Long time no post, I know. I’ve still been struggling with the seasonal depression, though with May approaching I am (knock on wood) over the worst of it. And in the past couple of weeks what’s kept me super busy has been finally opening the long-awaited – to me, anyhow – Eccentricity Supply Company! I’ve been brewing this up for months; nearly a year, in fact. I distinctly recall pondering it while on vacation in NH for my birthday – way back in July. That was when I cam up with the name, and registered domains for it. I’m still not using them, though I hope to soon. For now, ESC exists only in Etsy format, but it’s doing pretty well for a baby biz. More of a hobby, for now. But someday…

Sure enough, I seem to be finding a path. It’s been keeping me so busy I haven’t been blogging regularly. It’s interesting how I seem to go through cycles with that – and it seems like I’ve seen the same with other bloggers as well. I would like to return to blogging more often though, as I find it centering.

For now, I will keep it short and sweet with a little What I’ve Been Up To report. I’m slowly sussing out how to structure a life that feeds me well, and right now a lot of my focus is on a site called Squidoo. To explain what that is, let me just quote from their site. “Squidoo is a hand-built collection of nearly 900,000 pages built by people just like you. Squidoo is about giving you a free, easy place to set up a page online. About anything you’re interested in. Squidoo is about finding people when you care what they know instead of who they know.” This means it’s a great platform for me to teach, to write, and to learn. And the way the community is designed, I’m not limited to one niche only. While I want to write a bunch of articles on paper punches, like “How to Save Money on Craft Punches” if I’m suddenly struck with the inspiration to write a Zombie Gift Guide I can do that too. The cool part is, Squidoo splits their ad revenues between their authors and charity, taking just enough to keep Squidoo running smoothly. So this could generate a bit of revenue for me as well. Woot!

I’ve also finally bought a laptop, which will enable me to do computer stuff when I’m on the go – and is also a good deal more powerful than my old machine. I hadn’t quite realized how out of date my PC had become. I also bought the latest version of PhotoShop Elements, which I’m working on figuring out (I’m used to PaintShop 8!) so that I can get back to making digital collage sheets. I hope to finally launch my art supplies shop on Etsy in the next few weeks – I’ve been working on ideas for this for nearly a year now. With the laptop, I’ll be able to mail out the collage sheets even if I’m out of the house for a day or two (and I often am.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention – my sweetie has started working from home full time, which has shifted a lot of things subtly in happier directions. The most noticible change is that we moved the living room furniture around so that it’s an office on one half and a living room on the other; and now my desk is right by a window, which really seems to help with my SAD. I’ve also upped the amount of vitamin D I’m taking to 6,000 IU. I had a very rocky few weeks through January and early February, but things are evening out a lot. Things are really syncing up, at last! I’m even getting a bit better at writing effective To Do Lists and remembering (relearning, really) how to play and relax.

I tend to get caught in mental loops, chasing myself around in circles. Often I find the solution is to get these thoughts out of my head and “onto paper” – I say this in quotes because I almost always turn to Microsoft Word to work through times like this. At the moment, I’m working on a document to address my problems with flow. Here’s what I have to say to myself…

I’m having a lot of trouble with feeling blocked by problems that seem like they don’t relate to the Life Planning I’m trying to do. While the big picture stuff is important, the smaller details are what will make that possible. Flow isn’t just about being in a nirvana-like state of massive productivity. It’s a spectrum, like everything else in life. Right now, my flow is pretty much Jell-O. It wiggles, it jiggles, but it doesn’t really go anywhere. So I need to start with baby steps. Getting to molasses-like flow will be an improvement.

The two main issues that are blocking my flow are my body health and my environment. Because they are both of high concern to me and reminders are constant, I’m finding my focus constantly pulled away from Big Picture thinking. Allowing structured time each day to make progress on both these areas will allow me to put aside those worries.

In the midst of working through how to address those two issues, I decided to make a quick blog post because I’m really liking the excuse-busting approach I’m taking so far. I started by listing the main things I want to work on, and WHY. The why is really important, otherwise it’s easy to mentally downgrade their importance. Next, I listed all the excuses I make to myself, followed by a response to counter excuse. I know the logical answer to all of these, but sometimes it’s hard to remember. I’m thinking of making some flashcards for myself to keep on hand when I’m feeling excuse-y. In the meantime, I’m going to print out the Word document and use it in my visual journal.

Yeehaw! I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but I’ve been so busy creating that I’ve hardly had time to post in the past week or so. Right now I’m waiting for my paint to dry on the first of several journal pages I’m working on for the “Heart and Meaning” pathway of my Creative Entrepreneur Mandala. It took a few days to work up the courage to cut up the writing from the journaling prompts for this exercise so I could use them in my visual journal pages. I’m so glad I did though, as the process allowed be to literally cut away the irrelevant bits and the occasional negative self-talk that snuck in. It also allowed me to take all the bits and pieces and move them around and more easily find patterns and uncover more ideas about what’s most important to me. The whole Visual Journal thing is really starting to click for me. The way it engages your brain on multiple levels is really pretty fascinating.

