All Work and No Play

Yes I’m still doggedly working on the Great Reorganization of ’08. It maintains its place as the #1 goal of the month and I will say that it is working to help me to really hone in on the projects that really resonate with me. However this past week I found I had to loosen up just a little bit.
I had my very first teaching experience! I spent Tuesday evening leading a tie dye workshop at the local library for 30 kids. It was a really fun for every one. I haven’t got any pics of the kids yet but I will post them when I can. I’ve never had an opportunity like this but now they seem to be coming out of the woodwork I’ve had two other friends express interest in having me run workshops (these for adults) in the last three days. This is a direction I‘ve had idle thoughts about it before but never really perused it, definitely something to explore.
I seem to be slowly getting to an understanding about what I want to do with my life and how some of the paths I have been taking are in opposition to my needs as an artist.
I have a long standing habit of being a real task master with myself which is probably the reason that every so often my artistic self just goes on strike and refuses to do anything.
One of the things I really want to do is to create a body of work that is just about art, not selling or marketing just something I want to explore. I have been letting myself dabble in this in the last year and it really feeds me. I tend to push off any thing that I can’t see a potential payoff coming from. The problem is that if I constantly do this I get a dull and hopeless feeling and become very needy. Pretty much the opposite of how I want to be feeling. This past week I gave myself a play night, I spent some time stitching and just let myself have a bit of fun, I’m planning to keep that night free from now on so that I can fulfill some of my less goal oriented needs.
One of the things I played with was this…

Yup more heat setting