spent all of MLK Jr day at home organizing my crafts and generally being lazy. Not in the spirit of the holiday, I know, but sometimes it happens that way.
i’ve been thinking a lot lately about bringing more meaning to life, or how to, anyway. some of those thoughts are cyclical and come and go with the season (new year’s day) and some of that itch for meaning is all fate and chance (spurred by the tragedy in haiti). i’ve long since dropped ‘doing’ the stereotypical resolutions for new years, but i do try and figure out if the year (or next few months) will have a particular focus. my only one this year is to spend more real quality time with the people i love. the other day, gps and i were talking about our own to-do lists, and he had the brilliantly simply thought to actually start doing things on the list. regarding our mutual yearning to make more art, his words were ‘even if it turns out shitty, just make stuff.’ sounds like a joke, but we’d both been not doing the things on our to-do lists for months now! little, specific things like ‘draw more’ or bigger ambiguous things like ‘declutter my life’ had been on the radar for ages, but i never seemed to have the time or motivation to actually do any of them.
in our home we have something called ‘greg’s book of rules’. it’s another little lovely truer-than-it seems joke of ours. basically the book of rules is all glaringly obvious advice on how to fix problems: ‘i have a headache’ ‘take some aspirin’ – which is to say, if it’s bad enough to complain about, stop complaining and do something about it. ‘i miss so-and-so’ ‘well, then, call so-and-so and say hi’ – aka, get back in touch now, while you’re thinking about so-and-so. the truth in the joke is that the solution usually involves owning up to the problem first, then acting to fix it. so in terms of our moldering to do lists, and maybe even my wanting to make life more meaningful, the entry in the book of rules would likely be ‘i don’t know where to start ’ ‘start anywhere, as long as you actually start’.
so today, i started. a small, but successful start since part of my life, yarn crafts specifically, is now less cluttered! next step, calling a few friends to say hi, making donations to a friends haitian charity, and maybe just maybe a little bit of drawing.
