** Gretchen Rubin came to a similar conclusion in The Happiness Project. Somewhere.

P365 - Day 66 pushing papers (AKA 'on art and writing part I')

When we were kids, Lil Sis was recognised as the artist and I was the writer.

I don’t know if this was a deliberate thing on the part of our parents, or if it just turned out that way. It seemed like her artworks were always on display in our house and any ungainly attempt on my part to produce a drawing or painting was rather quickly dismissed. (Or at least, that's how I remember it . . .)

Now the funny thing here is, I was going to quote a couple of my Grade 7 reports from art class to demonstrate my lack of skill in this area. However, having just referred back to them after many many years of them sitting in a shoe box, I was extremely surprised – nay stunned – by comments like this:

‘work displays an obvious artistic talent’

‘work is sensitive, mature and finely detailed’

‘a talented student who has an instinctive sense of proportion and perspective’

‘has the ability to retain a clear visual image and is able to draw from memory’

This is quite the opposite of what I expected these reports to say, and I certainly can’t remember producing any work that demonstrated any of this so-called talent.

I was expecting words similar to my Phys Ed reports, which said things like ‘works to the best of her ability’ (this one came up more than once), ‘continues to apply herself well’, ‘gives her best performance’ and so on. Reading between the lines (as if you had to!), all of these comments are nicely summed up by this one, which appeared one year: ‘skills are still quite limited’.

Possibly the only subject I was less competent in was typing.

Anyway, Mrs Art Teacher’s comments obviously didn’t mean a lot to me at the time. They certainly didn’t sink in or I’d have remembered them, and I was convinced that art and me were not a good mix. I was a writer after all, not an artist, and as a result, I never studied Art at school after the compulsory Grade 7 class.

Meanwhile my writing was encouraged, to the extent that my mother organised for me to spend my Grade 8 summer holidays with our local paper, because I said I wanted to be a journalist.

I don’t remember a lot about that summer, only that there was a lot of time spend hanging around the office, and that I was really excited to get my first (and to date only) by-line at the age of 14.

One week they were looking for space fillers, so I wrote an anonymous letter to the editor that I knew would stir my mother up. It was published and she was so annoyed that she wrote right back not knowing, until after her letter had been published the next week, that I’d written the original diatribe. Everyone at the paper got a giggle out of that one.

Anyway I grew up knowing that my father could draw, my grandmother (on my mother’s side) could draw and my sister could draw, but that I couldn’t.

Instead, I wrote, but as I went through high school and university even my creative writing petered out, in favour of essays about books we’d read in English class, reports on the history of computers through the ages, the life of Katharine Hepburn, assignments on the meaning of life, morals and Nietzsche’s theories . . . and the list goes on.

I didn’t end up as a journalist, or even a sports scientist, which became my obsession in Grade 12. Instead I joined the public service, thereby fulfilling my mother’s prophesy in response to my claim in Grade 10 that I really wanted to be a mechanic. She said I’d be much more likely to end up as a bureaucrat pushing papers on a desk somewhere.

Oh how right she was!

So here are some of those papers.

P365 - Day 31 one month in

I’ve been taking daily pictures and writing about them for a month today, so I thought this would be a good time to reflect on my first month of blogging.

It’s been an interesting process for me. At first I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to do this, but after a couple of conversations and a randomly drawn card, I knew that this was the right thing for me to do and the right time to do it.

My original plan was just to take a picture each day and write a few sentences about it and that would be it.

But I found out really early on that a lot of the pictures had stories that needed more than a few sentences, and some of them triggered seemingly unrelated memories and thoughts. So my photo of my coffee mug turned into a story about not judging people by what you hear about them, and my photo of my Twitter feed became my thoughts on a lifetime of being told I was shy.

I wondered if anyone would care what I had to say – after all this is just one blog in the hundreds of thousands or even millions that are out there. I’m not a celebrity and I don’t create great art or write great words of inspiration. I’m just a normal working mum, with lots of insecurities, fears, hopes, dreams, highs, lows, good days and bad days.

But despite this, I’m thrilled that I have readers who read my posts and leave me comments – on here, on facebook and on twitter, or sometimes in person. I love that people I don’t even know, or have only met briefly, take the time to reply to what I’ve said.

And I like how different people ‘get’ different things that I write. Some people like scrapbooking, some people like my photos. Some like the mum stuff and some like the gardening. I don’t expect everyone to be interested in every single thing I write and I don’t expect everyone to agree with me either. 

One of the things that I’m grappling with in creating an online presence is how much to actually say, what I want to make public and what I don’t. There are some parts of my life I don’t want to share, and I suppose what I feel comfortable sharing will change as my circumstances change. I also need to take care not to say anything about other people that they might not want ‘out there’.

I also think that if I wouldn’t say (or at some point haven’t said) something in real life then I shouldn’t say it online. Sometimes I might need to make it clear that I’m talking about my own circumstances and that my thoughts on my situation are in no way a judgement on what anyone else does.

I don’t set out to offend or upset anyone. If someone disagrees with me, that’s fine, but I’m not going to apologise for being me and hide my opinions just because someone else might not agree. I just ask that you respect my views, as I will respect yours.

What all that boils down to is that I don’t see the point of writing this blog if I’m not going to be myself.

Having started writing about what I’m doing and how I’m feeling, I now feel less like I’m the only person in the world battling with trying to keep my house organised, or overcoming a fear of meeting new people, or coping with sending my child to school for the first time. And while it doesn’t lessen my own day to day struggles, knowing that there are other people out there dealing with the same things reassures me that I’m not on my own.

So thank you everyone who has read any of my posts and has said something to me about anything I’ve written. I appreciate you taking the time to do that, and it means a lot to me.

And so to the photo:

31 January 2011

This is a digital layout for my Project Life album. It’s based on the Project 365 app on my phone, where you take a photo each day and slot it into the relevant day on the month’s grid.

P365 app screenshot

Obviously this is a January calendar grid, painstakingly created in Photoshop Elements, and each day I’ve simply cropped and resized the photo of the day from the blog, dropped it into the grid and added the date in the corner.

The grid is a 10.5” square and each photo is resized to a 1.3” square. I’ll put a border around it and have it printed as an 11x14” print (once I’ve shopped around for prices).

Then all I’ll have to do is stick it to a 12x12” sheet of cardstock, slot it into a page protector and add it to the Project Life album. On the other side of the page protector I’ll write up a brief description of each photo and a few embellishments to jazz up the page a bit.

And that will be January's photo of the day done. Easy.