After my last post, I did indeed explore Lisa Sonora Beam’s website, CreativeEntrepreneur.biz. I signed up for a free teleseminar, which I participated in today. Participants were offered a discount on upcoming online workshops, and I jumped at the chance. I’m looking forward to having access to the private forums and getting feedback on the pages I’m working on. Even without the workshop though, I really so glad I bought this book and so glad that I pushed myself to actually do the exercises.

After posting about the book The Creative Entrepreneur last Thursday, I sat down and started working with some of the prompts and exercises. I wanted to make a quick update post, as a follow up to my initial impressions.

First of all, let me just say that in the very first paragraph of the book it’s explained exactly why I was rather frustrated with this book. It’s not for me. It’s for people similar to me, yes, but it isn’t intended for people in exactly the place I am, and the author says so upfront when describing the sort of person she hopes to help. “…for the creative soul who is blessed with passion and purpose yet cursed by the seemingly mysterious realm of strategies and skills that are needed to make an idea real.” No wonder I felt like she skipped over helping the reader find purpose, it’s assumed that the reader is starting from some level of passion and or purpose to begin with!

That said, once I actually sat down with a notebook and the myriad fine point Sharpies I got for Christmas and started working with the prompts, I actually DID start to find some of the answers I’ve been seeking. I now have an impressive stack of papers covered in colorful scrawls and – even more encouraging – doodles. In fact, I’ve spent several hours now just working with the first project, The Creative Entrepreneur Mandala. While it hasn’t magically changed my life overnight or anything, the deceptively challenging questions like “What do you value?” have helped me gain a surprisingly level of focus and vision. Who knew I had such a strong desire to teach? Or to create beautiful arrangements and displays? And what’s really impressing me is that I’m slowly starting to find way to put those pieces together to form something of a roadmap, a plan for integrating all the things that are important into a meaningful, fulfilling life. (Not just career or job, but a LIFE.)

So there you have it, a lukewarm review and now a glowing one. Take your pick. I have a hard time believing any one book will completely solve all of life’s problems, but just at this moment I’m willing to put this one in the “Seriously Good Mental Power-Tools” pile.

Here is a snippet of something I made last night. I guess you could call it a visual journal page. I’m still a bit tentative to call it that, as I’m still sort of in research mode, trying to get some kind of definition for what it is, if only in my own head. I suspect the term “visual journaling” is one of those terms that can encompass a lot of things and means different things to different people.

I got my copy of the book The Creative Entrepreneur: A DIY Visual Guidebook for Making Business Ideas Real in the mail the other day, and promptly devoured it. I intend to reread it, going through it more slowly to try out some of the exercises and prompts. Initially, my main goal was just to further my understanding of self-help through art and journaling. It definitely helped with that, but what I was surprised to find was some left-brained power tools, geared toward the right brained thinker. Great advice on setting achievable goals and creating strategies for how to achieve them; and this advice applies to anything, not just business. The author advocates using the methods for non-business goals specifically so that you can flex your left brained muscles. I liked the book so well that my next step is to explore her website, Creative Entrepreneur.

My impulse to visit her website is motivated in part by the fact that as much as I enjoyed the book and found it helpful, I found the lack of depth in some areas a bit frustrating. While the are journaling prompts along the lines of “I’ve always wanted to…” and “My creative dream is:” are designed to help you get focused about starting a creative business, for me it’s kind of putting the cart before the horse. My problems are not finding the chutzpah to make my dreams real, or narrowing my focus from broad to manageable. I’m having trouble finding the chutzpah to dream in the first place, or narrowing my focus from staggering and spastic to something that simply doesn’t make me feel like I’m in danger of spontaneous combustion.

I suppose that’s what journaling – and similarly, blogging – is all about. Working through one’s inner Stuff. I’m jealous and angsty because I wish I could be a bit more focused and confident. I feel like a freak because I don’t know ANYTHING about what I want from life except that the entrepreneurial drive is strong with me. But really? That’s probably very common. So I’ve got some added weirdness from being more left-brained than most artists, and the depression and Asperger’s issues sure don’t help. And that sucks. Now I’ve vented, and complained, and possibly not made much sense outside my own head (my apologies if that’s the case.) Well, perhaps that’s just the pressure valve I need, and I can go into the studio and try again to use some of my new goal-setting tools to work some of this out.

