National Blog Posting Month, Day 21
Wow, the last two days of posting have been hard. I have had nothing to post that even remotely deserves the attention it might receive. I mean, my god, shoes? Posting this much has forced me to admit to myself that I put things up on this site so that I can hold them away from myself and admire them, and it takes a tremendous ego to invite you to admire them, too, whether it's some little truth I've realized, or another web site I've found, or a picture of my dog, or for heaven's sake I try to sell you a t-shirt.
The crushing weight of this realization has humbled me to the point where I'd certainly like to erase this whole sordid mess and that, of course, is the point one reaches in any creative endeavor, when your homemade little boat is becalmed in the middle of an ancient sea, the shore is days (years/a lifetime) away, you're out of good snacks and nothing fun's on TV so why not just lie down quietly and wait for your whole personality to disintegrate.
But instead? You post until you find something to say, you write your way out of your personal abyss, or you knit one more row or run one more mile, whatever it is you love doing so much that sometimes you hate it.
Alice recently pointed me toward the book Art and Fear, which I bought but haven't read yet, so I'm going to paraphrase a section Alice told me about where the authors talked about a pottery class, I believe, that broke into two groups: one group would produce a piece every day, and the other group would produce a piece when they felt inspired to. At the end of the experiment it turned out that the group who had to turn out something every day, despite having made a fair amount of crap, also produced more good work than the group who only produced when they felt ready to. The point being that when you have to do something whether you feel like it or not, you may be more open to taking more risks and to easing your perfectionist tendencies, allowing more happy accidents to crop up.
I'm still not convinced that personal web site blogging is an "art," although it is inarguably a creative endeavor, maybe somewhere along the lines of a collage or, depending on your design skills, one of those intricate Joseph Cornell boxes, except with a whole lot of text and links in them. Unless you have ads on your blog, like me, in which case you're building a hockey rink.
AH, THE TANGIBLE SIDE OF BLOGGING
In case you have a loved one for whom a Fussy t-shirt would be an unnervingly appropriate gift come December, I'm taking orders for the holiday model, which will be a red shirt with pink letters this year! Imagine if you will:
Yes, bow before my Photoshop wizardry.
(Pleas to click on t-shirt page to order, shirt prices are still an incredibly reasonable $20, which includes shipping!! But the price is going up come January 1, so uh, you know, act now. Especially if you want to shop early for Valentine's Day.)
AND! in case anyone wanted a "Typed It Wrong" tee but missed out the first go-round: LET'S DO IT AGAIN. We'll need 24 orders to make my t-shirt guy's minimum and if we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya they'll ship before Christmas.
(No, they will, don't worry.)
The unisex/men's is a dark blue Hanes tee with light blue silkscreening, and the women's model is the long-torso fitted tee that everyone is liking so much, except in black with blue ink.
I will even wrap and include a note for an extra $3.50 if you're shipping to a third party!
Thanks to eight years in retail I am ALL ABOUT SERVICE, especially during the holidays.
The crushing weight of this realization has humbled me to the point where I'd certainly like to erase this whole sordid mess and that, of course, is the point one reaches in any creative endeavor, when your homemade little boat is becalmed in the middle of an ancient sea, the shore is days (years/a lifetime) away, you're out of good snacks and nothing fun's on TV so why not just lie down quietly and wait for your whole personality to disintegrate.
But instead? You post until you find something to say, you write your way out of your personal abyss, or you knit one more row or run one more mile, whatever it is you love doing so much that sometimes you hate it.
Alice recently pointed me toward the book Art and Fear, which I bought but haven't read yet, so I'm going to paraphrase a section Alice told me about where the authors talked about a pottery class, I believe, that broke into two groups: one group would produce a piece every day, and the other group would produce a piece when they felt inspired to. At the end of the experiment it turned out that the group who had to turn out something every day, despite having made a fair amount of crap, also produced more good work than the group who only produced when they felt ready to. The point being that when you have to do something whether you feel like it or not, you may be more open to taking more risks and to easing your perfectionist tendencies, allowing more happy accidents to crop up.
I'm still not convinced that personal web site blogging is an "art," although it is inarguably a creative endeavor, maybe somewhere along the lines of a collage or, depending on your design skills, one of those intricate Joseph Cornell boxes, except with a whole lot of text and links in them. Unless you have ads on your blog, like me, in which case you're building a hockey rink.
AH, THE TANGIBLE SIDE OF BLOGGING
In case you have a loved one for whom a Fussy t-shirt would be an unnervingly appropriate gift come December, I'm taking orders for the holiday model, which will be a red shirt with pink letters this year! Imagine if you will:
Yes, bow before my Photoshop wizardry.
