So, here I am. I have a new class that I really have to concentrate on. I mean really- I need to concentrate. But instead, I am thinking about opening an Etsy store.
Let me back up. I bought a cool machine that allows you to bind your own books. It was as if it were meant to be.
Why? I have a couple of manuscripts (that sounds funny to me- pretentious- I don't know) that I have sent off to publishers and they have all come back rejected in various formats. I keep thinking, perhaps, it's the presentation. They don't get it. They don't get me.
Maybe I am deluded but I can't change that- my self image is what keeps me going. If I am not talented and creative and endowed with a strange, hard earned wisdom all my own- then who the hell am I? I don't want to pay thousands to self publish and then do my own marketing. What to do, what to do. The beast inside me will not be quiet and must be heard, must be authenticated and must be validated. So, I'll make my own books, I thought. Could this be done?
I went, looking for book making supplies. This is not a craft that has a large following. Michael's has virtually no supplies. Hobby Lobby, of course, was the answer. As I wandered through the scrapbooking section wondering how many college educations had been squandered on pretty sheets of paper- (I went through the whole rubber stamping phase with my mother so I may be tainted)- there it was. The Zutter Bind it All. It will literally punch holes through wooden chip board.
It was mine. Mine, like the stray puppy that shows up, shivering, on your doorstep.
I looked at it.
I pretended to look at something else.
I put it in my cart. I said to my self- "I'll walk around and think about it. I can put it back. I can."
I almost called my friend, ChinaMommy, to talk me down. After all, this is a recession. I am poor. My car has a broken fender. My child's college fund, blah, blah, blah. But I realized if I called Misschell, she would say "Of course you must buy it. You have to." So I saved a minute on my track phone and picked up some co-ordinating supplies to go with the machine.
What now? Well, I went home, snuck it in the house, past my husband and downstairs to my domain. Where it still sits. I planned non-stop for three days. I came up with a whole new group of poems to put in a book. Ever since I had a baby my poems are mostly about little girls, baby girls, daughters, etc. It's just where I am right now. I have to believe that there are others in the same mind set. So I put the poems into Print Shop and out came some papers which I cut to size. Nothing like what I want. Yet. But it helps to have a solid object to touch, rather than just an idea whirling around in the nether regions.
Then I was off on my figurine idea that I have been growing for a couple years now. The other big thing I am into is self realization, actualization, coming into your own, the journey of being a woman, blah, blah, blah again. But it's true. My childhood was mostly hell punctuated with periods of gray, mundane bleakness. Spots of light were my aunts and my Grandmother.
My twenties were- uncomfortable. My thirties...I was finally getting it- the whole thing where I realized If I LIKE ME then that's enough because I have pretty high standards and expectations. And I do, most of the time, as long as I am fully clothed and made up, like myself. Now at 40. I don't even want to think about it any more. Don't care if you like me- you probably do, you just don't realize it yet, why wouldn't you- it's not like I am a serial killer and I am kinda fun to be around, even without the alcohol.
So, in order to express to the world how wonderful all us women are, I thought I'd go down the path of ourselves in relation to the women who have shaped us and the women we will shape. Generations, so to speak. My figurine, sculpture, what have you, is to be a woman, not beautiful by commercial standards just beautiful because she is simply woman. She'll be wearing a long robe over a gown. One arm lifts a side of the gown and you see sewn or painted on the inside figures of women. Past generations, mother, grandmothers, aunts etc. and down to descendants- daughters and grandchildren.
But I think I need a forum. That's where the Etsy Store comes in. I'd have to get some books together- I have three ready to go, but how to illustrate (or actually produce) and two or three of these sculptures. But then what? This seems like a full on- shall I say it? Effort. And there's this class I am teaching. And those two girls that I have to tear off me like leeches so I can have one tiny moment to write about how wonderful they are. Yikes.
There in lies the title for this post. I am the center of the wheel and I find that I am trying to go off in so many different directions that I just don't go very far in any one. And that wheel just keeps spinning around. Oh, for God's sake. My head hurts! I have to go lie down, quietly, so as not to wake the husband who will realize just how long it's been....
