143.

Several weeks back, I stuck a pin in my daily sentence project and left it sitting here. The pressure I'd built up in my head to make something of this, in combination with a couple of life circumstances, was crushing. I have a daily reminder in my calendar to do this, and seeing it at the top of my inbox every morning became intolerable. The freedom to delete that email without a second thought was very calming. Since then, I've been better about tweeting, about emailing and writing letters, about calling friends. I've also been doing a quiet make-a-necklace-a-day project that I didn't really even notice I was doing until a couple of days ago. It's filled the void of doing something daily, and has become a natural part of my day.

The break has also served to show me how much pressure I exert on myself to be public with the things I produce. That can be helpful to the process, and it's great for expanding my circle of conversation about the life of making things. Definitely one of my favorite subjects. It's certainly good for business. But it turns out I need a private pocket of making. I will probably eventually sell or talk about or publicize most of what I work on in silence, but I was surprised to discover how much I expect myself to be immediate with that process. Make and talk about, make and show, make and list for sale. There is a dialog that goes on just between me and my materials that has been getting crowded out, of late. I've lost a sense of ownership. Whether those materials are beads or metal or words or thread, I have been bypassing that private conversation of alchemy and construction that makes the work good and worthy of larger conversation.

Today it felt like time to make a start at this project again, so here I am, with words. But mindfully, and without a calendar.

141.

Morning was a pouring rain, freezing a fringe of icicles onto power lines and bare branches. Afternoon was billowing clouds and clear air. Evening was balmy and gilt-edged, the softest blue dark.

139.

I had the happiest day today. The absolutely worst thing that happened to me all day was that I got repeatedly haired in the face by a very short and happy woman dancing in front of me at a concert. That, my friends, is a blessed existence.

138.

My time out in the world today was mostly spent doing adulting errands and going to appointments. At four of the five places I went, just as I was leaving a girl (a stranger to me) in a red calico skirt and cowboy boots was coming in. We had nearly matching mornings, except for the fourth stop of five. She was at the first, at the second, at the third, *vanished into an alternate adulting universe for an equivalent length of time*, at the fifth. It's driving me bananas wondering where she went while I was returning library books.

137.

And now it's Thursday, and I'm dead tired and wracking my brain for something to say because it will not do to miss three days in a row. It's not like they were uneventful days. Stuff happened. I went places. Things got done. Fun was had.

Still, I'm having trouble marshaling any of it into what might be called a narrative. So I'm going to fall back on a standard and relate something my niece said. Mainly because my parents really like getting to hear this stuff. Think of me as the family archivist. (Also think of me as flawed, for a number of reasons, but here because I may not have remembered her whole spiel accurately. It's representative. The bit about the cup is right, though.)

"Daddy!"

"Yes."

"I want to travel with you on a train or in a cup with milk and then we fly and go down a slide and it says 'mew, mew' and I take Orange Kitty!"

"Please never stop talking."

134.

I am brain tired and bone weary, but happy with my progress and feeling good about myself.

133.

I'm experiencing a learning phase right now, in several aspects of my life. It's one of my great pleasures to immerse myself in something that someone I like is good at: I thrive on enthusiasm. It makes the information stick better, and there is nothing more fun than giving a good teacher pleasure by learning something they're passionate about. So I'm having a pretty good time, discovering new things and improving at them. 

That being said, the water is nearly over my head just at the moment. I'm learning something new that I hope will improve my creative life. I'm exploring and getting better at something that I do for fun. I'm adding to the roster of my professional skills in order to improve my life in general. I'm learning things about myself. A lot of the time, this feels like too much information, and I'm positive I'm not taking it in. Too much practice, and I feel I'm just stumbling around in the dark. But here's the thing about learning, particularly if you're pushing yourself too far: it all makes the blade sharper. I've been surprised again and again at how much of what I'm learning comes back to me a week or ten days later at the appropriate moment, even if I was absolutely blurry-headed when the information imprinted. The new things bubble to the surface as I need them, and old things that I've forgotten about, but that are somehow relevant, come with them. Like the paperclip metaphor for memory: pick one up and a whole string of them comes with it.

