Should I close the doors?

Well, here we are, after years of intermittent posting and sporadic updates. I still want to keep this blog, but I think I'm moving my scribal updates to my SCA website, Matildis.art, and possibly keeping this one for other things.

What other things? I've stopped doing henna, I'm no longer a freelance editor... so much has happened in the past couple of years, which I haven't posted about. And I have Facebook and Instagram for most of my updates on my personal life. And yet I'm busier than I've ever been, with art, writing (amateur level, nothing published yet), work, parenting, music... my life and my heart are full.

Should I retire "littlefiddlybits"? I don't want to delete it, I have way too much stuff here going back too far to want to erase. Should I dual-update both here and on Matildis.art? I can't decide.

I'd poll my audience but I think only about three people follow this blog, anyway. It's more of an archive for myself than for anyone else.

Decisions, decisions. In the meantime, here is a picture of me with blue hair for my 50th birthday.

My Current Hope-To List

Longtime readers will recognize that I've made some cosmetic changes to the blog in the past few days (let me know what you think of those, btw); well, I was doing some stuff behind the scenes and had cause to look at a bunch of posts from about 2008 or so.

It was kinda cool, but also kinda depressing.

Cool to see some of the projects and ideas I'd had floating around – but depressing to see how many of those are still in stasis, and more so to see that the things that were bugging me about life in 2008 are still bugging me today, in 2011.  I still need a job.  I still am having relationship issues.  I still question my abilities as a mother, and my value to society.

Like I said: depressing.  It's as if I'm the project that is currently in some kind of indefinite holding pattern.

However, that's not what I want this post to be about.  I want it to be about all the nifty ideas that I've had floating around, waiting to be acted on, and on all the sweet projects that actually have come to fruition in the past few years.

So, here is my current "hope-to" list.  It's not a to-do list because those are depressing and frustrating; it's a list of stuff I hope to get to because it would be nifty if I could.

• Hang-gliding; and once upon a time, you could actually take that for PE credit at Indiana University in Bloomington.
• Marionettes, which have interested me ever since I read Pinocchio when I was about six, and the book had this terrific appendix about them, their history, and how to craft papier-mache heads and the proper way to rig the controls.
• Mosaics.  I have #3 to repair and then 9 more to build to finish that monster of a project
• Oil lamps and
• Silk banners – both of these are for our group campsite at Pennsic, but I've taken a class on oil lamps and they're really really cool.  Cost-effective, safer than tiki and lighter-fluid type things, pretty, and crazy easy to make. The banners would involve learning silk-painting, which I could totally see becoming my Next Crazy Project for a few years, you know?
• Hand-crafted books.  I already know how to do a specific type of limp-binding, and I've even built one full of calligraphy already as part of a group project to make a "scroll" (see previous posts about the accuracy of that name) back in 2003.  I keep thinking of crafting a pair of books with favorite poems in them, to gift to a couple friends of ours.  Making the book itself only takes about 90 minutes, if you have all the right supplies.  Prepping the pages, doing the text and illustrations and such, takes considerably longer.
• Decent, regular work in henna bookings.  I could pay my bills with this if I had more consistent business, but that's a big if.  I really enjoy puttin' the pretty on people, though.  Also, that's not really a "project" like the other things on this list.

See, that's my problem with lists:  I start out with "want-to" and start putting in "should" and "need to".  For instance, right now I need to get a job and should start looking.  The house needs de-cluttering, organizing and cleaning.  I should be downstairs getting a load of dishes going.  Blah, blah, bleah, blah.

Anyway.  Watch this space; I hope to get more calligraphy stuff up this evening – but I do have a gig tomorrow that I still need to finish preparing for.

If any of you have ideas for how I could turn this stuff into a regular job, I'm all ears!

Ka-BOInnnnnngggg!

That's the sound my mind is making lately.  I got really angry a few days ago, and actually did something adult and mature with it.  I've been stepping back, taking stock of everything in my life that is ticking me off and from which I deserve better.

Important: this isn't some kind of whiny, entitled, "gimme gimme" anger, although certainly I've fallen prey to that before.  No.  This is me looking around and deciding that I'm going to make things into the kind of "better" that I've decided I deserve.

Betcha didn't know that anger and depression are related, did you?  In some cases, depression is nothing less than (and nothing more than) the exhaustion you get from holding anger back, or turning it inward on yourself (which is really draining, trust me on this). I've found that staying angry can be tiring, too, but not nearly as much as trying not to be angry when you by golly ought to be.

Depression can come from a sense of powerlessness, of time spent beating your head against a wall and somehow hoping that this time things will be different.  Of time spent trying desperately to affect things that are utterly and totally beyond your control (like, say, how other people behave, or whether they choose to respect you, or even like you).  Let me tell you, anger is really, really good at demolishing that feeling.  When you get pissed off enough, you can't help but say to yourself, and maybe your inner demons and baggage, and maybe even people around you, "Oh yeah?  Yeah??  Well, watch this, you big jerk."

