Time Travel - Monster Hall of Fame

Ok so the first task that I am going to do is tell a horror story from my monster hall of fame.

It was quite some time ago, but I was sill working at the little paper, I was the week prior to a holiday week so we had inserted a couple house ads to make our readers and customers aware that there were going to be early deadlines. Using the flyer that J had printed out for the reps to give to their customers I created an ad that said "the !#%& will be deadlining early" and when I had brought the paper up after a press check she freaked out because apparently deadlining isn't a word and she said to me "if you don't start using your spell check I am going to smack/slap you" It wasn't until later that evening that R pointed out that J had been extremely inappropriate in saying that did I become furious. I realized that it wasn't the first time that she had been inappropriate with me but that she does it all the time.

Momma said there'd be days like this

• Accept that some days you're the pigeon, and some days you're the statue.

Finaly the other shoe drops...

I have decided that I am going to do mt morning pages in two different spots, on in my analog journal and one in my online blog...this one here.

To day is Tuesday, it should be rather slow here at work because its only tuesday and the rest of the week should be rather quiet because it is Easter weekend and there probably will not be too many open houses on Sunday.

So since the beginning of the year things at work have been a little bit on edge, for many reasons:

1. We have a new publisher
2. print circulation is declining
3. its the first quarter of the year
4. and all we hear about in the news is "recessions"

having not done well in my economics classes in college I had no idea what a recession really is so I got online and read up, come to find out that a recession is:

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP,real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

While my job is not in any REAL danger, unless we are habitual screw ups...what it does mean is that if some one leaves they can not re-hire for at least 90 days. Which really is not a problem because there hadn't been anyone leaving the department till now M is leaving at the end of the month, and our boss is moving my teammate A to replace him. the interesting part is that I am going to absorb the night person L and then become part of another team who is less busy on my busy days.

The frustrating thing is that I get put into a strange situation because for a period of time I will be the only one who knows how to do my teams stuff, which at times can be a little over whelming. But if I can do it and do it well things will pay off because my boss said that she is looking for me to rise to the occasion.

Week 1 ~ Day 2

Starting Over

OK, so I had all intentions of starting my Artists way journey again, and I did re-read the first chapter and then write, but the following night I was just too exhausted to do it, and I forgot.

There has been lots going on lately.

work is super slow, so slow that it is painfully slow until Friday when all hell breaks loose.

So I guess I just dropped the ball on writing last week, which seems like it was a lot longer than that, last week must have seemed like forever because A my partner at work was out Monday-Wednesday, and I was looking forward to a few days off on Thursday and Friday. I was taking some time off because R was coming to town for a visit after spending a year overseas where she met her finance C.

It was very nice to see her but it was also strange, it was almost as though she is a different person, we don't have the opportunity to talk much while she was gone. and it seems like C is her new nest friend and that I happen to be just someone she used to know. It seems silly. Maybe we have just become different people.

So she came in on Thursday afternoon and wanted to get her hotel and take a nap. So I wend to get my dog and just relax at my house till they were ready for dinner. After dinner they went to their hotel to sleep and I went out with the girls The two M's, B, and K were there as well as some other friends of theirs.We had a few drinks then we proceeded to head further downtown to different bar known for their beer. I didn't used to be such a big fan of beer but recently it has become one of my favorite things to drink maybe that is because I have found one that I really like Cold Smoke from the Kettlehouse . I happened to be the lucky gal to empty the keg that night so I only got a little taste. But I found another dark beer that was an OK substitute. A few others met us there D and his girlfriend M, and T whom I have been hanging out with...

R, C and I then spent Friday driving around town doing absolutely nothing...she wanted to show C all the fun places around town.

On Saturday R and C left town to head back and I went to take a nap, then I took the dog up to the parents house because I was working at the coffee shop on Sunday morning which is something I hadn't done in a while. I also went to the gym on Saturday night because I was in a bad mood, part of me was upset because of how I feel about R and C, and because I don't know how I feel about them, the good thing is that she seems happy. The gym worked it made me feel a lot better. Plus I decided that since I told my roommate A that I would do a 5K with her it was about time that I started to prepare.

I also went to yoga on Sunday and felt so good after!