This evening, I was experiencing some guilt over not getting more work done this evening. Then I started mentally reviewing my week - things I knew at the end of last week, and things I know now. Things I was afraid of last week that I plunged in and did this week. This week has ticked quite a few boxes for me, and the next two weeks are looking about the same. A lot of information, a lot of trepidation, some challenges that definitely feel too hard. My jewelry making has suffered some neglect, as has my business housekeeping.  But I spent this weekend resting and recharging, letting my new information settle in my bones. Next week I'll keep adding to it, and even if I miss the mark, I'll know more than I did this week. My world is getting bigger.

132.

When Clementine woke in the morning, she found the typewriter sitting beside the bed, regarding her with a solicitous tilt of the return bar. There was a piece of paper in the roller, and with a groggy sense of bewilderment she read:

I COULDN'T HELP NOTICING THAT YOU WERE HAVING SOME TROUBLE. PLEASE FORGIVE MY PRESUMPTUOUSNESS, BUT I'VE FINISHED YOUR MANUSCRIPT.

131.

Today I'm feeling a genuinely unreasonable loathing for this project. I had a good day. I'm having a nice night. I'm sucking on a tiny lozenge of unnamed melancholy, which isn't enough to bear examining. I just want to keep reading my book in the ticking silence, but there's the noise of having to do this cutting across my avenue of escape. And now it's done, but will I get back into the silence?

130.

I passed the outer edge of the flame over the metal, evenly, back and forth, until the flux bubbled and set, and then held the dark blue center of the heat at the midpoint of the joint until the solder flowed like glass.

129.

My niece has been playing little narrative games by herself for the last several weeks. It's fascinating to listen to her structure a world and have conversations and give directions to the toys she's playing with, or just the imaginary playmates in her head. As I stood at the printer this morning, I heard this snippet:

"I'm a big sister!"

"Whoa. You are giant."

128.

Today's post is a very small-time report from domestic life, but one that's generating a huge amount of aggravation, namely:

DEATH TO THOSE TINY ANTS THAT INVADE EVERYWHERE NO MATTER HOW GOOD MY HOUSEKEEPING.

127.

The rat that lives in the garden across the street has just scuttled under the fence and into his accustomed hole beneath a ruffled tablecloth on the patio. And who should come sauntering down the street behind him, but the household cat, returned from her walkabout? Let the drama begin.

126.

Ever since I moved into my apartment, my creative workflow has been off. I've fiddled with it here and there, and small changes have made small improvements, but it hasn't felt really good to me in over a year. I've been missing the juice, the joy of it - the thing that used to make me come home from work full of colorful thoughts and get right to making things. I still have plenty of ideas, but they don't seem to gel right. It often takes me three or four times longer to get a design right than it once did.

A huge part of my enjoyment in my design work comes from pure tactile contact with my bead collection. Being able to move them around and see them together and fidget with them makes things happen in my head. I've often joked about making a giant ballpit for them and playing in it like a sandbox. A couple of weeks ago, I was frustrated beyond the limit with my inability to find a good workflow, and the ballpit of beads joke suddenly seemed like the greatest breakthrough I could imagine. 

So I cut a huge cardboard carton apart into wide strips, taped them to the edges of my kitchen table, and dumped out 11 boxes and two drawers full of vintage Lucite beads. It made a crashing enormous noise, and it felt wonderful, but it still wasn't quite what I needed. After staring at it for two days, I knew what had to happen. I needed the beads to be free range. I loved that idea, but it also made me incredibly nervous. I manage inventory in order to be able to repeat designs by knowing exactly how many of which beads I have, and having all of them together in bags or on strands where I can find them easily. The work still wasn't right, though, and it had to be done. With some smiling encouragement from the good man who holds my hand, I bit my lip and closed my eyes and changed everything about the way I work and run my business. I dumped all the beads out of all the bags, and I threw the bags out. 

The result is pure joy. It's a sandbox full of color and texture and shape and I can't stop touching it and it's unlocked dozens of ideas and put a huge giddy smile on my face. Every time I walk past it, I reach in and give the beads a stir and see something new. I pull out little handfuls of color, and make them sing. I've made more new things in the last 10 days than I have in two months. It feels fantastic. 