[Pause.  I'm listening to Peter Gabriel on my iPod just now, and discovering once again that the iPod's speakers are way better than the ones in the minivan or on my computer. I shall be basking in the richness of sound and enjoying nuances heretofore unheard for about the next... 4 minutes and 10 seconds.]

*happysigh*

Something people probably don't know about me.  I've had, for pretty much my entire adult life, a real problem with determination, and motivation.  Determination to me has always felt way too much like anger, and I grew up thinking that anger was bad, categorically and pretty much universally.  I've struggled to find motives rooted in something else, anything else, other than anger.  Delight has worked.  Shiny new exploration has worked, until the thing stopped being shiny and new. Spiritual joy has worked, when I've been able to find it.  And, you know, looking around for other sources of inspiration has been a good thing, I think, in that I've gotten pretty good at seeking out the bliss in a given situation, and I've gotten really good at walking away from soul-draining suckitude and mediocrity.

But.

Anytime I started to feel like it was time to dig my heels in, be stubborn, say, "I'm gonna make this work, dammit, just you watch" - you know, show some determination - I'd scare myself right off of whatever I was doing.

Except now (cue the trumpets), da-da-da-DAH, I have a shrink!  Okay, yes, I'm being flip; but it's helping a lot to learn that A), yes, I'm not wrong, anger and determination are related, but B), that isn't bad.  Anger isn't evil.  Anger isn't anything different from happiness - it's an emotion.  You feel it, and you use it to accomplish things.  How you use it can be pretty unhealthy, but so can all the ways people have of running after happiness.

I don't know many people whose homework assignment from their shrink is to actually be angry for a change, but it seems to be working.  And it's why the title of this post is "ka-boing" and not "grrr".  Ideas are everywhere right now, to the extent that I'm actually at risk of losing the anger for lack of a single target to aim it at.  I've got an idea for a class to teach, the winter market proposal to complete, and a house to tear apart and reconfigure - which means everything from sorting and tossing useless crap, to doing laundry, to rearranging furniture, to painting, to tearing out and replacing light fixtures, cabinet doors, carpet, the whole thing.

Oh, and a marriage to work on - it's apparently way easier to have a marriage when both people are acting like grown-ups, can you believe it?  And a kid to parent - ditto the acting like a grown-up.

I just hope talking about it all here won't jinx it, dilute my focus, and keep me from doing anything (again).

So tell me.  Have you hugged your anger today?

An experiment in living off-line

I have an Internet problem. I like to say I can quit anytime I want, just like the characters in all those After-School Specials I watched as a kid; just like them, I can't actually. But at least I'm big enough to admit it, which in the specials usually only happened in like the last fifteen minutes of the show, right before the scene where they screw up their courage and Get Help, the commercial break, and then the scene where they're either All Better or starting to Get There.

My life doesn't have commercials. It would help if I had commercials, 'cause then I might know where I was at in the plot.

Anyway.

I've decided to try and download a desktop blogging thing, so I can write posts without going online, and only publish them in the evenings, and otherwise, stay the hell off the Internet in the hopes of becoming a productive member of society. If it helps, think of it as me getting a New Year's resolution underway now, so I can drop it on January 2 and feel guilty, just like the rest of you out there.

Oh YouTube, I'll miss you most of all. Hm. No... oh RSS feeds, I'll miss you most of all. Or maybe -- oh Wikipedia... or Dogpile...

How am I ever going to survive??

Feel free to drop me a comment or email in support or commiseration. I'll at least get moral support in the evenings, when I allow myself to go online again.

(I won't miss Facebook too much, I think...)

Between projects

*sigh*

I have this aimless drifty feeling going on, again. I don't like it. It's depressing.

Potential things I could/should be working on:

1. Next mosaic in the series - this would be #4 of twelve, and it's only taken me two or three years to get the first three done...
2. Embroidery belt favor and/or purse. The style I intend to use would mean about three or four hundred hours if I were to make a purse, but if you've followed this blog for any length of time, you realize that this is just another draw for me. I need help, people.
3. Finish a calligraphy thing I found while working on the other big one. This would just need a bit of finishing detail and then to be mailed off to California.
4. Lucet cords to lace up Amelia's new dresses. Lucet is actually really easy; if I didn't get motion sick in the car, I'd work on it during the drive down to visit the in-laws in South Carolina.
5. Clean things. Around the house. Like a responsible adult.
6. Get a job. *headdesk* Prove that I am not, in fact, an unemployable blot upon society.

*sigh* Why doesn't chocolate therapy work for things like poverty?