Week 1 ~ Day 1

New Beginings

I randomly started reading The Artists Way about four months ago, I was trying to kill some time one Sunday evening before I had to go into work, I decided to stop and have a drink at Starbucks and read a Book that I knew I had in the trunk of my car. I opened my trunk and saw the book laying there and I decided it was a sign. Having been frustrated at work I thought it might be a good exercise for me to get my creative juices flowing. Little did I know what would come!

I heard about this book when I went to Seattle, WA for Bumbershoot 2007 ...Not only was there lots of cool music, there was lots of cool art from the silk screen posters at Flatstock to the performing art of PDL's Portable Confession Unit. Since that was in September and it is now March of 2008 I had to Google Portable Confession Unit and read about it again...

The Following is an article that was in the Seattle Times... A moment with artist Greg Lundgren

Pretend you have a social life. You don't have to bowl alone, buy single-size popcorn or hike solo in bear country. Coming up with a team for pickup ball is never a problem for you, nor is finding a fourth for bridge. Best of all, you can count on heart-to-heart conversations with close friends. If this doesn't sound like you, you might find solace for the empty space left by the absence of good conversations with a friendship simulation brought to you by the three-man Seattle artist team known as PDL (Jason Puccinelli, Greg Lundgren and Jed Dunkerley). At Bumbershoot, PDL will man three "confessional units." Anyone can say anything and get advice. Lundgren talks about PDL's latest project and the reasons why anyone would confess to an artist. On the need for portable confessional units: People need an outlet for their fears, guilts and frustrations. We offer that. It isn't a prank. We're serious. On the lack of such outlets in Seattle: It's hard to share. Maybe it's a habit we didn't develop. Lack of sharing leads to what we call "toxic thought syndrome." We'd like to place our portable confessional units in shopping centers, playgrounds, airports and businesses. They're Porta-Potties for the soul. On the reason why such talks aren't better left to therapists, rabbis and priests: Why go to a trained professional when there are artists around, eager to listen? We won't judge, no matter what. Kurt Vonnegut once said that an artist's job is to make people like life more than they did before. That's what we're trying to do. On confessionals, which are part of the Catholic Church: None of us was raised Catholic. We learned what we know about confession at the movies. -- Regina Hackett

The reason I included the article is because it explains it much better than I ever could...this project intrigued me for nervous reasons.

1. Who would confess to complete strangers?
2. What types of things would they be confessing?
3. What would I confess?
4. Why did I want to confess?

I thought long and hard about that one. Then it struck me Vie lost my creativity. So when it was my turn I walked into the booth and the voice asked what I would like to confess, I nervously said I have lost my creativity. (I figured that the listener a member of PDL was probably a creative type as well and would quite possibly understand where I was coming from...and he did) he asked my a few questions like:

1. What do I do for fun?
2. Is my job creative?
3. Where do I get my inspiration?
4. Do I surround myself with creative people?
5. Do I do any thing for myself that is creative?

And then told me many of his friends as well as himself have experienced the same thing. I told him that my job is semi creative but doesn’t allow me to be super creative or as creative as I would like to be, and that I often feel like an InDesign monkey and the going to work knowing that any one that knows the computer program could get my job and that you don’t really need any creative skills. I don’t have an answer to the question about what I do in my free time, because I don’t really do anything fun or creative in my free time, it is spent doing house work or non fun stuff.

Then he also recommended The Artists Way as a way to aid in finding my creative self. So I came home in September and bought the book, I read a few pages in the days after it came but then for some reason I put it in my car and promptly forgot about it until that cold December evening.

At first I was a little worried about it because it started off semi religious. Even though I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit I don’t really like talking about it with others. So that worried me that it was going to be a religious journey.

I was pretty good about writing, then things fell apart the reading said that was normal, it talked about how just as you are about to make a break through you skip a day, because you do not want to admit or come to terms wit whatever the issue is.

My initial reason for starting this is that I feel like I have lost my ambition. I think that the loss of my ambition is how I lost my creative self in the first place. I imagine this is the case because I don't take time anymore to be specifically creative. in school I had to be creative everyday because I knew that I wouldn’t pass my class or my instructors would have me work and rework a project until it was good, but sometimes you can over work something and you begin to not enjoy it anymore. I think that finding that fine line is the thing I struggle with the most; I just get tired of it and quit, that is what I did the first time. So here goes!