My candy revolution means that I'm only going to be making one of a kind designs for a while. It's difficult to find specific beads to pull multiple pieces together for inventory. But I find I'm excited about that idea - offering unique pieces of jewelry to my clients and my stockists sounds like fun.

I'll be in my playground; keep your eyes open for new work at urban legend!

125.

"Penny."

"Mmm?"

"Have you seen those slaps around town that are pen and ink drawings of a woman, very simple and graceful lines? She's wearing a bamboo hat."

"Yeah, I love those."

"Did you notice that they're all viewed from behind except the ones that are along the riverfront on the east side? You can see her face in those."

"No! Really? That's a mystery."

Pepper kicked her leg out behind her and slammed the oven door shut, hands full of hot pies. "Well, now you've done it. You used the word."

124.

It's odd how much of a sense of a neighbor's life you can get just from muffled sounds through the wall. My neighbor to the north, for instance, has a cold and has been playing very loud dude-shooting video games since Tuesday, while making endless cups of tea (or possibly TheraFlu). He is about one more day of sickness away from losing his temper with his brother. My neighbor to the south has been shouting at the Olympics without ceasing for the better part of a week. He is shouting when I wake up in the morning. He is shouting when I come home from work. He is shouting when I go to bed, although more often the evening shouting is on the phone and involves the news. It's possible to tune almost all of this out, but sometimes I let it in just out of curiosity. And sometimes I wonder if they tune me out, or if they pay attention and know when I'm sick or sad or happy.

None of this, of course, must ever be mentioned when any of us meet in passing. Which is another oddity of urban life.

123.

I'm a third of the way into this year-long project. Yesterday I forgot to write. Actually, I forgot until I was in bed at the end of the day, and when I remembered it didn't feel important enough, in that moment on that day, to sit up and do it. But that being the case, today seems like a reasonable time for a little self-reflection about why I'm doing it and what I've gotten out of it so far.

I've been pretty consistent about doing this, with a couple of slips here and there. On several days, I have frankly and without apology phoned in my effort. That wasn't my intention when I started - when is it ever the intention to half-ass something? - but there are days when it seems more important just to do the sentence, whatever it is, and get it done. I started this project to get myself back in the habit of blogging regularly, and I hoped that it would also lead me into some new paths with writing.

123 (minus a few slips) entries later, I have several things I'm really proud of, and a couple of things that I think have potential and could be reworked into something I'm proud of. I have a few self-reflective entries that were important for me. On a couple of days, I've written single sentences that I love. There's also quite a lot of dross. Most of the time, I'm painfully aware that I'm not giving the right kind of attention and risk and time to this to get what I want out of it. Basically, that's time. I prioritize other things over this, and I don't do it at any consistent time of day, and I seldom push myself with it.

There's a temptation here to make a commitment to give more time to this project for the remainder of the year, but here's the thing: I won't do it. A lot of the time, I'm barely clinging to doing this. I want more out of it, but the bottom levels of Maslow's hierarchy of need are occupying the bulk of my resources at the moment. So I'm hanging onto the hope that the compulsion to not fail at this simple one sentence goal will eventually turn into a habit which will eventually start to yield some deeper work. Two-thirds of a year to go. If I can make this a habit that I don't struggle against by the end of my 365 days, I'll be pleased and count it progress.

See you tomorrow.

122.

[This is not a real post, because I forgot to write yesterday. It's a place-holder in hopes that I won't forget again.]

121.

My grandmother passed away today - my father's mother. I've written about her here before, and in the next few weeks I'll be writing about her some more. Today all I really want to say is how fortunate I've been to have all of my grandparents in my life well into my adulthood. She was the last; but I had four wonderful grandparents, and I had a good long time with all of them. My relationship with each one was unique, and I'm so grateful to have had them for so long. I realized today that I have talismans from each one that are special to me - things I wear or use or keep out where I can see them. I've been so lucky to know them, and I'm lucky to have them still.

120.

I almost forgot I had to write a sentence today.