The Art of the Day is: coping with artless days
I've been out of sorts. I've been distracted. I've been unmotivated. I've had excuses. I've had other things on my mind.
But I feel badly about all that.
Every day should be lived like an art, and I will try to post more regularly. A day without art is like a rudderless boat.
The Art of the Day is: Perseverance
Getting through, keeping on, persisting, plodding, making slow forward movement. Trudging forth.
Doing adult things like going to the dentist when you don't have a toothache.
The Art of the Day is: Catching up
On the one hand, I may be having a Red Queen Day, where it takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. Then again, I may be remarkably productive, and get lots done. Either way it's a day to be "in gear", "in high gear". Gotta go.
The Art of the Day is: Being (behaving like) a grown up.
After yesterday's ode to toys, I find myself thinking of where I am in the scheme of things.
Too old to be naive.
Too independent to be truly settled down.
Too fond of food and things, and comfort and security (oh, that is oldish).
Responsible. Adult.
Sensible, for the most part.
Conserving my parents Liberal beliefs.
A little rusty.
A little wiser.
For now.
The Art of the Day is: Dealing with Left Overs
Not just the stuff in the refrigerator, but the stuff that defies fitting into basic categories. The junk drawers and miscellaneous files. Other.
The food stuff is actually the easiest. Things can become other things, soups and sauces, fillings, or history. I have thrown out food before.
When things are sitting in a drawer or a box with no particular place to go, my instinct is to make smaller boxes. Some of my most singular "treasures" are small. Toy sized. Toy like. Well, that's their function isn't it? Some people are more toy prone than others. I guess I'm one of those folks. I generally like things, and see things as potential other things. And I think that is a good thing.
Every once and a while I need to clean out the fridge, I need to sort through the miscellaneous boxes. I need to decide what to throw out and what's worth keeping, but I don't have to throw out all my toys. I intend to remain playful.
Happy Year of the Pig
The Art of the Day is: showing up
The Art of the Day is: Being Reasonable
The Art of the Day is: Making Methodology
David Seah's article for today is about something he's calling
Scientific Creative Methods. It's interesting as a stand alone article, and it's interesting how he continues to explore his process.
My process is still more like Neko the Cat, who bumps into the edge of his screen, and is forced to make course corrections. I always think I design within a box, a script, a parameter, and use those edges as containers for content.
The Art of the Day is: random acts of kindness
This is a karma builder, but only if you don't boast about it, so I may be loosing points here, or I may be causing other random acts to occur, which could be in my favor, whatever, which ever.
I don't know when I began doing these sorts of things, I know I don't do it often enough to be a habit, or seldom enough to be a rare occurrence. I do know that it is something I've done more lately than in the past, that I started doing it way after the bumperstickers came out (and I didn't "get it" when they first came out), and that I'm delighted with the idea of delighting someone else.
The art of it come from the randomness, the serendipity (such a nice word), the using your sneaky tendencies in imaginative ways. It makes me smile. I recommend it.
The Art of the Day is: Storm Watching
It was about a year ago I wrote a longish piece on watching a storm move in. Today I'm doing it again, watching a storm move in, and it is important, because it causes us to stop and think; about the weather, about our place in the scheme of things, about our powerlessness in the face of natural phenomena, about the silence of snow falling, about the shape and direction of each snowflake, about being inside watching outside. About snow days when we were home from school, about winters past. Cold and warm, wet and dry, alone or together. So many thoughts, and some space and place to think about them.
Storm watching is an art, the roots of poetry.
The Art of the Day is: Using Technology
I had to change my wireless router channel this weekend, because someone with a stronger router was bumping me off, or at least that's what my
network guy says.
Now he just says my router must be broken.
The Art of the Day is: Being a Receptor
Kind of like an emotional sponge. Kind of like a psychological barometer. Similar to a contact high, but often a contact low. Passive
acquisitive. These are the people who get very upset listening to bad news, paralized by the evil in the world. Bleeding Heart Liberals. No, that's not me. I'd rather be a transformer. I'm not there yet, but I'm trying to be.
The Art of the Day is: Actively relaxing
The Art of the Day is: Rolling with the Punches
My friend's dog was run over by a car. My neighbor's white cat ran away in the snow.
Rolling with the punches is an active
exercise.
The Art of the Day is: Anniversaries
It was a year ago today that I started publishing this blog!
That means I've posted 88% of the days. Not too bad. Not perfect, but that wasn't what I was trying to do. Keeping in mind to live every day as an art. Seeing what topics keep coming up. Being able to look over the month, the season, the year, and see movement, sometimes forward, sometimes backwards, sometimes laterally, sometimes just skewed, that's what this was about. I feel stronger for doing this. More connected with my feelings. Not too bad.
