Snail mail

I'm a little more than a week into this project and having a lot of fun with it. While I am enjoying myself doing this, it is also serving its intended purpose really well. I am developing a discipline of both reading my bible every day AND doing something creative every day. It is also teaching me to loosen up and let go, bit by bit. The idea isn't to spend hours each day creating draft after draft until I'm satisfied; it's to spend a few minutes each day connecting and creating. I have to quiet the voice in my head telling me to start over because that line isn't straight enough, or I don't like where this is heading. It isn't about being perfect.

*all scripture is from the New Living Translation

If you want to receive a postcard and be a part of this project, please send your address to inspirepostcards@gmail.com. Don't be shy-  Join in on the snail mail fun!

5 (of the many) things I want from Raygun

There are plenty of unique places to explore in Des Moines' East Village, including previously mentioned shops, Found Things and Domestica, deliciously undead restaurant Zombie Burger, and Raygun, a t-shirt shop specializing in tongue-in-cheek love for the Midwest. It's another place I have trouble spending money because I know if I buy one thing, I'll buy them all.

Here are five things I want from Raygun right now:

Find more cool stuff from Raygun here:
http://raygunsite.com/

Happy Easter

Hope and joy abound on a day like today. CELEBRATE!
Happy Easter :)

Fear of a blank page, or empty day (and a new project!)

I think I've mentioned this video before on the blog, but here it is again with context.

It's a video from Creative Mornings, "a monthly breakfast lecture series for creative types."  This particular lecture is by Kate Bingaman Burt, an "illustrator, educator, and maker of things." She works primarily with automated directives, and talks here about the idea that constraints drive creativity.

She relates her fear of a blank piece of paper. It's intimidating. I feel the same way about my time. A wide-open day is intimidating. How will I fill that time? How should I fill that time? How many things will I fail to get done in that time? Could I have better used that time? I will get less done in a completely wide-open day than one where I only have a 30 minute window between work and other obligations simply because of it's overwhelming emptiness. It's like when you have so much to do that you simply sit down and do nothing instead because you don't know where to start, except the complete opposite.

One of my biggest problems is that I am an "all-or-nothing" girl. In other words, if you can't give your best, don't even bother. If I can't set aside several hours to deep clean my house, then I won't clean at all. Sometimes I come up with an idea for a project, but don't think I can carry it out exactly how I imagine it in my head, so I never start it. If I eat an entire pint of Ben and Jerry's in one sitting, I have already failed and won't even try to eat well the next day. If I miss a day of reading my Bible, why bother picking it up the next 35 days. Yeah, it's been 35 days.

While always giving your best is a great sentiment, this is a horrible way to live. Procrastination by way of perfectionism...strange. It doesn't even make sense. Each day is a learning experience. No one picks up a paint brush and instantly composes a masterpiece (except for child prodigies, but let's just not talk about them).

How many experiences have I missed because I was afraid to fail before I even started?

Don't worry. Just do. Make. Create. Try.

I will stop admitting defeat before the day has even begun. Let's say it again together, louder this time.
I WILL STOP ADMITTING DEFEAT BEFORE THE DAY HAS BEGUN.

Kate Bingaman Burt's rules for a project are as follows:
1. You must have a limitation on your format
2. You must have a framework for your content
3. You must have a restriction on your tools

So here's my project:

Every day I will pick a phrase or verse from that day's Bible reading. I will write that verse on a postcard, and send it to someone. I will only use black ink. I will do this for 3 months. I will photograph each postcard, and at the end of each week I will post the photos here.

SO, if you would like to receive a postcard (whether I know you or not), send me your address to this email: inspirepostcards@gmail.com, and you will receive one! 

Please help me out and send your address! Also, who doesn't love to get mail that isn't someone asking for money?

I have tried this kind of project before and lost track. You may remember a little thing called "100 days of Hand-lettering" that lasted less than ten days. Sigh. Well this time, I'm inviting you to keep me accountable. Bug me about it. If I haven't posted in a while, feel free to send a barrage of texts, emails, phone calls to get on it.

Some recent pages

Haven't posted any pages since I started working on a new group of papers- the Central Wisconsin group.  There are four papers in the Central Wisconsin group: the Wausau Daily Herald, the Stevens Point Journal, the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, and the Marshfield News Herald. Here are just a few examples of what I've been up to since working with these papers.

Here's a fun challenge: Design an A1 without
a single photo (except for the  Packers promo)

It's the most wonderful time of the year

Okay, I'll just say it.  I hate summer. I know- I can hear the disbelieving shrieks of schoolchildren everywhere, but it is just awful.  Okay, maybe not awful, but it's about as close as you can get to being awful without actually being awful.

My two main reasons for disliking summer are as follows:
1. It is extraordinarily hot outside all the time. Some days I wonder why I even bothered to shower before work when I sweat two gallons walking from the parking lot to the building.
2. The primary sport of the season is baseball.  I used to rag on baseball all the time for being boring.  I have since retracted those comments and warmed up to it, but it's not soccer or football. Baseball is like that last resort friend you keep in the wings. Well I have nothing better to do...I guess I'll watch baseball.

Anyway, apparently this isn't the popular view because every year on Ohio University's campus around March, or whenever the temperature rises above 40 degrees, students flock to "South Beach," throwing frisbees and playing basketball in shorts and t-shirts or sunbathing in bikinis.  And every year, I laugh at its ridiculousness.  It is just way to cold for that stuff still.  But people do it because they can't wait for it to actually be warm enough for both this behavior and apparel to be acceptable.  They grab on to any little taste of summer they can get and dive in. This is how I am about fall. 

