I Get Behind

Magazines I'd stacked on a printer to sort through later

Now that I've proven to myself that I can indeed set small daily goals in order to meet a deadline, I've taken a few days off before having to dive back into steady work towards completing the next quilt. I'm using part of this time to straighten up the studio from this last push, putting away tools, swooping trimmings into the trash, that sort of thing. But in the process, it is clear I've fallen behind on my documentation files big time (so a printing session is soon in order). But before I tackle that, I've started to tackle one of the peripheral piles I left in place when I did my bigger studio cleanup at the beginning of the year. I'm terrible about this stacking of things that basically just need filing, but it's too easy to convince myself to deal with it later.

Still a lot to sort and file once magazines removed

The pile in question is on top of my pigment ink printer, which I haven't used for a long time. I need to clear some clogged jets to get it functioning again, but without an urgent need to print with it, I've put off that project. On a whim, yesterday found me taking a closer look at what I'd piled on top of it, and it is mostly magazines I wanted to pull individual pages or articles from and whole magazines to keep but in need of flags marking the articles of interest. The rest is loose pages already pulled from magazines, mostly quilting designs for reference and quilts that caught my eye that will be pasted in an inspiration scrapbook. Honestly, it would have taken minutes to tend to each of these as they arose. Now I face a good chunk of time to get it under control.

AQS Award winning quilts worth keeping to ahhh over

On the other hand, it has been a pleasure to go through the magazines (to my surprise, the Quilting Arts ones go back to 2015), viewing the quilts anew and affirming why I'd set these things aside. In some cases, it reminds me of tracks I'd taken off on and abandoned even though not done with the exploration, things I think I could happily revisit at this point. In other cases, I can see that I've grown beyond needing the information that once would have been helpful.

Culling, sorting, filing . . . it's a process we do all our lives I guess. But it's easier to face when we don't let it unduly stack up, when we don't let ourselves get behind.

One More Chance

"Float" 13" x 21" - Sheila Mahanke Barnes ©2018

"Sometimes what you're looking for is right in front of you." Michael Bungay Stanier, Great Work Provocation/Box of Crayons

"Float" is done, the last stitch on the sleeve put in last night. Did I say I was going to face rather than bind it? I did think so since I had no more of the border fabric nor anything remotely like it to use as binding. Facing seemed the only choice. Another bit of chance changed my mind.

Click on photo to see quilting detail

I was looking for a suitable backing as well as that facing fabric which might or might not be the same as the backing. In picking up a short stack of fabrics that I'd not wanted to fold in half to fit in my racks, I found that fabric from the "failed" black dye run of last summer. It was there apparently because I'd pinned a note to it saying to try some bleach discharge shibori with it. But now as it sat next to the top I'd soon be layering and quilting, it looked amazingly close in color to the paint of the lattice and leaf clusters. I auditioned it again once "Float" was quilted and was very pleased to see how well it would work and that the dark binding made for a better visual finish.

How very many times this has happened to me, the chance meeting of just what I need with something that is right in front of me.

With this finished, the 4th piece for my ArtWalk display, all that's left before dropping everything off on Tuesday is pricing, filling out the paperwork, cutting dowels to length and attaching business cards. Oh, and attaching Leaf Cluster VIII to the foamcore board I cut today and slipping it into its metal frame. All very doable with a minimum of stress! 

Chance

Results of a "I don't care" printing session last year

Chance: adjective 1. fortuitous; accidental

I'm well on my way to finishing one last piece for ArtWalk, one that has been fun to work on because every step along the way has been a matter of chance, and I often work best when solutions present themselves by chance rather than by me actively seeking them out. The picture above shows some of what happened when I abandoned my carefully planned stamping placements on specific fabrics and just grabbed some odds and ends that I'd put in my paint area for expending paint on brayers and brushes and testing prints. I truly did not care if any of these worked, and so they all mostly did, exciting me more than the prints I'd spent so much time working out. The one in the lower left has been on the design wall for a year, and as I worked on Sway, I thought its colors would work well with the other pieces I'll have in my exhibit. And because it was so small, I trusted I could actually get it done in time.

"Yes. Chance has always been my best assistant." Director Agnès Varda in Faces Places.

