Inertia

I've started another set of blocks, this time to be in papier-maché; seven of them all told, to spell the word inertia.

It's a funny thing, inertia. It can mean both being stuck, and moving. To quote Mewton's, er, sorry, Newton's First Law: an object at rest will remain at rest; an object in motion will remain in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force.

I feel I am right now stuck in the remaining at rest part of the Law; and trying to get myself to work on Something today, like these blocks, meant talking myself through it, the way a very depressed person has to carve up the day into tiny, manageable baby steps. Instead of looking at the whole project, which felt overwhelming, I told myself, Okay, now I'm just going to get the wallpaper paste out of the drawer of the art caddy. Just that, and nothing beyond that, right now. Turns out, though, I don't actually have any wallpaper paste, I just thought I did; but still, I did work on the blocks a little. And that counts.

Partially I'm sure it's the fact that it's winter, and all I want to do is hibernate; a little tricky, really, to get moving when Nature is telling me to remain at rest. But, also, it's that I have really gotten out of the habit of making things, and there is a lot of stuff to get moving, psychic, mental, and physical. So there's rather more to it than I'm assuming.

But, here are my blocks, so far:

Pardon the unphotogenic background; my drawing table does double duty as my sewing table. I hope to get that rectified soon, as I'm working on refinishing the spare room to be a proper studio space; right now my drawing table is set up in a corner of my bedroom, not the best way to go about things, if one has a choice.

Now, in the interests of showing myself (and the rest of y'all) that I have been doing plenty in the name of being creative every day, here's what I've put in my creativity log so far (I won't, probably, post in this much detail all the time; I just need to see it and make it real out in public today):

1/1/09: Danced a little to "Brain Damage Situation" by They Might Be Giants, which has a great groove; got doll's skirt attached and apron made; sketched a little; finished off the first set of Artist's Blocks; wrote a blog post.

1/2/09: Researched/wrote about Benzaiten for several hours (and let me tell you, Her history is unbelievably complicated!); and, oh, I'm gritting my teeth and making myself include this, I played The Sims for a while. Mostly I made the little houses, this lovely terraced neighborhood of Minoan houses with nice little gardens, &c. which, yes, technically, is creating something. (I will learn not to judge this one, dammit!)

1/3/09: Wrote Goddess of the Week entry; played more Sims and worked on the little houses some more (if interior decorating in reality is creative, so is this--yes, yes, I'm trying very hard to convince myself!); sketched some toy ideas.

1/4/09: Started more blocks; photographed doll; made a couple Minoan heads (these little bitmaps in Photoshop) for The Sims. (All right, Brain, listen up: this month's theme is Play; combine that with my word for the year, Permission, and it means I have permission to play. You know, like a game. Like, oh I don't know, maybe, just perhaps, The Sims! Oh, Brain, when will you learn?)

Here's that photo of the doll I've been working on. Right now she looks a little Amish (by which I mean the no face part; that's one way they reconcile the "no graven images" thing in the Bible). I have a vague idea what I want to do with her face and hair, but haven't liked any of the sketches I've done so far, so I've put her aside for now while I mull.