This daily archiving series is about organizing and dating my journal collection. Today’s samples are a series of composition books that served more as to-do lists. They merge work with daily life. [Deeper journals were being recorded elsewhere on large drawings and mind maps.]
See previous samples:
Unnecessary Violence Project Explanation and Sample 1 Oct 21, 1992
Today: Journals, Composition Books between April 2014 to October 2019
April 6 2014
Procrastination Rules
- Get a composition book – just get it
- Collect some writing and drawing supplies – don’t need to use them
- Collect all your to-do’s in a basket- if they fit in a basket
- Make a book pile – impressive
- Grab a coffee and your phone
- Collect some shit to eventually glue into your new composition book
- Go on Instagram
- Reheat the coffee
Slingshot Metaphor: I’ve been mulling over the image for a few days now. I recognize a theme happening for so many of us right now, certainly for me – feeling like I am being pulled backwards, just when I thought I had it all figured out and within my reach. Being pulled back into revisiting so many triggers from the past, reconnecting with so many people from the past. Weighed down by the same old fear of not being able to make ends met. Humiliated of not being able to access funds that are waiting. Feeling undervalued, not ready to ask questions. All this stuff/imagery/photos/film/video memories being revisited yet again. I want to say “Alright, I leave you now. You’re not serving me anymore.” I am being pulled so taut, so thin, so vaporized. Until finally there must be a true letting go and I will shoot forward from past the past the past, to new heights. SEE YA.
November 24 2014
Moss in time… in time… the root overtakes the bone and pulls it down past the moss and the rock and the roots and the decay away and overlay and sun though the leaves offers pockets of hope and the shoot and the root crush under the boot. Here. Hear! HEAR! HERE!
February 20, 2015
February 20, 2015
Sitting at Starbucks at Cornwall, waiting for Anna. Julian is out with his friend. Tobey is in the car and Asterix at home in his cage. I tend to keep those 4 in my thoughts all the time – checking in. Tobey is definitely aging quickly and writing it down makes it more real and inevitable. He’s just so representative of my connection with Pappa especially as I compare their two journeys of winding down towards the end of life.
I feel tired, excited, more peaceful, but tired and worn. Fridays tend to be so. Reflecting days. My days. So the body inevitably relaxes into migraine mode. I am worn out. This time last year – Jesus Christ. Accepting surrendering, packing, moving, bankruptcy, no money. No home.
” You need to finish your book here,” the caretaker Bill said as we looked at our potential apartment.
I recall:
May 29, 2015
“Every true story ends in death.” – Ernest Hemingway
June 12, 2015
Will I ever be able to pay my bills with ease, to travel at leisure, to feel successful, to never worry about money because my ideas/projects flourish? Do I stay on this oasis island that is me: asexual, isolated, alone, alive, anxious? I LIKE IT HERE.
July 2015
July 10, 1015
Repeated patterns, finding your true self, understanding the root causes of why you find yourself repeatedly in the same situation and how over time we are able to change the pattern, break the cycle, to create a new perspective, a new route, to look at the same situation with new eyes to alter the thoughts process by a simple 180 alteration to at least try a different way…
July 27, 2015
Act as if… Dear me,
You now stand fully naked, fully present, fully you. Gone are the shackles that pulled you downwards into self-doubting, crippling anxiety. No longer do you hesitate before expressing. But most importantly, no longer do you collapse in shame and doubt after you expressed yourself.
Speaking your truth used to cause you to feel like you were choking on amniotic fluid. Felt like it came at a price.
Now you can breathe in and breathe out with open mouth, open nostrils, open sinuses, open throat, open heart, open eyes, open mind without fear.
You release your truth, your art, your work onto and into the world and receive back the conversations/communications with an open and fearless heart- a heart that is ready to dialogue.
Your work used to require boundaries. Your life used to comprise of self-imposed boundaries to protect your heart from rejection and loss. But now you are boundless. And so the work you have built on awakening creative expression in others- a gift you truly were born with and have worked so tirelessly to deliver- takes on a new level on a global scale. You are not in need of accolades. You are simply expressing, thereby allowing others to feel the same freedom. It need no longer be frontline work (in person), it is a new principle and way of living.
Full presence.
You have taken all the heartache, all the joy, all the blood and guts of life and built a mission and vision that has created true abundance.
You will never be anxiety-free and you will never not have heart-shattering challenges, but you now have a giant delicious toolbox with which to meet those challenges and easily process, die into them and rebirth from them. You are truly living with ease.
All is as it should be.
Congratulations.
Love, me
July 2015
November 2015
June 2016
August 18, 2016
July 2017
September 2017
October 2017
November 5, 2017
September 2018
“Don’t worry. He won’t get far on foot.” – Gus van Sant
May 1, 2019
May 18, 2019
Saturdays I tend to have– a type of Saturday Migraine– what I call- spiritual migraines- as the time to myself hits after sleeping in an extra hour after a full week of so much output– I can either be in euphoric creative mode, or despair/exhaustion. Of course, I enjoy the euphoria. I get a lot done! The despair tends to look like this:
Today I did have plans. Several of them were canceled. And instead of filling up the space with other get together requests– I took a walk alone, checked in on the herons, and settled myself here on a rock at Second Beach.
What do I hear?
Seagulls, small birds, bike bells, this paper, crows, planes, squeaky bike wheels, waves, boats, jet skis, children by the water, people on the seawall.
The tide is out and I am surrounded by tide pools.
I am not depressed today. I am not euphoric. I don’t owe anybody my time today. I don’t need to hear anyone’s despair, or help organize their thoughts. Even my own.
October 5, 2019
One comment