To-Do in the New Year

I'm so thankful the holiday season is over.  Now it's time to get back in business.  Every weekend I look forward to Monday so I can start my week.  Each time I said that this week, the people around me kept groaning.  OK, so they have to go to a job on Monday, but so do I.  So my job is at home, so what?  It's still a job.  I still wake up at 6A.M. to get the day started.  There's alot to do, and I'm a morning person so that's the time when I feel my best.  By two in the afternoon I start to poop out. 

I'm not big on resolutions, but I have a to-do list that needs attention.  The one big thing I need to do is show up in the studio every day.  To show up and be present with no agenda other than to play at being creative.  By working with The Artist's Way I learned to just do something, one action, towards artful activity.  Even clearing the desk in my studio is "doing".  Writing the Morning Pages every day is "doing".  Inspiration seems to come with "doing" the smallest things.

Another item on my list is to plan the weekly artist's date, as well as a daily artist's time-out.  The time-out phrase is my idea.  The Artist's Way suggests a weekly date out alone as well as small daily pockets of time for a little artist's moment, but I'm going to call it a time-out.  I can barely get myself on a full blown date once a week, but scheduling a small fun thing during a break in the day would work. I'll see how it goes.  I'm planning a visit to NYC this week. There's an exhibition, The Origins of El Greco: Icon Painting in Venetian Crete at the Onassis Foundation in midtown Manhattan and I may go take a look as my first artist's date in the new year.  The visit alone is an artist's date even if I don't get to the exhibit.

I want to do the tasks I didn't get to in The Artist's Way course.  One task was to put music on and doodle in a sketchbook, but I never did it.  During my shopping travels I picked up a mini sketchpad . I'll have it in my handbag for doodling when I find myself somewhere with nothing to do.  I filled my rapidograph with ink and I'll pop it in my bag along with the pad!   I love pen and ink so I'm just going to have it ready to go.

I'm looking forward to a productive year and my mantra will be: It's the process, stupid.



For more info on the exhibit of painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, El Greco see:
The Origins of El Greco