Queen of the Gravity Urge

Your friendly neighborhood inconsistently-motivated crafter here. Just a reminder that Small Business Saturday is coming right around the corner.

Relying in big business interests alone isn't going to help fix whatever you think is wrong with this country that made it "not great". They are only in it to make the rich richer off the backs, hopes, fears, insecurities and materialism of the rest of us. If the country really wants to be like the "good old days" (without the rampant racism and sexism, although I am not sure about that, a lot of people seem to be pretty smugly a-ok with that) there's a way to do it. And that way is to behave responsibly and be community-minded again. 

So much like during wartime, I encourage you to take a two-pronged approach this holiday season. Practice austerity for yourself for the rest of the year, and practice community in your holiday gift-giving. Shop more at local small businesses, re-foster that sense of community. Get to know the people you share your neighborhood with. Buy smaller, more meaningful gifts that enable others in your immediate viscinity to also buy small more meaningful gifts. Buy one beautifully handmade scarf instead of 2 cheap department store scarves. Take people out to dinner at local mom and pop places. Give gifts of small container gardens, handmade soaps, cookies. 

It would be a good year to teach your children that less is more. Sure get them that big ticket video game if you feel like they have to, but have a conversation with them about how it's important to be a member of a community. Maybe talk to them about enrolling them in a local class that suits their interests. Participate in a program where you purchase things for a local anonymous family in need. I know that my mom, even when we had very little money, would still purchase a few toys for those types of programs (probably because we had to participate in one when I was in first grade).

A lot of kids will listen if you foster this in them young enough. And fostering empathy and community in kids when they are young enough is how we can keep this from happening to the future. Make this the year you start to teach them if you haven’t already.

Sometimes it is really hard to function as an artist.  

Sometimes your brain swirls with new ideas and devalues old ones you have put a lot of time into working out the details of to the point of paralysis. Sometimes even faster than you can write down even the most basic parts of that complex bursts of thought.  Sometimes your hands don’t want to form the images you’re seeing directly in your brain, and will only function adequately in your opinion when given absolutely no pre-planned direction from your brain.  Sometimes the human-created concept of a clock, and weeks and months, and the importance of getting work done in those relatively arbitrary timelines looms large and oppressive. Sometimes you’re even afraid that because your brain responds like that that there might be something actually wrong with you.

I just want @postcardsfromspace / @xplainthexmen to see that we non-superhumans did have what was as practically close as possible within our laws and experience to Murderworld.

So, it was yet another spring where I got practically nothing accomplished due to depression (although I did make a rather lot of clothing), but I am finally back and trying to post regularly for all of the two people who look at this. 

But a chronicle of how I went from doing nothing to making something almost every week is just as important than followers, right?

In this edition of Gravity Stash, I submit as Exhibit A the arcade tokens that I have had laying around literally for the exact purpose of creating cufflinks for an absurd jacket I have had for 10 years and only just now fits again.  I’ve had the tokens since maybe 2009?  2010?  At least 6 years.

Sunday night I started The Artist's Way after being reminded about it during the Winter Writing & Reflective Yoga class with Charity.

I was first introduced to this book in about 1999/2000 by someone I wasn't exactly too fond of in the first place, who oversold it. I read a few pages and, being me at 22 or so, dismissed it out of hand for mentioning the spiritual aspects. Not to mention that it definitely, at least in the intro, has a tone issue where the author is pretty smugly proud of herself. Now, being 37 I realize that pretty much ALL self-help books have a similar tone that attempts to project confidence, but comes off as arrogance to me. This was one of the first self help books I tried to read (the very first being Dianetics, which was out of curiosity, knowing it was a train wreck of hubris).

In these days of social media I definitely have more patience for self-aggrandizing bullshit, so I decided to start it. Even if I find parts of the tone off-putting (once it gets into the weekly coursework it seems to be better) I am going to try to stick with it. It's only 12 weeks, and even if my outlook and the author's outlook differ, I am sure there is much in there that will help me.