Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Weekly edition 2 - Focus

As you know if you've been following, I've been working on building the habit of habit-building, and of doing things for specific sustained periods, few at a time or singly. The first month of school has been a trial by fire, and I think I'm still surviving, though I can't say I've come through unscathed. However, I have not pressed the snooze button a single time this month so far. That habit at least I feel I can say I have developed to sustainability.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Update (or: Day-what?)

                                                       

It's become obvious to me (and maybe to you, if you've noted the paucity of posts in the past weeks) that the quotidian scheduling of this challenge is incompatible with my new school-year schedule.


At first I was sad, figuring I would eventually just sort of "time out" and abandon the challenge. However, in keeping with many new ways of thinking that seem to have stolen over me over the past two or so months, I realized that just because I wasn't keeping up with it as I'd originally hoped, didn't mean I had to abandon the project entirely or start over in order to maintain the illusion that everything I do is perfect if I do it at all. After all, I could see that I was actually getting something out of it. Turns out this "forming a habit of forming habits" thing is actually where I needed to start. (Talk about "starting from where you're at". Who knew applying teaching methodology to myself could effect measurable results?)

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Days 11 and 12

(forgot to post this one but I wrote it on Day 11)

Today I was trying to think what I was passionate about. In my adult life, I've found it hard to feel like I'm passionate about anything because I'm quite easily sapped of energy and so I don't often take on creative art projects or stick to erstwhile hobbies like playing piano. However, then I started thinking that there are definitely things I feel strongly about. I definitely have moments of flaring anger, or bursts of delight. Thinking about this, it occurred to me that one of the things that tends to drive me to passionate expression (usually in the form of rants or shared posts) is injustice.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 10 - 2 for the price of one

Yesterday was crunchy, and I didn't get to pre-poetry writing, so this morning, I've done two to make up for it. Still experimenting with the best times for stuff with school starting. I'm not quite in a routine yet, but I figure I can still keep up with my habit-building goodness.  

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 8 - Indulging

I'm not going to buy them, but looking at them makes me happy. Maybe more than owning them, in this particular case, given the inches on these things. 

On some old self-indulgent schizz. Purple satin MJ too-high heels... Boudoirs, corsets, courtesans, sex and class. Martinis and white wine, the outer beauty, pain for pleasure. Mary Jane, the consummate little girl, shoes engineered to give a shine and smoothness to the angular ash of the human foot -- fit for work and play. What kind of work, these, is another question. What kind of play. Sultry shady sensual sleek. Bustles and proffered arms. Tipped hats and fascinator bonnets and pin curls.

In other news, I've successfully made it through the first week of the micro-challenge. Hooray!

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 7 -- rhapsodizing

It feels like the honeymoon period is over. Today's post was hard to want to do, partly because now that school's just about to start, this is no longer merely a "why not?" activity that fills empty space during the day. But, as a testament to how I'm doing with this habit-forming method, and how far something being habitual goes toward its getting done on a regular basis, I did still do it. Hopefully soon I'll adjust just as well to writing it at night -- either that, or go back to writing it in the morning, once I'm waking up early enough.

The writing wasn't so hard once I actually found a picture. But yes, finding a picture is getting harder than I originally projected. I suspected initially that it might, given my somewhat perfectionist nature and the urge to do things right if I'm to do them at all. I want to write something worthwhile. I want to exude creativity, not just work towards building it. I've knowingly, yet unintentionally upped the ante on this challenge, but I'm going to try to maintain its integrity and insist to myself that even on days when I don't feel I can find a "suitable" image and write "inspired" text, I still do, in fact, find an image and write some text.

Europe -- history's desktop and nature's wheel and humanity's sketchpad, a collective studio of the gods, a street cafe where they gather to smoke, drink, nourish themselves and write, throw, design, create works of art, beauty, truth, light. The evocative beauty, studied yet genuine in its ageless antiquity. Lush and verdant, stately and grandiose, detailed, delicate, tiny, hardy, crumbling. It is the be, mingling with the been, the think mixed with the thought. This is where ages meet.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 6 -- Tiny altars

Some day, I would love to be able to make something like this. 