***

Also, it's now been fourteen or fifteen days since I finished work on the big calligraphy thing, and my thumb is still a little sensitive, and the skin there and on my fingertip is starting to peel. I was expecting that, having overdone it on a project before.

***

Holidays. I like celebrating stuff, I guess... but the disruption to my routine throws me for a loop much, much more than it ever did when I was younger. It feels sometimes like I don't really recover my balance again until March. I guess that officially means I'm unstable - heh, as if I needed that confirmed or anything.

Do I sound depressed? (um, yes.) Is that likely to help me market my leet mad henna-slinging skeelz? (um, no.)

I'll be over here with my head on the desk. I've at least learned not to pound it against the keyboard - the dents in my forehead make me look silly.

Dilemma

I originally put this blog together as an attempt to A: market the henna (and any other artsy-fartsy stuff that people would be willing to pay me for) and B: to avoid whining daily about my clinical depression and the joys of therapy and angst.

However.

I have opinions. I have rants. I have a long discourse on Daylight Saving Time and why it's stupid and should be done away with. I have answers to all the world's problems, most of them come up with in twenty minutes or less because I am just that smart.

*sigh*

So, do I follow the general rule of "it's my blog and I can rant if I want to", risking the effectiveness of the blog as a marketing aid, or do I keep things inoffensive and get all irritated that I'm not allowing myself an outlet to vent? Or do I create yet another blog in addition to the two I already have? (And you're not getting the address to the other one - see above re: whining.)

I just don't know.

Dutifully yours

There was a henna party back on the 3rd that was a blast and a half. I'm still doing the weekly thing out at Nature's Pharm, and hoping for bookings from people now that the farmer's market season is over.

I wish I had before and after pictures of my work table; after being dedicated to mosaics and clutter-catching for nearly a year, it's actually clean, in anticipation of me getting to work on a calligraphy commission I received not too long ago. I have a month, but I'm still not sure whether that will be enough time.

My embroidery apparently isn't too bad. I think the only reason I find this disconcerting is because I've had too many years of training in not being proud of my ability to pick things up quickly. I admit to being curious, though, to discover whether or not there is anything I truly have no aptitude for. There are plenty of things I'm not trained to do - brain surgery comes to mind - but I'm talking about a natural ability or inclination to be able to do something well.

I mean, I know lots of people who claim they can't sing, but I never met someone who actually could not carry a tune to save their lives until I was in college. Most of the people who say they can't are really just referring to their lack of training, and inability to sound like a pop star - but they can still sing. My husband claims not to be artistic, and he is missing the steadiness of hand and training he would need for delicate work, but he and I form ideas together all the time. He has the eye and the imagination for it, just not the training - and it may be that there is nothing to be done about a shaky hand.

Here I am, laboring under all this low-self-esteem garbage, trying to figure out what there might be that I have absolutely no true ability to do or even to learn.

I read that sentence, and my brain goes, "um... yeeeeah..."

I'm not actually a farmer, but...

Just got off the phone with representatives from the two farmers' markets in our area. Assuming that they decide henna isn't too weird for them, I might be able to get a booth at one or both markets, and work enough henna magic to earn my lunch money (or at least to cover the booth fees, I'm not picky).

Lafayette I'm not so sure about; they seem to have a slightly stricter policy on who can and can't sell there, and I don't know for certain that I fit. There's something of a more conservative, traditional "feel" there from the visits I've made. West side, though, feels a little more like a mini-carnival. They have t-shirt and jewelry sellers as well as the fruits and veggies (and homemade cookies!), and I feel pretty confident that I'd fit right in, if they'll have me.

Crossed fingers and knocking on wood - let's hope for a good outcome.

Issues with self-confidence

I have a million ideas, I'm a skilled writer, but I'm not so great with the marketing. What little I've done suggests, strongly, that the markets I thought would want my booklets are actually not interested, because they have plenty of other sources available to them.

Things are still up in the air regarding teaching the classes at the pottery studio.

The mosaic booklet has sold zero copies despite my efforts to date - although in fairness, there is still plenty that I can do to promote it without annoying anyone except, possibly, me.

I haven't done any calligraphy in months, except for a commission in February that took me three hours to finish; the calligraphy space is currently occupied by a mosaic that has remained in the same state of "unfinished" as it was when I started writing the booklet.

Okay, yes, I suffer frrom depression and it's easier for me to become discouraged than to become my own cheerleader; but still. My efforts aren't bearing any fruit right now, the one with the best chance of becoming a regular job (calligraphy) is in stasis, and here I am creating a blog about my "career". I'm feeling kind of like a hypocrite, and a failure.

*sigh*

And this blog was originally meant to focus on the art and the writing, and serve as a bit of a marketing tool, but I don't know that telling the world I think I'm a hypocrite is really going to help me sell much of anything.

Like I said. Issues with self-confidence. Maybe I should eat some breakfast and see if that helps my mood.