Sway played a part in choosing a border fabric. Frankly, I hadn't decided yet how I would approach this little 10" x 18" uninspiring piece of batik I'd stamped over. But when I put Sway up near it to audition binding fabric and moved a small piece of handdyed fabric from a collection auditioning for something else on another part of the wall to a spot in between the two, I suddenly saw how well it would work as borders for what I was thinking of as "Float". Certainly not enough for Sway binding but would it be enough for "Float"? Just barely; I could cut three 2 inch strips from it, one for each long side and the third cut in half for top and bottom. Close, very close.

“Chance favors the connected mind.” Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation

From the get go, this piece had a problem. Because I was just stamping with no real intention, it ended up with nothing going on at the bottom. I've spent months wondering what I could put in there that would look like it belonged with the stamped features. I may have solved the border issue but I hadn't solved how to balance out the bottom. That is, until I was taking a quick look through a basket of batiks for a fabric I've used as piping in the past. Again, it was Sway that led me there, the piece I thought I might add piping to the binding of to spark it up a bit. It was total chance that I saw the leaf batik while fanning through and made the connection that the colors and size of the leaves might work on Float, piling up at the bottom and maybe floating alongside the leaf clusters. I spent some very happy dithering while cutting and arranging.

Top border sewn with a partial seam

I'd been doing math in my head, enough to know that the horizontal border strips would not be long enough to span across the quilt with borders sewn on both sides. Visually, if one is not going to miter a border (and again, not nearly enough fabric here for that) then it's better that the top and bottom borders runs all the way across rather than the sides running all the way to the edges. As I kept playing with the strips for best placement of the fabric color changes, a chance placement reminded me of a block technique that staggers the beginning of each side. The top and bottom border strips were just long enough to span the quilt and one side border, so that became my solution.

You work your way around, each border starting flush with the edge of the quilt and catching the end of the preceding border until you are back to the start where you've left a partial seam. Once the last border strip is sewn, the first strip's seam can be completed.

"More conservative minds deprive coincidence of meaning by treating it as background noise or garbage, but the shape-shifting mind pesters the distinction between accident and essence and remakes this world out of whatever happens." Lewis Hyde, in Trickster Makes This World

And there you have it, a small quilt progressing all by chance, and ready for quilting. This is the most color accurate photo.

Of course, I'd been thinking about using the same dark burgundy thread to quilt around the leaf clusters and lattice as I'd used on others printed with this same color of ink. A little dull and boring but that was all I'd come up with except the possibility of a light green like the batik. It was that leaf batik that showed me there were other options, time to try something different, and here are the threads I pulled for consideration

I was leaning toward the golden browns when I realized I was playing safe again. Yes, I said it again - go bold or go home! The yellow/red variegated King Tut thread won out and is really brightening up the quilt as well as tying in with the rust in the border fabric.

I've started quilting the lattice with the burgundy and it is really doing great things to sharpen up the design. I'm holding off on any more quilting on the leaves until that is all done. Perhaps you can see that faint blue of the print on the batik that is echoed in the batik leaves I fused in place. Depending  on how it looks when all other quilting is done, I may add some blue/green quilting to the leaves. It's a decision I think will be ok to make by chance. 

A Different Kind of Struggle

My latest non-textile art haul

Warning: lots of words and musings, quotations and links; one lousy picture.
 
I may be at least temporarily out of my struggling with my preparation of pieces for ArtWalk, there's a bigger struggle going on that keeps teasing me away from work with fiber. I keep buying sketchbooks and pens and paints and stencils and bookbinding supplies and other things that on the surface have nothing to do with my quilting, even as I am not using any of it on a consistent basis. At times I wondered if I'd lost interest in quilting altogether. At other times, I thought these diversions might simply be a way of procrastinating. I worked at rationalizing time spent away from fabric and stitch, doing my best to believe I was learning things that would cross over. Yeah, there was a bit of guilt every time I turned my back on the studio for something else. But even that guilt has mostly dropped away, and if my art quilts benefit from any of this (and I'm sure they do at least a little), more's the better. Because if I am enjoying new explorations, what difference does it make if I can link it to my primary creative venture. Except that I have so many at least partially formed designs and projects on the textile side that I still want to work on, would really like to see completed. The rest that I fill the time with feels frivolous sometimes, even when it is satisfying.

