I spent the early evening lying on the grass staring at the treetops thinking about the question that haunts me most weeks: 'what do I create first?'.
In LOG 01 this is what I said I would do today - figure it out.
To be honest, I thought this would be a breeze by comparison to figuring out how to actually do the thing.
But I surprised myself with how few ideas I could recall. I feel like I usually have loads?! I guess it feels that way in the moments they come to me and then - poof - they disappear.
It reminded me to keep a notebook for my special creative ideas - a place I can trap them so they don't escape. I used to do this religiously - I called it my 'book of treasure'. I'm not sure it helped me with execution, but it definitely served as a reserve brain.
So I think I'll start using my pocket notebook to capture creative ideas, how irrelevant they seem when they first occur to me.
Anyway, these are the (very few) high-level ideas I had swilling around my brain today:
make a zine
make a series of collages
make a book of letters to my inner child
Even with so few (and unfleshed) ideas, deciding which one to do first is like asking me to fly solo to the moon. I don’t know why my brain can’t compute, but it can’t.
So instead of tying myself in knots asking myself question after question like ‘which will be the easiest?’, ‘if I make this one now, will it make sense for me to make that one next?’, ‘is there an order that makes most sense?’, I’m going on a feeling.
My feeling is that I want to create a zine.
I started creating a zine at the beginning of this year in the hope I would publish it by the end of the first quarter. I wrote it, planned the illustrations, and fell at the last hurdle of putting it all together.
I like to think that was practice, because now I would much prefer to use collage over illustration and I have a better idea of the story I want to tell.
So tomorrow I think I'll pick my zine idea back up, throw it around a little, and see how it goes.
Over and out.
P.s. Where I am right now - in fact, I don’t have enough signal to post this log so it’ll be sent out into the ether tomorrow Sunday 12th May when I’m closer to civilisation.
P.p.s. Creativity is around every corner - I don’t know if it’s sacrilege to cut up old music sheets, but I found these outside of someone’s house saying ‘take me’, so I did, and I I’m so excited to integrate them into my collages.
This reminded me of how I use to carry a little journal around to help me keep a list of all things running tasks in my brain. I’ve forgotten for awhile but maybe it’s time I pick it back up again.
I’m sitting here right now wondering what fun thing should I do first?
Work on a new hat for my daughter and her partner? Continue on my mitered blanket? Take some photos of my work? Continue gardening? Write a Substack? Write a letter?