Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, creativity, finishing, making stuff, yay on February 4, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I finished a thing!
I can’t get into details because Mr. Man is giving this thing to someone as a gift, and that someone has been known to visit this site.
That said, it felt pretty great to conceptualize the thing, start the thing, work through the inevitable issues that came up while making the thing, and then finish the thing.
Pretty freaking great.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, action, hope, Thoughts on February 3, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Some days I wake up and the world is my oyster. The sun is shining, work is good and my to do list glows with possibility.
Other days not so much.
It’s usually not that anything is wrong, per se. The sun is just as bright, work is on schedule, the world continues to turn. All good things, but there are never just good things. I like to at least try to look on the bright side but of course, not everything is awesome all of the time. And some days the not so good carries a little more weight.
Inevitably, you will miss the bus, your loved ones will not always be healthy, dogs (and software glitches) do eat homework, and the good guys don’t win every round.
Fair enough. But what is the antidote to this not awesome?*
Action.
Make something. Do what you can. Help someone, even if it is yourself.
Life isn’t always positive but you’re creative, interesting, smart, capable and fun. When you can, be an island of hope in a not-always uplifting world.
Answer not good with great.
“This is the world as it is. This is where you start.”
― Saul Alinsky
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* Regular readers may have guessed what I’m going to say but that’s ok, reinforcement strengthens habit and action is a habit I appreciate.
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, Mondays, Thoughts on January 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I’m pretty sure someone out there needs flowers today. Is it you?
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, inspiration, quotes, Thoughts on January 27, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I’m working on a bouquet of smaller projects today, so I’ll leave you with this thought:
“I don’t care what you do in life, but challenge people with greater power than you and defend those with less power.”
— Nick Clooney, to son George
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Posted in Other, Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #AfterCovid, England, history, inspiration, Thoughts on January 23, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I love history. Not the memorization of dates and tests and such, but that moment where you realize in a sudden, visceral way that the past isn’t ever really gone. That the present is built on its bones.
I also like the idea of uncovering that past, either via literal bones or the items that people leave behind. Gold is nice and all (not least because it lasts) but I have a soft spot for the ordinary. What was once worthless, like a broken pot, a used envelope, translucent blue glass jar or a single button, becomes a window into the everyday.
A window in time, if you will.
From museums to restored footage to dragon bones (ok, not exactly but still) and virtual reconstructions, there are a lot of ways to see the past.
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I tend to prefer the more tactile alternatives.
My mother used to take us out to a friend’s cabin in the woods. In winter we helped her gather sap for maple syrup, but in summer my brother and I would head to the stream at the base of the hill. The water had cut a small cliff into the shale, and if we were lucky and good we could find fossils.
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Here are two examples of hands-on history I think would be fun to experience.
The fossil hunters of the Jurassic Coast
… with the West Dorset cliffs eroding at such a rapid rate, scientists alone could never hope to save even a fraction of the fossils emerging onto the beaches before they’re swept away by the waves. This has left amateur collectors as key partners in the fight to preserve the area’s extraordinary fossil bounty for study and display, and has, over the past two decades, fuelled a huge rise in the number of people visiting the local beaches in search of prehistoric treasures.
… the majority of the things salvaged from the mud are more recent—often medieval or later—and are small, humble reminders of what people used, maybe loved, and eventually discarded. Exploring the shore as a mudlark is like conducting a swift, simple, satisfying archaeological dig, with almost no digging at all.
More fun for the future!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, Thoughts on January 22, 2022| Leave a Comment »
“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate… I choose love.”
― Johnny Cash
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, Thoughts on January 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, home, inspiration, Thoughts, winter, yay on January 17, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It’s a snow day! True, I still have to work and all that but regardless, there’s something about a fresh blanket of deep snow that brings back childhood feelings of joy.
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“Perhaps I write for no one. Perhaps for the same person children are writing for when they scrawl their names in the snow.”
― Margaret Atwood
Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #ChimeraChronicles, Affinity Photo, creativity, inspiration on January 15, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Apparently I am not done with the Chimera Chronicles, or whatever you want to call this animal-human hybrid portrait thing I’ve got going on.
Behold, King Cassowary!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #ChimeraChronicles, Affinity Photo, creativity, inspiration on January 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Some days you get an idea in your mind and you have to go with it or spend the rest of the day pestered by the project that was not.
Meet Captain Pepper Griff McCaticus. She lives with friends and, apparently, spent a previous life rising through the ranks. Which helps explain her current position as queen.
“You know how it is with cats: They don’t really have owners, they have staff.”
― P.C. Cast
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