This interest in things not fiber feels a symptom of something bigger. There's an underlying restlessness I've been noticing for over a year, maybe even longer, that unnerves me because I think of it as unfamiliar and a sign that subconsciously I want change, to shake things up, and that is so unlike me. But it may not be as dire as all that. I've always dabble in new things, tried all kinds of creative things. It was only when I decided quilting was how I really wanted to spend my time that I narrowed my focus and mostly eliminated those other things. So much to learn about the craft of quilting, so many things to try, so many variations to explore, so many techniques to master, so many exhibits to get into. I'm not vain enough to think I've come to the end of what I can learn about quilting, especially quilting arts, and I still get a thrill when things come together in a piece that is especially good work. But I do feel competent in most areas and it does feel like I've accomplished much of what I'd hoped to. Perhaps I'm just to a point where I want to once again broaden my focus to include other things. And with the world at my fingertips via the internet, I am bombarded by fascinating and beautiful images, tickling my brain with ideas of the places I could go, the things I could try.

In the midst of my musing, Austin Kleon to the rescue! Nothing like a good quotation to alleviate guilt and help one see all this is just the natural progression of things. In his post "What do you want to Learn?" he talks about mastery, "branding", and how to re-invent yourself. There's a good video link too that he transcribes quite a bit of. But these are what caught my eye:

"When you feel like you’ve learned whatever there is to learn from what you’re doing, it’s time to change course and find something new to learn so that you can move forward. You can’t be content with mastery; you have to push yourself to become a student again." from his book Show Your Work

"Every single person is a learning machine. You want the challenge of trying something new, figuring out how to do it, mastering it, and then starting all over again. You want to Learn, Leap, and Repeat." Whitney Johnson

Well, I've always said I am like a sponge, gathering information from all kinds of sources, making links and finding places to apply it. "Book learning" mostly, although I must admit I've done the same with my explorations of all kinds with fiber and fabric. I am a student at heart. I don't really want to be confined to a narrow path or recognizable "brand" as talked about in the video.

In another post shortly after, Austin approaches this subject again in "Learning for learning's sake." Just the title had me thinking, "Ah - that's me." He starts right out with a new premise, not what do you want to learn, but what's next? Yes, good question, and this may be exactly what my subconscious has been asking. And he immediately follows up with what's been needlessly bothering me, what if this next thing has nothing to do with your primary thing, that "it’s not professional development, it’s a hobby.” Disclaimer here - he's addressing people who make a living at what they do, which I do not. Yet like Austin, I've always bristled at being termed an amateur or hobbyist in spite of the professional manner with which I've always approached my craft and the exhibiting of it. So for arguments sake, lets just say all of us artists are professionals and anything we do outside of our narrow field that does not directly have "value" to that field is just a hobby.

"First off, I’m trying to imagine Thoreau or Leonardo limiting their interests to “professional development.”

Second, I am so tired of hearing “hobbyist” and “amateur” thrown around as pejorative terms. It’s such a lame, macho move. God forbid we ever do anything for pleasure or love."

There. That is what I needed to hear. And this:

"Creative people are curious people, and part of being a creative person is allowing yourself the freedom to let your curiosity lead you down strange, divergent paths. You just cannot predict how what you learn will end up “paying off” later. Who’s to say what is and what isn’t professional development?"

Indeed, I AM a curious person, as was my father who was always pointing things out to me that I'd walked right by or over, and asking questions, always wanting to know more. I have a hard time understanding people who aren't curious and questioning. So I guess I shouldn't be surprised that as my physical health improves, my cognitive health is back on track too, restless to keep learning, asking what's next?

And Now I'm Not...

...Not struggling that is. I wish I knew what flips that switch to change me from the bumbling awkward novice feeling to the confident competent no more second guessing almost on autopilot feeling. Maybe it's the realization that I'm running out of time for dithering. Maybe it's taking on a more I don't care attitude. Or just going into nose to the grindstone just get on with it mode. I wish I had more control over it because it is a wonderful feeling to be back in the driver's seat and making decisions with a minimum of fuss. A few more moves of leaves and said to myself, "Good enough." And as I was stitching them on down the middle (with invisible thread and leaving a bit of each end loose), my mind wandered. I'd considered adding piping in the binding but the batik I thought might work was just too much. But now, with nose so close to the quilting threads, it occurred to me that I could run a line of the lime green Oliver Twist thread next to the binding for a similar but more subtle affect. I laid a length of the thread along the binding and not allowing myself to ask too many questions, decided it would give the finishing touch and be a good tie-in to that same thread in the quilting. Again, I noticed myself thinking, "Good enough," almost as a wall against any inner critique wondering if I could have come up with a better solution. Nope. This looks really good. And those leaves look more like they belong, blending  better now that they are properly attached. I quickly cut and sewed a sleeve and hand-stitched it in place with little ado yesterday, so this one is done and I can start on one more piece for my ArtWalk display.

