Shifting Gears

Hey people. I finished the last batch of tree sculptures yesterday (Thank God) and am delivering them today (Mon) to a gallery up north. So ends my "holiday push" for this year. I have a couple gifts to make, one personal, and one for a special client, a surprise gift, maybe-- if it turns out.

Prepare yourself, this post is going to be as rambling and jumbled as my brain is right now. Speaking of-- Oh- hey- here's the salad I made for Thanksgiving-- (you can click for a more delicious view)

It came about because my 95 year old grandma can't eat any greens. It's shredded carrots, sweet peas (raw), toasted almonds, pomegranate seeds, and raisins coated in cinnamon, ground cloves, ground ginger, nutmeg and sea salt. Dan says it's so awesome it should be on some cooking show.

I'm pretty happy to have stumbled on something healthy that I like because I'm going to be battling weight gain again for a while. The weather is making getting in regular rides at the trail impossible, and from here on out, if it's actually rideable, it will be frozen, & possibly covered with snow and ice, meaning IF I work up the guts to go at all, it will be at a snail's pace. Not exactly fat burning. To top it off, My leg is still messed up from my last spill, so I can only manage a plodding trudge that could be charitably described as a slow jog.

I need to really get on the eating sitch if I'm not going to be able to burn as much fuel off. Turns out-- if you slow down your activities, and eat primarily cold cereal, candy, and reduced-fat Chips Ahoy cookies, your AssFatAirBags deploy. Boo. Luckily, I now have that awesome salad in my arsenal. Yum.

Very excited about going down to visit Sis and the brood later this week. Isn't she adorable? I can't wait to hang-out, dork-out, laugh my butt off, and just kind of "be" in her space for a while. I really need to slow things down right now, take a beat.

I also can't wait to see my rockin' niece and nephew. Megan is eight now, I'm pretty sure-- anyway, every time I see her she's more grown up. We've always had this "thing", a big connection.

Everyone, even her mom, jokes about how she's like the kid Katie had for me-- my kid out of her body. Fine with me. Thanks sis-- way to take one for the team.

Me and the boy need to get to know each other better this trip. We share a music thing, and like each other, but we're different species so it's harder. Now that he's 5 1/2 I'm hoping the whole annoying toddler temper tantrum stage will be over and I'll be able to meet the human he's on his way to becoming.

I'm thinking about so much creative stuff right now. This is the time of year I plan, and try to rest, but when you do what I do it never really shuts off so it's more a matter of controlling the flow rate. I've been working really hard in the shop for a long time, and need a break from that, but I can't just not think about it at all or it will be March and I'll be behind already.

I have to decide how I want to approach the coming year, what kind of work I want to put out, what shows do I want to line up, what to tell people who want commissions-- when I'll work on those, who I want to partner with for selling-- galleries etc, will I do any public art? Big projects? That's all just simmering.

Writing-wise I'm eager to get back to writing, but this year need to approach that differently than I have in the past. I've learned SO much in the last few years writing novels. The main thing that resonates this week is that I can write-- I apparently have unfettered access to a whole cast of characters I can flesh-out quite handily, and can get into a groove of a voice and carry it along through a whole project. I'm basically a good writer who gets better the more I do it (like all artists), but I really need to get a handle on structure.

I've always begun with a basic idea and kind of rolled with it, usually making outlines as I go that morph as characters kind of go feral. I can really easily get into a flow of some tangent that appears and write tens of thousands of words that seem really good, but since I'm not really following a plotline, it gets pretty sloppy.

Kind of like this post.

Bla bla bla. Anyway, I'm letting the creative hose just kind of run into the stock tank right now and trying to figure out how to make the work I do this year be more "on purpose."

Also I have tons of ideas for a new non-fiction project unlike anything I've done before. I think I'll do it as a new, separate blog first to kind of test it out. Right now the working title is- "The Road To Ruin- Or- How To Be An Artist For Reals, Attitude, MFA, & Brooding Good Looks Optional." It will be really smart alecky, but also give tons of practical real world advice.

What do you guys think? About any of this?