(Pleas to click on t-shirt page to order, shirt prices are still an incredibly reasonable $20, which includes shipping!! But the price is going up come January 1, so uh, you know, act now. Especially if you want to shop early for Valentine's Day.)
AND! in case anyone wanted a "Typed It Wrong" tee but missed out the first go-round: LET'S DO IT AGAIN. We'll need 24 orders to make my t-shirt guy's minimum and if we all hold hands and sing Kumbaya they'll ship before Christmas.
(No, they will, don't worry.)
The unisex/men's is a dark blue Hanes tee with light blue silkscreening, and the women's model is the long-torso fitted tee that everyone is liking so much, except in black with blue ink.
I will even wrap and include a note for an extra $3.50 if you're shipping to a third party!
Thanks to eight years in retail I am ALL ABOUT SERVICE, especially during the holidays.
15 Comments:
That is an interesting and humble point in regards to the different pottery classes. I always knew I should change the style of class I'm in, but man, that's hard.
I love that summation of the pottery classes. Every day when I try to figure out what I'll be writing on another day of NaBloPoMoFo, I am not sure I'll be able to pull it off... yet somehow, it works out.
Jules
House of Jules
"... you write your way out of your personal abyss..."
That paragraph is one of the many reasons I love reading your blog. Thank you!
Nice job of turning shit into gold; or at least a workable metal.
That's a post I needed to read today, as I've reached that 'becalmed' state. I should ask my family to give me that book for Christmas!
In theory, though, we don't need to post everything we write for the blog regardless of how good it is... recently I've rejected more posts than I've posted. It's a discouraging feeling.
This sums up this whole nablopomo thing for me- and even perhaps this whole blogging thing...It has become daily practice for me to take a bit of time to myself and reflect and slow down and write. Just write. This blog has become many things, but mostly discipline and freedom. I said my thanksgiving thank you to the blogosphere for giving me my voice back and that so very includes you....
gobble gobble
I've never posted to you before, but I've been reading you for at least a year.
Even when you have *nothing* to say, you are still interesting.
You don't whine, you don't talk only about yourself, and you have a lovely off-kilter style that I identify with so much.
(oh, and that story you wrote about your beat-up black oxfords and the roommate - starkly beautiful. I read it to my Dh and he now kind of gets why I'm on the computer so much. It takes a whole lot of slogging through the dross to find a diamond, but you're definitely one of the few blogs out there that are tops in my book for quirky and deep - sometimes both at the same time.)
Now off to figure out how to leave a hint to my hubby about the Fussy t-shirt for Christmas...
That whole pottery thing just made me feel a whole lot better about the last few really shitty posts I put up on my blog. Obviously there is some gold in there somewhere. If you maybe have a shovel or something.
Also I want the typed it wrong shirt. Ahem, husband? Shirt? Xmas? YES.
Great post and beautifully written, as always. Since I've been in the arts my whole life, I really didn't think blogging would kick my ass but it does. So one day about a month after I started, I began printing out each day I posted and put them in a binder by months.
When I filled one year's worth, I started flipping through the pages and it made me realize that they weren't all gold, but I certainly wasn't embarrassed that I'd done so much writing. It also made me regret that I didn't take the last 24 years I've been a standup and work on jokes that religiously. (although jokes are harder to write than a blog)
And yes, writing is art. And like all art, some sucks and some is brilliant.
In a poetry class, the professor declared that he determined grades by throwing our portfolios down the stairs at the end of the year, and whichever hit the bottom got an A. I thought he was kidding, but he said the only way he could teach us (& the only way we could teach ourselves) to improve was if we created enough that we could see the strengths and weaknesses. So, the portfolios with the most volume went the furthest down the stairs and up in the grade book. I think he had a point.
"whatever it is you love doing so much that sometimes you hate it."
couldn't have put it better.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I'm thankful you keep going even on the days when you feel your post is crap.
Your blog is the reason I started blogging. I'd post ten times a day if I didn't have to work and take care of my kids.
I think the pottery class thing is right. I usually only blog when I feel inspired or aggravated enough to write about something. But sometimes I do feel that way but don't get around to blogging about it. With NaBloPoMo I have to do it every day and I've been surprised how many topics I've managed to come up with.
I maintain that whether or not blogging is an art form depends on who's doing it.
People just don't realize that art is actually work. Blogging practice, like a diary, is part of the work, and sometimes it is also the work product.
I think you do a great job, and I love your shoes.
And Cookie. I love Cookie. I wouldn't ever choose not to have seen those pictures of her being "molested" by Alice and then by you. Those were beautiful.
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