I Am Struggling . . .

I have been putting off sewing the binding on my main new piece for ArtWalk. Not because I was still dithering over what fabric to use. No, I had made that decision and even cut the strips. It was this decision to use a method that would allow me to use a double fold binding (for extra stability over my usual single-fold method), make sure the application would result in perfectly equal measurements of the long sides, and not result in a join along one of those sides. That method has you adding the binding like you would a mitered border, and this little tool helps to mark the sewing line to make the miter in the binding happen, since unlike a border, the seam must make a turn midway. I've only used this once before and remembered it as fussy, tedious and requiring precision. My memory was not wrong. It was not enjoyable, and I spent way too long trying to get the points poked out all the way.

And then it was the long slog of hand stitching the binding to the back after pinning. It took about 3 hours; I know that because I listened to three hour-long podcasts while I stitched. No wonder I've become so fond of framing.

It still needs steaming around the outside, but first impression is that those corners are not all that square for all my troubles. One I am sure points out like a finger flipping me off. But I'm running out of time to fiddle with my ArtWalk pieces so I've pinned on the leaves (have adjusted the positions since this poor picture) and will stitch them down this afternoon. They help this look less like a tablerunner and more like a piece of art, I realize, the risk one runs when using a long narrow format. Then it will be sleeve time, another part of the process I don't enjoy. At least it will be a short one. Fortunately, I've used muslin on the back, so my label can be inked directly on it rather than having to make a separate label that would also need to be hand sewn on. Yes, this is the drudgery part of the creative process, maybe partly because it is not creative at all. But still, it must be done and done well, even as my mind wanders and wants me to do other things.

May's Art Group Meeting

Just a few things from my art group's meeting this week. I took my book in progress and latest leaf cluster with quilting completed to share so am not including pics since you've already seen them. Last month Terrie shared a grid round robin challenge she is involved in and here is the last one she'll be working on. Picnic is the theme and she is considering adding a couple of glasses of ice tea or water and eating utensils as well as filling in some areas with fabric. The "reveal" is coming soon so she will see what the others in the challenge have added to her starter piece. One aspect of the grid challenge that is unlike regular round robins is that the owner doesn't have to sew hers together in the way it has returned to her. She can rearrange the individual pieces and even relegate some of them to the back of the quilt if she wants.

Terrie is close to finishing up another challenge, one where she was given three vintage Dresden plates to work into a design any way she'd like, as long as all pieces of the plates were included. Terrie chose to disassemble the plates into 3, 5, and 9 petal sections and back the pieces so she could use them in a three dimensional fashion instead of attaching them by stitching along the edges. I particularly like the three-petal one at the top that forms an opening bud like a calla lily.

And how clever is this use of a zipper? The flower centers still need to be added, probably yoyos. She will be facing this one.

Busy Terrie also got this Judy Niemeyer pattern started in a class. She showed a diagram with the different looks you can get by changing the colors and value placements of the star diamonds. Scroll down the Twinkle Star Pattern page to see them.

Robin has spent the winter in Arizona so we were excited to have her back. While away, she experimented with Laura Heine's fused collage technique using the Hen Rietta pattern which called for a lot of floral fabrics. She loved the technique so much that she started work on the Abilene Cow pattern. Here is one of the background fabrics she is considering.

This time she used all geometric-patterned fabrics and is planning to quilt "Buttercup" using a grid design.

Meg has been working on building her website and has hit upon the idea of letting her little fabric birds and animals and kids do the talking and marketing, since she herself, like many of us, is quite uncomfortable with selling herself. So she will be talking through her quirkie creations, which we all feel suits her style and her art really well. She also wants to produce a time lapse video that shows how the pieces of her big tree go together up on the wall. She says one of the most difficult things has been to explain what it is that she makes and how a buyer could "use" or display them. She's hoping this video plus the newly vamped website will help. Go take a look - it's really cute! megmarchiando.com 

Diverted

I was fiddling with a photo, hoping to come up with an interesting if not also cool rendition to update my Facebook portrait with. I started with the picture on the left and ran it through the various filters in my software program, coming up with several usable ones, including the one on the right, the result of using "lights" under the illumination effect. What I generally do when working with this program is use its random button rather than mess with the individual settings myself. Click click click until I see one I like to save. There. That didn't take too long.

