I've been trying to control the impulse to start new journals until I "finish" the one's I'm supposedly using. Only, tonight I realized that I am actually using the old ones (for 29 faces, still a few spreads to fill) and my Fabriano journal (with experiments in impulses). I'm ignoring the couple of little project journals that are currently tucked away. They don't count in this discussion because their time will come. Blobs are murmuring amongst themselves. The project journal will have to wait until the weather gets rainy or colder. The family journal sputters along.
But I did want to fill up Fabriano before I moved on. It only seemed respectful. BUT... that is not to be.
Tonight, I had to. Move on, that is. I also had to eat some pie, but again, beside the point.
I have needs. (and yes, some are pie needs, but ignore that). Cut and paste and marker and ideas bumping around in my pinball of a head. Actually, I guess my head is the machine. The ideas are pinballs.
I've been in the yard spraying. This is only of those ideas. In between yard chores, I let loose with the spray. I'm spraying cereal and cracker and pasta boxes. Things with flaps and foldy bits. Big pieces, contorted pieces, you name it - it's got aerosol on it.
That's one idea getting slapped around.
Then I remembered I made a journal in an on-line class called 'Urban Notebook' with Dawn DeVries Sokol. I liked the journal, but it's been sitting on my -I like to make more journals than I use -shelf. It was officially outside my comfort zone.
I loved the big bold colors, I liked the use of trash materials (aside from the paint). But... the style, the style, the style. My voice is stilled. My eyes devour the color and my hands savor the feel. But my voice... I'm not sure what to say with this.
Now I know. I saw an article by Tracy Bunkers (aka Bonkers) in ART Journaling by Somerset Studio and a bell went off. Maybe because I have things I need to journal about illness that are not pretty portraits and gratitude and compassion. Although I want to do pretty portraits and be grateful and compassionate. But I need both those things, and the pinball in side my head hit all of that in a hailstorm of ideas (yes, mixed metaphor - tough).
Being on prednisone is kicking my butt. Not a lot of sleeping, not a lot of focus, on edge, restless in the middle of the night.
PERFECT JOURNAL TIME!!!!!! So I am letting go of my pretty version where I finish up each and every journal before I begin these new ones. That version is the one I'm trying to hold on to so I won't continue a lifelong pattern of launching into one after another soon to be unfinished project. But those time are not these times. SO ...
I am allowed to change. I am allowed to mature.
And I am allowed to cut and paste in the the middle of the night.
Yup. I am.