Encaustic, book altering and personal shrines. Three of my favourite art forms coming together. I love the nature of these perfect miniature monuments to the self and spirit, tiny meditation altars to focus the love you hold for yourself or another. The form lends mystery, imparted partly by the hidden content behind the cover -- a little box of smouldering potential -- partly by the littleness and intensely personal nature. And the mottled wax, at once ethereal, ephemeral, archival.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 5 -- rainbows

Seriously, I have a thing with them. With bright blended colours. With... well, today's writing inspired me to create this new pin board. It hopefully speaks for itself. But in case it doesn't, here's the actual pre-poem:

What is it with me and rainbows? I have this fascination with them in various forms. I just love the progression of bright colours from one into to the next, blended but strong. Red to orange, orange to yellow, yellow to green, green to blue, blue to purple to red. And then there's the non-analogous blends. Red to blue, with but a small, illusory blur of purple in between. Rainbow hair, rainbows on the wall, rainbow on my plate, rainbow in my pocket, rainbow on the page.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 4 -- steampunk

Getting more structured with each post. I like it and I don't. Part of me wants to stay elemental with just word association, but part of me wants sentences, poetry over prose, etc. Interesting to see these predilections coming out of their own accord. It's amazing what we can learn when we stick to the plan.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge Day 3 -- Ideal experimentation

Which one is the right one? Only one way to find out.

experimentation at its best, I long to use my kitchen as a test kitchen, but the space, the increase in the amount of food we'd have to buy, the increase in the amount of food we'd EAT! 4 cakes, which is best? so objective, I'm left wondering. what makes things good is so defined by personal taste. I don't know how to describe what I like in a cake. I'll have to taste them all. Bake them all. So tempting. Record-keeping is my nemesis. How to do it, when, in what form, where, for what purpose?

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 2 -- figure vs ground

Today's imagery seems to focus on perspective. Seeing a large thumbnail of this image, I couldn't tell if it was a gnarly tree or a river delta seen from a height, a photo or painting or mixed media, nature or vision made real, organic or inorganic. I did know that I found it beautiful.

Tree or delta? end of the world, or source of life? fall and summer colours, beaten gold and copper, algae and deep, still river water, like metal leaf on canvas or wood, this should be a piece over the mantel, or a miniature on a pendant, a little shrine to nature, what's behind the tree, I wonder? The sun, and a clearing, or perhaps a picnic or a cottage, figure or ground, receding or advancing, these are the questions the eye asks. Sun-dappled shadows, playful, sinister. Molten minerals.

Pre-poetry micro-challenge: Day 1 of 21

Baby steps, right? So I like words, I like poetry, I like pretty stuff, I like art, and I know that somewhere deep down, I like creating. But I find it hard to get started, and hard to feel "into it" once I do. When everything's like pulling teeth, it's hard to find making stuff enjoyable. Today I decided to try an experiment in step-by-step goal-setting. A finite, habit- and mindset-building micro-goal if you will.

Each day for the next 21 days, I will do something that I already know I can do and that is uncomplicated enough that I can already do it and feel successful at it: I will find an image, and write out the words and ideas I think of as I look at it.

How do you wash dishes sustainably -- and compactly?

Our kitchen counter (fridge on the right, stove on the left)

Suggestion time! What would you do? Or even better, what do you do?

For as long as I can remember, my home has had a medium-sized, single-bowl sink, and no (usable) dishwasher. In our current apartment, we also have very limited counter space.

Now, I've always washed dishes by running hot water while I individually scraped, soaped and rinsed each item. I generally balk at the filling the sink method because of the ickiness of the water after a while. But I know my method uses a ridiculous amount of water. There's got to be a more reasonable way.

PCIMOS: Week 2, Day 5 & 6 journal

I've had a significant work-related triumph this weekend. Finally solved a problem that's been bothering me about my math program!

Week 2: Project CIMOS and The Reason

Well, I haven't been able to really write anything down since figuring out the plan for recording thoughts! However, there are a few things I've noted down, to put up when I got the chance.

First, where my motivation to teach is concerned -- through talking it out with several helpful people, I realize that maybe my motivation has felt low because I've been contradicting it with another, more external. I mean, who wouldn't want to be friends and have fun with the kids they work with? But you have to get the academic and official stuff done too, and sometimes it seems like too much fun might "get in the way" of that. I think I was working on the assumption that until I had fulfilled all the curriculum/reporting requirements, I had to shelve the idea of doing the fun, simple things. With a serendipitous change in perspective brought to me by the very kids themselves (my true motivators, of course!), I realize that this doesn't have to be the case.

In search of a reason: Something to work for this month

My first GIMP creation: Teaching Time
I need to find something motivating to work for this January.

 

 
I find myself really unmotivated to go back to school Monday. I know, we all do, twas the season and all that. But this past term was actually the most painstaking, stressful four months of my life so far, and although I keep trying to tell myself it'll get easier, my body and soul don't believe it yet.

Project CIMOS: Week 1, Day 3 journal

Today's exercise proved much more fruitful than yesterday's. Goes to show, things are easier to pinpoint when you write them down.

Project CIMOS: Week 1, Day 2 journal

Jan 4, 2012

Ack. Writing the date feels a little like a betrayal of myself. Where is the time going!? Anyway. Today felt like a good start on the path to cultivating a habit of non-judgment.

Project CIMOS: Week 1 -- Cultivating non-judgemental thinking

Project: Comfortable in my own skin