The good news is that I do have a few more posts of substance lined up behind this one, but for now, as long as the spirit is willing and the flesh is able, I’d like to get something down into electronic words.

I was going to try to read cram a chapter of two in out of the “textbook” for the final I have tomorrow in before bed. But I’ve had such a day that I would much rather let the outline I wrote up tonight be good enough. The class is such that the material is pretty self-explanatory, it’s just naming the theories that’s going to be a little tough. The nice thing though is that I’m not panicking!

I’ve finished the wedding art card for my friend whose wedding Charlie and I will be attending this weekend. I’ll post the big reveal on Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook for my non-interwebsy friends. This design is a definitely different take from the one I did for the last wedding I was a guest at, but like all children, I love it just the same.

I’ll have more news on the Zentangle front, but I have a few loose administrative ends to tie up before I go blabbing about it on the Internet. I promise, though, if everything works out, I’ll spill the details here.

Despite all of my leanings, I must be an optimist, because I keep thinking that the 6-week summer semester is a good idea. The subject material in this class is interesting, but it’s not 3-hours-a session interesting, and I find myself fantasizing about leaving every break. I’m pretty sure I’ll be skipping on Thursday to get some headway on the second paper, and look through the notes. That is sadly a better use of the class time.

So I tell you this to mention that I recently used my Dick Blick gift card from Ada to buy myself a 5×7 sketchbook and a full set of Sakura pens, and I’ve taken to making a Zentangle in every class. I’m not sure if it’s helping to assist me in learning the course material and “zen-ing out,” but I’m definitely getting out there and producing.

I find myself having the same conversation with people about producing things. Mostly, it was a lot of deep theoretical conversations with bona fide artists (visual, performing, and musical), but recently, it was with someone who would not have considered themselves and artist in the traditional sense.

Basically, I encouraged him to produce not for accolades, but for production’s sake, and that eventually the accolades would follow. It reinforced to me that I need to just keep producing if I wanted to get back into the arts, which I am desperately missing and craving. As a result, I’m seeing the budding that’s occurring within me as far as working on 2 to 3 Zentangles per week.

Now, I just need to continue to leverage that production back here into my writing. I do eventually want to be published again in a non-fiction magazine for one of my personal essays, but the only way I’m going to a) generate a large enough body of work to draw from and b) re-hone my skills as a writer that have atrophied over the years is by staying in practice, and keeping up here on the blog is going to be the way to do it.

What I need to stop saying is, “I should…” and I need to start saying “I’m going to…”