Second Review

Spending a year with the Groundhog Resolutions system of David Shea's (see the posts for March 3 and February 2, 2008 if you want a review). Essentially, you make your New Years' resolutions on the second of February, then review your progress once a month, on March 3, April 4, May 5 etc. Mine were:

1. I will not beat myself up for falling short of perfection with respect to this list.

2. I will complete 9 knitted projects this year.

3. I will complete three spreads per month in the art journal.

And boy, I'm glad I made number 1 a priority.

Not only am I late with the April review, I'm not making progress with respect to the rest of the list. I'm wondering if this is more than I'm willing to take on, given the rest of what I do. (I work out 5-6 days per week; I write a 55 word story each day; I post here once a week. I refill the well with words others have written. I take on projects to enliven my world.)

I know that my muse tends to wander off when I work a creative job for my livelihood. She doesn't care for the spotlight. She wilts in the heat, and the "fun job" becomes just like any other job. The joy of creating gets sucked out, leaving a rattling husk.

I've been knitting and knitting and knitting like a fiend on two projects--a blanket for Linus and a shawl for me. The Linus binkie is nearly complete--technically finished, even--but it needs a border. It's been nagging me for a border since it was about half-through. Fine. I'll knit the border on because I can't let it go without. I'll know it's really only half-done.

The shawl is sooooo very nearly done I can taste it. I have about 20 more repeats of the big edging to do, and 2-3 rows along the hypotenuse, and we're through. That's essentially another day's work, so I may very well post two porjects for April, which would put me neatly back in the running for nine knitted projects this year.

I thought about picking up socks for the rest of 2008, I really did. I could bang out my nine projects easily. However, the amount of stash consumed would be negligible, and that's really what it's about for me. Making stuff from the stuff I bought to make stuff with. That's what matters to me now.

And, of course, making stuff takes time. I'm not slacking on the knitting front.

I am, however, slacking on the art journal front. Part of it, I suppose, is that I'm working in images only, working fairly slowly, and working to make complete pieces without any journalling. I've struggled to keep to fewer than 10 words per spread.

The result? I have not done any art journal work since mid-March.

No wonder. It's hard to dance when you've shot yourself in both feet.

So . . . what can I do?

I can finish out this section, doing a little at a time--maybe even the timer system that has worked for me in the past. (Set a timer for one hour, and knit. Set it again, and do paper arts. Set it again, and read the current novel. Lather, rinse, repeat.) Given how achy my neck and back are from sitting and knitting and reading charts (that's what really kills me, turning to read and leaning to move the row marker, and repeating every few stitches and every row) that may well be a good choice for next weekend.

Once this section is done, I can change to doing single sheets rather than spreads. I can use the same technique as far as binding is concerned, where I do one section at a time and knot them together at the end, but I can work on one page at a time. I certainly can also give myself premission to journal or doodle in the blank spaces, and just work to create a single focal point to work around.

All it has to please is me, after all.

See you in May!