Daily Creative Practices

I was feeling a little down this week. I've been wanting to find time to do little paintings, but it seems like I keep running out of time once some of my more mandatory projects have been attended to. (School work, getting groceries, etc.) I thought about how I could "make time" when I realized that I have quite a few daily creative practices already. The more I thought about it, the more I realized I had reasons to celebrate.

The daily comic has been updating daily for a few months now, but behind the scenes, I'm still catching up on the backlog. This week, however, I finally finish editing Book 2. Hurray! I'm on to editing Book 3 and it feels like a big hurdle has been crossed because I am still drawing in Book 3. I'm looking forward to being entirely caught up, although to get there, I know I have to continue to make it a daily practice.

Related to editing the daily comic, I make it a practice to draw the daily comic daily. The goal is to never have a backlog. I finally found that I if I drew the comic while eating breakfast, I had more success. Now it just feels wrong not to draw it in the morning.

Another thing Connor and I have been keeping up on is writing with our non-dominant hand. We started in July as a way to prove that there is no such thing as talent. The idea was that talent is just a culmination of practice. Well, I'm not sure if either of us has seen much improvement in our non-dominate handwriting, but both of us have noticed that our left hands have felt much stronger. The experiment continues.

These three daily practices have required making a habit, but my last daily practice is one that I just can't help myself: knitting. Just about every day I've got knitting in my hands and a few more rounds find their way onto my current project. And let's face it, my current project is probably socks.

Does anyone else have a daily creative practice? Or is there something you'd like to make a daily creative practice?

Sucking The Fun Out Of Fun

Has anyone else had a time in their life where they forgot how to have fun? I feel like that has been me lately. Since the last week of April, I've been staying disciplined by working on getting The Comic up and running. Every day I edit at least two pages and after I get a pile edited, I (digitally) cut them up and Connor posts them. The thing is, I had gotten so efficient that even when I left room for myself to do something fun, like knit, it wasn't fun anymore. My efficiency spilled over into my hobbies. I'd tell myself, "The faster you finish this knit, the sooner you can finish the next one." I made myself into a machine. This isn't any way to live. 

After making myself miserable for the last two plus months, I heard a sermon that snapped me out of it. The sermon itself was about envy, but in it the preacher talked about the movie Chariots of Fire. (A quick aside, I've never seen all of Chariots of Fire. I watched about 10 minutes at which point I realized there weren't going to be any chariots, so I stopped watching.) The plot follows two runners. One is always worried about who is catching up to him and who might beat him while the other throws his head back and enjoys the act of running. I realized I was the worried runner when really I'd rather be the happy one, so I've been practicing mindfulness. When I catch myself strategizing what I need to do next, I write it on the list, then promptly think about what I am enjoying about my current activity... even the ones that aren't really that fun on paper. I'm happy to report that it has been working. I feel like I'm having fun again. An added bonus has been that I've found myself more productive while I've been having fun.

What are those things, you might wonder? Wonder no more! First off, I am happy to say that I have finally finished editing Book 1. Connor and I need to still put the latter half of book 1 on the website, but we have made that a more pleasant experience by listing to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. (We have especially enjoyed episodes 303, 305, and 310.)

I've continued to make great progress on my father's second Peeta Sock and Connor's Dude Sweater. In typing this, I realized that there is nothing on the needles for me. Gasp! Actually, I'm having a great time knitting both projects and I look forward to giving them away when they are done.

I also started work on the next lavender sachet. I have embroidered several now, but had put them aside to stay true to the comic. I pulled it out again while Connor and I were playing Scrabble. We both can take a long time to come up with a word, so I've been able to make good progress on the new one.

And last, but certainly not least, I've been putting time aside at night to work on my Tour de Fleece project. I entirely forgot Tour de Fleece was coming up until a day or so before it started. In an effort to stay in the moment and not suck the fun out of it with too many goals, I only have the modest goal of spinning a three ply sock yarn out of my braid of Greenwood Fiberworks 80/20 Merino/Nylon in the Cider House color way. It's been on my mind for a while, but like the embroidery, I wasn't going to work on it until I had "earned" it by doing enough of the comic.

It seems so silly now that I was punishing myself by not working what I really wanted to. Connor reminded me that everything will eventually get done, and I suppose that is true. And if it doesn't get done, maybe it never really needed to anyways.

Has anyone else had the problem of sucking the fun out of their hobbies?

The Comic Lives

Connor and I have been reading "The Road Back To You" together. It is a book about the Enneagram. What's the Enneagram you ask? It is a system of 9 personalities. The theory is that in childhood you develop one particular type to help you cope with life's difficulties. Here is a list if you want to have a look.

It's been clear that Connor is a solid 9. He is easy-going, peaceful, but also can get lost going to a place he has been to a hundred times. We've had a harder time pegging me. First I thought I was a 3 (The Achiever). Then Mum read the book and thought I was a 4 (The Individualist)... then Connor got ahead of me and thought I was a 1 (The Reformer, but also The Perfectionist). I think Connor might be right. I read the chapter on the 1 hesitantly. (I didn't want to be a 1.) Guys, I think I'm a 1. I have trouble putting work out into the world unless it is perfect. In some areas that is great, like with writing knitting patterns. In other arenas this is terrible, like with the daily comic.

I don't want to reveal something that is less than perfect and this comic is just that. The lines aren't perfectly formed, the lettering is not all even, and I am not perfectly confident that it will be well received. I do think the stories are good, though... so there is that. So, even though I have not got all the comics up, I think it is time share that the daily comic site is up.  I'm not quite brave enough to post the announcement up on any of my other social media locations this time. This will just be between us, here on the blog. The site is called Audry Without An E and can be found at http://audrywithoutane.com/.

The site is still being tweaked, but thanks to Connor, it is largely where I hoped to have it. In the long term I hope to have a comic strip post once a day, although the strip will be from exactly a year ago. As of this writing, we have posted July, August, September, and a wee bit of October of 2015.

It's no small job. I've had to scan 160+ pages, clean up the lettering in areas where it was illegible (which takes a silly amount of time to do), then cut up and format each strip. In the original form, there are 4 strips per page, but for the online version, I have to break them down to one strip per page. After all that, I hand the strips over to Connor and he uploads them, titles them, adds tags, and makes sure they post to the correct date. Last night we sat together for three hours just to get 34 strips up.

Currently, I have processed strips through mid-February 2016, but there are still so many more to do. I'm not quite half way done even after spending every spare moment I've had in the last month. I guess what I'm saying is that it is a really big job and I really could use some positive feedback.

The Daily Comic Lives Again!

A while ago, I worked on a daily comic. Every day I'd draw a three panel comic that showed highlights of my day. Eventually, I gave it up because it wasn't fun anymore. Life is too short to have hobbies that don't fulfill you. Well, a few months ago, someone who was featured heavily in the comic asked if they were available to read. I never did scan them, so I started to look into what it would take to publish them. (I'm still looking into it.) Then something happened that I didn't expect: I missed drawing my daily comic.

Connor wasn't in the old comic, so I thought it was high time to draw one where he was featured. I hadn't drawn much since the old comic ended, so starting up again, I was surprised to see that I was able to pick it up pretty easily. I also feel like my story pacing is far better than it used to be. That being said, it still is difficult to be disciplined about drawing the comic each night before going to bed. I still have memories of the comic becoming much less consistent when I would put off drawing for a day. One day typically became a week, became a month, until the comic finally died.

I have stuck to it for two weeks now. I don't know how long I'll draw it, but for now it is fun.

Is anyone else experiencing renewed interest in an old hobby?