a little break, a big list

I'll be taking a blog break until the weekend while I assimilate into my new path / career.

It's been an interesting detour (and detour and detour) to get here and I hope "here" is where I feel good and comfortable. I've been reading, quite a bit, about WWII and the "invention of stress" or "being broken by modern life"--how ads and journal reporting started naming a sense of American fatigue or dissatisfaction. An interesting sense of this comes from the idea of "future shock":

"Future shock [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in a short time."                                                               
      --Alvin Toffler, Future Shock, 1970

I might have experienced this--both Jesse and I might have experienced this--with marriage, a move, career changes, and our new rural experience.

Luckily, there's the better and more meaningful idea of transcendence:

"O my friends there are resources in us on which we have not drawn."
      --Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1838



Some things I'll be working on and hope to update you all about:

• a sketch a day: inspired by a print a day, I'm hoping to get back into the practice of making a sketch a day and remembering to document the day visually.
• trying to dress as amazingly--or at least closer to and better than i do now--as this lady over at atlantic-pacific. Bee is just a stunning woman who understands how to make basic pieces look different or unique with good accessories and clean lines. I have a total girl crush on here and I doubt I'm alone in thinking that.
• looking for an old chair to make some more storage room in the house--what a clever idea for turning a chair upside down. This reminds me of how I used to tell my students that creativity just means looking at something that's already there and making it into something that wasn't there before. Of course, I probably had a new definition the next day, but it's still a good self quotation...makes me sound a bit bright.
• collecting sticks to make my jewelry (the little bit I've got) into a display piece for the bedroom like this. Our bedroom, after spring cleaning, is in serious need of a headboard (still) and some light and loveliness.

spotted on MJ Porter Design

Someone beat me and Jesse to the plant book idea, but I still want to make them soon. Now that Jesse's back, he's got a list of house chores to do (I think this is called a "honey do list"--at least, that's what my sister says) and he's promised promised promised to help me build some things I've been dreaming up.