Today I actually succeeded at not setting my alarm and waking up at a relatively decent hour (9:30 to be exact). I think it's very important for the success of this summer if I limit my ridiculous night owl tendencies so that I don't go completely nocturnal like last summer. Last year it wasn't uncommon for me to go to bed at 4 a.m. and wake up at 11am or noon the next day. A pattern like that would be fine if I was actually being productive, but par for the course, I was just wasting most of that time online.
Which brings me to one of my goals: Limit my time watching TV (the rule will be that I can only watch things that are brand-new to me...no mindless reruns of things I've seen before) and aside from the time that I plan to spend on this blog, I want to only use the computer for learning graphic design and maybe brush up on some web design with a very small amount of time (maybe 10 minutes 4 times a day) devoted to checking email/social networking sites/general time wasters.
For the most part my day was pretty low-key. I woke up, futzed around online, the usual. It was as I was responding to the latest email from the lady I was getting my Wacom Graphire tablet from that I remembered an idea I'd come up with the previous night while watching Work of Art. The first thing I felt when watching the show was jealousy - clearly the level of skill on the show was varied and clearly certain people were chosen by producers to be entertaining, but they did manage to throw together a fairly representative group of artists, such as one you might find in a higher college level art course. The jealousy came because these were people who got to work closely with other artists, all day, every day for what would probably amount to a month. They were given every material in the world at their fingertips and pretty much a blank check when it came to how much of each material they could use. They were given the opportunity to hobnob with several famous artists but the best part of all is that they were automatically motivated by being forced to produce something every day.
Now forcing yourself to work on something in the creative arts on a daily basis isn't exactly a new idea. I've had friends set up journals where they forced themselves to write a short story every day or forced themselves to try something new every day or even create a new piece of art every day. But it was a concept that was new to me. The problem is that as much as I love art, I'm too much of a spazz to say "I'm going to create a new piece of art every day." Because the truth is, as I've gotten older, and as much as I love art, I've kind of found myself connecting to new creative outlets that don't always include the fine arts. So I've decided that part of how I'm going to motivate myself and hold myself accountable is that every single day I want to force myself to do something creative or something that aides creativity. Just a simple contribution, whether I'm working on a new song on my harp or writing a grant for the theatre company I'm involved with or, yes, painting a picture or rendering a drawing. I'm not going to make a huge list because lists overwhelm me and when I'm overwhelmed I become static. Creating something every day is a lofty goal, but by keeping it intentionally loose, I don't think it's insurmountable.
This is the plan that I hashed out while riding the trolley over to the part of town I used to live in. This is the section of the suburbs that my boyfriend grew up in and where we used to live before moving to a more artsy and somewhat younger suburb of the city. I was making the 45 minute trip to my old town to meet a woman off of craigslist who, when I tried to google her, all I could come up with was some really famous soap opera star that I'd never heard of. I was so confused by this that I was worried at first that this would some sketchy craigslist killer wannabe using the name as an alias but I later found out that she used this name to avoid sketchy people on craigslist (I guess the kind of people who would google her name, ahem).
I had my big psuedo-celebrity sunglasses on and was texting a friend when she came up to me in front of her apartment building. The level of relief on her face when she said my name and I said hello was surprising. For someone who was guarded enough to use a fake name on craigslist, she was definitely pretty open after she determined from my outfit that I was middle class (yes, she did the look up, look down). She was comfortable enough to immediately invite me upstairs to pick up the tablet, rather than making me wait downstairs for her to get it (and I got an explanation on how she'd never let a man inside her apartment alone). We chatted on the way up and the more I talked, the more at ease she became, in a way that actually made me more uncomfortable (was it that I was white? That I used to live in the nice suburb? That I was clearly educated?) Maybe I was overthinking it, but she was definitely worried about offending me while we talked "business" and even took the $125 cash I gave her without insulting me by counting it. When I felt awkward and reverted to my general rule of "When nervous making small talk, compliment the other person's taste level in some way" I commented on how beautiful the decor of her condo was (this place, in this town, probably would have been $700K or more on the market with another 100K in home furnishings). The only downside of that was that I ended up getting a tour which extended my stay. Since I felt like an invitation to tea or tennis doubles was dangerously near, I suddenly noticed the time and had to head out. She wished me a good day and then told me that if there was a single thing wrong with the tablet, to bring it back and she'd refund me. That was definitely cool of her, since you don't get that often on craigslist. In the end, she a lady with good intentions even if the interaction was slightly strange.
Realizing once again that I had forgotten to eat, I quickly grabbed a chocolate croissant and a bland mocha latte at a local coffee shop. After spending $8.50 to sit in the modern but sterile decore with a bunch of immaculately dressed 30-somethings, I searched for a bathroom and realized that this cafe had none. Really? No bathroom? In a coffee shop? The only way there could have been a bathroom is if it was behind the counter and through the kitchen, straight into the den of pursed lipped baristas, one of whom had stared me down when I spent 3 minutes trying to choose my first meal of the day. No thanks, silly coffee shop.
After giving up the bathroom search, I headed to the good local coffee shop and without doing actual business, I did my business. After adventuring into the suburbs, all I could think about was coming home and actually starting this blog. All of the entries, aside from this one, were posted on June 30th which was technically yesterday at this point. It took me the better part of the day to get started breaking only to welcome home my lovely boyfriend and make a pasta dinner for us. I've only covered 2 days so far, so here's hoping that the rest of my summer is as invigorating as the first two and a half days. 59 Days left, 1440 and 15 minutes to go.
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