Slowly but surely, I’m remembering play. I’m coaching myself to take a deep breath and just dive in. Today I “dove into” alcohol inks. I’ve rarely used alcohol inks before, just the couple of times been when friends from the NEATC group let me borrow theirs. My aunt gave me two sets of Ranger alcohol inks for Christmas, in Nature Walk and Farmer’s Market. To complete my “starter set” I ordered an applicator from eBay, and bought a bottle of 91% isopropyl alcohol from the grocery store (rather than using Ranger’s pricey mixative).

I had lots of fun just experimenting with different amounts of ink and rubbing alcohol, and on different surfaces. I found that glossy photo paper is a great place to start when learning to work with alcohol inks, as it’s a nice slick surface that’s fairly cheap and can be cut into backgrounds or elements as you please. I tried my hand at inking brass charms, but I’m not sure how pleased I am with the result so far. The nice thing about alcohol inks is that you can often come back and rework a piece with more inks or mixative. But the real triumph of today’s playtime was definitely the wooden star pictured here. Originally a plain silver star from a value pack of gold and silver stars and moons, I added dots of ink (Eggplant, Wild Plum, and Stream) directly to the glossy painted surface and “smooshed” them around with the applicator. Having really enjoyed the look of the rub-on letters used often in the pages of Visual Chronicles, I decided to dig out the sheet that worked it’s way into my collection at some point. I didn’t have a fancy stylus, so I just used a mechanical pencil with the lead pushed all the way in. I’m not sure yet what to do with this delightful little treasure, but it makes me smile every time I look at it. I’m on my way.

(And yes, “smoosh” is the technical term! Ok, Ranger says to “randomly stamp and twist” but I find “smoosh” to be far more succinct.)

I am slowly planting little seeds of healing within myself. With a little help from Sark’s “Change Your Life Weithout Getting Out of Bed” nap guidebook, I am practicing the fine art of therapeutic napping. As a lifelong insomniac, this is hard work but very important. Healing my relationship with sleep is vital to healing myself. By the same token, I’m reading bits and pieces of everything I can get my hands on to learn how to heal my relationship with art.

I’ve taken two or three micronaps in the past few days, and I think I’m getting better at them. Yesterday I finally did a few little art bits, just embellishing projects I’d started or noodling around with pre-painted ATC backgrounds. I could feel even these baby steps working to nourish me though. When the paint bled through a piece and onto the table I scooped up the puddles of color with a scrap of an envelope, and wrote a little note for myself.

Though I’m still dipping my toes into the blogosphere (netspeak for the world of blogging) rather tentatively, I am definitely seeing quite a few lovely New Year’s posts in the blogs I follow.

Jennifer Perkins linked to the Indie Fixx article “New Years Eve on a Budget” where she contributed tips on how to make a rockin’ pipe cleaner tiara.

I was touched Lani Kent’s beautiful New Year’s wishes; “May this be a year you deeply discover and express your undeniable and unique dreams, gifts and visions!” (click the link to read the full text.) I may have to print this out and put the up on my magnetic whiteboard as a reminder.

At GoMakeSomething.com Lisa Vollrath prompted her readers “Go Make a Creative Resolution!” My resolution was short and sweet; to heal myself through my art. Go check out the 70+ other responses, they are quite an inspiration!

Along with healing, I hope to make progress on, as the title of this blog says, finding my path. Starting – and succeeding in! – some sort of new creative entrepreneurial adventure is not something I feel comfortable “resolving” to do this year, but it’s definitely something I’m putting positive energy toward this year. What are your creative goals, hopes, dreams, and wishes for 2009?

Today’s image is from my art retreat earlier this year. I wanted to start the new year with an image of my hands at their happiest; covered in paint and tingling from the joy of unbridled creating. I want my hands to look like this a lot more in 2009!

Sometimes the universe gives you all the tools you need, you just have to slow down long enough to realize they’re there. I was browsing Amazon last night, looking through the latest batch of books recommended for me based on wishlisted items and past purchases. I was particularly looking for books related to healing through creating art, and I surfed from one of the recommended books to a similar book, Visual Chronicles. I was looking at some of the preview pages, thinking it looked like just the thing, and was about to splurge on it when… I realized I already had. Several months ago I went on a mini shopping spree when I noticed half a dozen or so mixed media books offered for various very low prices through Amazon Marketplace. Visual Chronicles was among them; and after laughing at myself and scanning my studio bookshelf for it, I noticed there also were two or three other books I’d bought that might help me on my journey towards self-art-therapy.

I curled up with my “new” book and started reading. I couldn’t have been more than a few pages in when the words I was reading reminded me… I’ve already got and altered book in the works. And the word in big, bold, gesso-stenciled letters on the first and so-far-only spread? PLAY!

Um, self? Take a hint…