As soon as it drops below 70 degrees, whether we have passed Labor Day or not, it is fall, and I am wearing jeans and a hoodie, drinking hot beverages like it is my job, and talking about football and leaves to anyone who will listen, which often means that I'm talking to myself.

Maybe it's just residual excitement from the years of my life when fall meant it was time to head back to school, start to soccer and marching band season, and wear the same hoodie every day for a week without judgment, but I just don't get this excited for any other season.

Maybe it's because fall weather is absolutely the most beautiful and comfortable weather of the year.  I wish I could spend all day hanging out under a tree with a book.  I can enjoy a cup of coffee without sweating at the same time.  Fall even smells good.

Maybe it's because when fall arrives, I know that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just around the corner, and I am a total freak about the holidays. Oh, it's October? Josh Groban Holiday Pandora station, here I come.  Not to mention, I have already scoped out nurseries where I can buy a real Christmas tree (they're the only kind that count). Little known fact: Santa himself despises fake Christmas trees and skips over the houses of people that harbor them.  Okay, that's not true, but this one is: the first commercially manufactured fake Christmas trees were made by a toilet brush company. Your fake Christmas tree is a giant, green toilet brush, and that is how I will forever see it.

Or maybe it's because fall is the season for me to get my hopes up every year that my beloved Cincinnati Bengals will win the Super Bowl.  You're all laughing, aren't you?  Yes, I am aware that the Bengals haven't won a playoff game since I was born, but hey, go big or go home.  Some day it will happen, and I will be able to say I believed the whole time. Haters gonna hate.

Whatever it is, I'm happy that fall is here and ready to enjoy it.

More ink and watercolor pencils...

Let the countdown to Homecoming begin!

I finally bought my plane ticket to go back to OU for Homecoming, and in the wise words of Becca Warhola, "It's my thing to look forward to."

While I am loving Des Moines, and my new life here, it is still difficult to leave behind my life as a student and Young Life leader at OU.  The past 18-ish years of my life have been spent in the structure that comes with being a student, but in June, that phase of my life came to an end- at least for now. For the first time in my life, I do not have a timetable for the next phase, and I will admit: that's pretty scary. 

When I thought hypothetically about where my life would be going after graduation, it was exciting to think about the lack of boundaries I would have. I could go anywhere and do anything.  But that was all hypothetical.  Now it's real. I could go anywhere and do anything. Sounds exciting, right? Maybe it should be, but I find it a bit terrifying.

For the most part, I have always known what the next year would hold for me. I knew how long it would take me to finish high school. I knew that after high school I would go to college. I knew (or assumed and prayed) that I would finish college in 4 years, and then begin my job search. Now I only know what I am doing right now. I know that I am currently living in Des Moines, Iowa working as a newspaper designer.  There is no roadmap or Cliff's Notes for my life.  Although, I guess it has always been that way.  I could have been in an accident that prevented me from graduating high school or run into financial troubles that forced me to complete college in 5 years instead of 4.  These things were never "givens," but I had assumed they were. Life seems so much more real now.

I actually don't mind working eight hours every day. I expected that to be a lot more of a shock to my body than it turned out to be.  I was ready to be done with school and put all my learning to practical use.  The most difficult thing about moving into this next phase is that my friends aren't as accesible as they have been for the past 4 years.  I don't live within a half square mile of everyone I would possibly want to hang out with, and I don't have time to hang out until 4 a.m. every night of the week, or any night for that matter.

I'm still trying to get into a rhythm with my daily schedule. Working nights can be difficult because my schedule is the exact opposite of most people's, which means that when I'm not at work, everyone else is, and vice versa. I sleep a lot, and I go shopping a lot.

It's not that I'm lonely, just lonelier.  Over the past few years, I have become accustomed to hanging out with my friends every day, but no matter what career or life choices I made, this was going to end when I graduated college.  I miss hanging out with no particular plan- wandering into 11 Stewart Street, knowing that there would be a friend or two or ten or thirty sitting in the living room.  I spent at least 25% of all my time in college at this house, and probably 75% of my best memories took place there. Where else would you find someone over the age of five drawing cat whiskers on their face with a marker completely sober (and it wasn't Halloween either)? In fact, the summer before senior year, I definitely spent more time at 11 Stew than I did at my own house. Way more.

I have been so lucky to have this place and the people that frequented it in my life. It was my source of entertainment,  my method of procrastination, my support system, my home and family away from home. Life is a lot different without it, but more importantly, my life is different because of it. So here's a shout-out to everyone who's ever been in that house: I love and miss the crap out of you, and am so, so, so grateful for you. To the people who live there: Thanks for the enormous sacrifice of privacy, alone time, and peace and quiet you have made by opening your home. It is so much more than the typical, structurally questionable college house. You preached the Gospel through your hospitality, showing Christ's love to everyone who walked through the door. Way to be.

"They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." Acts 2:42-47

Never have I seen this lived out so well.

So let the countdown to Homecoming begin! 15 days...

I've been playing with pen and watercolor sketches lately, so here's an early one. I bugged my friend Tim repeatedly to send me a picture of his house, which he finally did, but then of course I accidentally deleted the text before I did the drawing. Therefore, this one's from memory, so it's not quite right, but close enough!

Whew, that was a long one!

Fun fact: A middle school teacher once offered me a whole bucket of candy not to talk for the rest of the day. I talk that much. (And yes, I did it.)