But I have no self control when it comes to trying out the various effects. Soon I was pulling up "patterns" under reflections effect. I've done this so many times that I'm getting used to seeing pretty much the same thing pop up, only in different colors depending on what photo I start with. This time was different. I'd not seen anything like this one before. Oo ah oh!

Nor these.

These look somewhat familiar but somewhat different too. Such fabulous fabric some of these would make.

Ok, shut it down, I said to myself. But really, do you expect me to quit before I've run this through the kaleidoscope effect? And I gasped at the first one. Definitely not what I've seen before.

Nor this one. It looks like feathers.

Here's another unique one, very subtle, no brown or peach in sight.

This one has quite a different look as well, and with no blues or whites.

This is so dynamic. I think I fiddle with the number of "petals" on this one to make it more symetrical.

 

Would you have guessed my portrait would have produced such designs and colors? It was all I could do to tear myself away, quit all that clicking and saving!

Evolution of a "Simple" Project . . .

. . . Or how an idea for a quick project gets out of hand. If you recognize yourself in any of the below, please leave a commiserative comment!

The Challenge:

Sturdy brown paper bags with twine handles and graphics

I've been following Ali Manning's blog and Facebook page (Vintage Page Designs) for awhile now. She has such a straightforward approach to bookbinding, lots of good basic information and some interesting bindings mixed with a variety of non-standard bookbinding materials. So when she started a Facebook group devoted to Crafting Handmade Books, I, of course, joined. I wanted to see what others were doing without following a lot of different blogs or joining Instagram. The group has given me so much eye candy, information and inspiration. And then Ali decided to try giving the group monthly challenges. For April she chose "Upcycled covers: create a book with repurposed items as your covers." Oo Oo - I can do that, because I have TWO small shopping bags I'd set aside (a long time ago) with the idea of turning them into some kind of book. And it shouldn't take long to do (she said, immediately dooming any chance of a quick finish).

The Plan:

I chose the smaller bag on the left in the top photo, the one with the dragonfly on it. I found instructions in two different books to help guide me with my idea of using the fold in the side of the bag as the starting point for more folds to make a concertina spine. Once I started cutting the bag apart, I realized that, rather than trim them away, I could fold the bottom and sides to the inside for a sturdier edge. I hadn't planned on pasting in "endpapers" but I also hadn't thought about how those twine handles were attached, and it didn't look pretty. I hit upon the idea of using some of the security envelopes to neaten up the look.

I was thinking I'd only need to make a fold on either side of the bag's side fold but their width would have made the signatures to be sewn to them too narrow. I had the hardest time getting my brain around how to place the additional folds (even though I thought I'd worked it out on a scrap of paper) but eventually figured it out. I chose my security envelop pattern, pasted them in place and secured the side and bottom flaps to the inside, all with YES!.

The Problem:

Now for the pages for the signatures. I'd also set aside this very heavy brown paper that had been used as packing in a shipment. It wasn't crumpled or creased, and I intermediately thought how well it would go with my little bag books if I ever got around to making them.

I thought I could get a lot of pages out of this length, plenty for my little book. I did the math on how big each sheet should be, straightened off one end and started tearing sheets to length. For being so rough and unrefined, this paper tore quite well. But I could only get 6 sheets from this piece, one for each peak of my spine, and there was no more, nothing even remotely like it. One folded sheet per peak was not going to cut it.

The Solution:

 

This was the point at which I was letting myself get just a little bit terrified of my project. I had intended to tear away the excess along each side of each sheet to bring the width to the proper measurement, but for now I decided to leave it turned to the inside to create a little more "bulk" because that is what I needed, things to add additional thickness to fill up the space between the folds in the spine. And as I held it, opening and closing the flaps, I started thinking about what might get added on these pages, things I could collage in place perhaps. While my mind scrambled for ideas, I hit upon one small step forward I could take in the meantime, a step more easily done before signatures being sewn in place. I've been using a piece of corrugated cardboard to stamp lines in art journal projects. I hadn't really thought through what I would be using this book for, but surely I could put some writing in it. And having lines as guides appealed to me.

Another night of mulling before dropping off to sleep produced another idea. I've been saving teabags, not really knowing why, but now I thought this would be a good place to experiment with them. I laid some out and decided, why not? They can be a first layer, can be stamped over, drawn over, collaged over. Not increasing the bulk much but I was really liking how they looked on that paper.

