Post 150!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my goals list tonight (especially fitting now that I've realized this is my 150th post!).  Even though the new year is still six weeks away, I have a feeling that these weeks are going to race by and I don’t want to rush the creation of my new goals list on December 31^st.   Plus, T and I will be off to Paris and India for the last two weeks of December, which really leaves me with four weeks to finish up my priority projects and formalize my 2011 list.

My first thought about the 2011 list is that it should be qualitative instead of quantitative.  Trying to accomplish 100 creative things was definitely fun, but it also made me feel that I was trying to head off in too many different directions.  I started trying to knock off small goals quickly without giving much thought as to why I added them in the first place - definitely not the point.  Ultimately, the list is meant to help give me some creative focus and motivate me to work on projects even when I’m not feeling particularly inspired.  Like most things, I find that simply picking up a sketch book or sitting down at the computer to write is more than half the battle. 

So, 2011.  No more arbitrary numerical target.  Well, maybe.  I do love a good ‘top 10’ list and my mind still wants to categorize things this way.  But if I do go with a number, what should it be?  100 was too high.  25 seems to low.  50 could work, but it still doesn’t speak to any underlying focus.

Another possibility is a list organized by ‘the passions.’  Writing, drawing, printmaking, and bookmaking would be the big four.  However, pretty much everything I do involves some overlap between these categories in some way, so separating them doesn’t make much sense.

One idea I’m considering (and I’m sure this will seem completely crazy considering my less-than-regular posts) is the idea of aiming to do one creative thing every day.  This ‘thing’ would have to result in a piece of art – be it a single line of text or massive painting.  There wouldn’t be any limits on scale or scope of the creation, but it would have to have some sort of ‘thing-ness’ to it - tangible, experiential, documentable.  This idea comes out of reading a lot of blogs by artistic entrepreneurs who often follow the ‘create one thing a day’ rule to keep them motivated and developing new ideas.  I’m sure it sounds a lot easier than it is in reality (just like my 100 things list... which was originally supposed to be a 365 things list!), but it’s a great challenge.

The big difference in my mind is that the ‘create one thing a day’ goal lends itself a lot more to inspiring the process as well as the final product.  And since this blog is largely about documenting my creative processes, the whole concept seems to be a better fit.   However, I still want to create a projects list as well.  I just operate better with a ‘to do’ list.

I suppose I’ll have to think on this a little more as I’m figuring out my 2011 projects.

All suggestions welcome!