Fortunately, I had a scrap of the brown paper and some extra pieces of teabag to test out some adhesives with. I'd already determined I did not want to add adhesive over the top as is so often demonstrated by multimedia folk, and I did not want to use anything that would buckle that brown paper, heavy and stiff as it was. The results were surprising, except for the YES! The other three buckled the brown paper to varying degrees while changing the look of the teabags in different ways. In the end I went with the YES and was very pleased with the results - no buckling and not much change in the teabags.

More Solutions And A Theme:

I still needed to find something to create more pages in each signature. I got to thinking about that paper I made from recycled shredded mail. Most of it was pretty thick and I hadn't come up with any ideas for using it yet. It turned out to be exactly the right size with minimal trimming,  and whereas I'd not liked how the tea leaves I'd thrown into the mix had bled out brown around them, now against the brown paper pages, it was a good fit. It had occurred to me that I could play off the dragonfly printed on the outside of the bag and fill the lined pages with things about dragonflies and maybe even poetry about dragonflies. I determined that the best distribution of brown paper pages and handmade paper would be to nest the former into the later to form a signature. Yes, it turned out that I only had six pieces of the handmade paper that were suitable, exactly what I needed.

The more I have worked with this, the more the ideas have come, and because of the spine I chose, I soon realized that the sorts of things occurring to me to add and how they need to be added would be really difficult to do on signatures sewn to those peaks in the spine. So my "quick" and "simple" challenge project, one I thought I could whip out in a few afternoons, turned into a longer range project where I will be looking for all things dragonfly and perhaps even drawing a dragonfly or two. I've been surprised, frankly, at how similar the thought process has been to when I work with my textile art, making it a little less foreign in feel. I'll be putting it aside, now that I know how much more time I need and things to find, now that I have a theme and a bit of a vision about it, because the days are flying by and those things with real deadlines need some attention. 

Unlocking

Kurt Vonnegut's Six Seasons

I ran across Kurt Vonnegut's take on season designations not long ago as my area was doing its usual struggle to break from winter. I tire of the complaints that arise during these transition months that have been assigned a season that gets generalized by its best attributes and ignores the broader reality of their existence. Vonnegut's description of how he would redistribute months into 6 seasons is totally in line with how I have always experienced these in the northern climes and so I think it quite clever.

So when "spring" officially arrived without warm temps and sunny skies, the impatient grumbling began. The "unlocking" had begun, though, and in the last week I can report we have thoroughly unlocked with the sudden burst of blooming trees. Yesterday I opened my blinds to see the wild syringa (Idaho's state flower) had come into bloom overnight. And the lilac bush along my daily walk has the beginning of blooms that should start opening and spilling their scent within a week or so. Right on schedule.

Creativity can have its seasons too. Are we being receptive to what each is and has to offer? I found this post, Reception, on Austin Kleon's blog offered a thought worth keeping in mind. (There's also a good Thomas Merton quotation over there).

You can have a good antenna pointed in the right direction, but if the tuner isn’t twisted to the right spot, all you’re getting is static. I’m hesitant to use machine metaphors for creative work, but there’s something here.

You can clear space in your day, clear space on your desk, and clear space in your mind, but at some point you have to move your fingers.

So are you ready to move your fingers? Are you about to embark on a wave of productivity, or at least wish you could? You may find Frank Chimero's Modest Guide To Productivity of interest. There was one suggestion on it that I do periodically but with a type of permission added that I really needed to hear.

Dump your brain on to a sheet of paper—every single thing you could hope to do in the next 3 to 4 months. Then, look at your task list. Have the author sign each one. Did you write it, or was it fear, that nasty tyrant in your head? Cross off anything written out of fear. Listen: some drudgery is unavoidable, but you’re living your one and only life. You get to drive; no bullies at the wheel.

Yes, this basically says you need to really look at all the things you think you need to do and make sure there aren't things there added out of fear, guilt, obligation or any number of reasons that do not serve you and in the end will not make you happy, and may even hinder your productivity. The other piece of advice he calls The Reckoning, a point down the road where you reassess and allow yourself to "tidy up". Things change over time and you should not slavishly stick with a master plan that no longer fits and needs editing. That's always been a tough one for me but I am very much more open to this sort of thinking and planning this year. On the other hand, we tend to put off the things we like the least yet they still must be done (binding, you're on that list...). "There's no pleasant way to face them," he says, "but we must." Time to quit putting them off, always be "tidying up" so that they don't all pile up at once.

 

Austin Kleon Blackout Poem

 

It's spring, a time of growth and refreshing. It's time to unlock. Let's get to work.