Let me back up. I bought a cool machine that allows you to bind your own books. It was as if it were meant to be.
Why? I have a couple of manuscripts (that sounds funny to me- pretentious- I don't know) that I have sent off to publishers and they have all come back rejected in various formats. I keep thinking, perhaps, it's the presentation. They don't get it. They don't get me.
Maybe I am deluded but I can't change that- my self image is what keeps me going. If I am not talented and creative and endowed with a strange, hard earned wisdom all my own- then who the hell am I? I don't want to pay thousands to self publish and then do my own marketing. What to do, what to do. The beast inside me will not be quiet and must be heard, must be authenticated and must be validated. So, I'll make my own books, I thought. Could this be done?
I went, looking for book making supplies. This is not a craft that has a large following. Michael's has virtually no supplies. Hobby Lobby, of course, was the answer. As I wandered through the scrapbooking section wondering how many college educations had been squandered on pretty sheets of paper- (I went through the whole rubber stamping phase with my mother so I may be tainted)- there it was. The Zutter Bind it All. It will literally punch holes through wooden chip board.
It was mine. Mine, like the stray puppy that shows up, shivering, on your doorstep.
I looked at it.
I pretended to look at something else.
I put it in my cart. I said to my self- "I'll walk around and think about it. I can put it back. I can."
I almost called my friend, ChinaMommy, to talk me down. After all, this is a recession. I am poor. My car has a broken fender. My child's college fund, blah, blah, blah. But I realized if I called Misschell, she would say "Of course you must buy it. You have to." So I saved a minute on my track phone and picked up some co-ordinating supplies to go with the machine.
What now? Well, I went home, snuck it in the house, past my husband and downstairs to my domain. Where it still sits. I planned non-stop for three days. I came up with a whole new group of poems to put in a book. Ever since I had a baby my poems are mostly about little girls, baby girls, daughters, etc. It's just where I am right now. I have to believe that there are others in the same mind set. So I put the poems into Print Shop and out came some papers which I cut to size. Nothing like what I want. Yet. But it helps to have a solid object to touch, rather than just an idea whirling around in the nether regions.
Then I was off on my figurine idea that I have been growing for a couple years now. The other big thing I am into is self realization, actualization, coming into your own, the journey of being a woman, blah, blah, blah again. But it's true. My childhood was mostly hell punctuated with periods of gray, mundane bleakness. Spots of light were my aunts and my Grandmother.
My twenties were- uncomfortable. My thirties...I was finally getting it- the whole thing where I realized If I LIKE ME then that's enough because I have pretty high standards and expectations. And I do, most of the time, as long as I am fully clothed and made up, like myself. Now at 40. I don't even want to think about it any more. Don't care if you like me- you probably do, you just don't realize it yet, why wouldn't you- it's not like I am a serial killer and I am kinda fun to be around, even without the alcohol.
So, in order to express to the world how wonderful all us women are, I thought I'd go down the path of ourselves in relation to the women who have shaped us and the women we will shape. Generations, so to speak. My figurine, sculpture, what have you, is to be a woman, not beautiful by commercial standards just beautiful because she is simply woman. She'll be wearing a long robe over a gown. One arm lifts a side of the gown and you see sewn or painted on the inside figures of women. Past generations, mother, grandmothers, aunts etc. and down to descendants- daughters and grandchildren.
But I think I need a forum. That's where the Etsy Store comes in. I'd have to get some books together- I have three ready to go, but how to illustrate (or actually produce) and two or three of these sculptures. But then what? This seems like a full on- shall I say it? Effort. And there's this class I am teaching. And those two girls that I have to tear off me like leeches so I can have one tiny moment to write about how wonderful they are. Yikes.
There in lies the title for this post. I am the center of the wheel and I find that I am trying to go off in so many different directions that I just don't go very far in any one. And that wheel just keeps spinning around. Oh, for God's sake. My head hurts! I have to go lie down, quietly, so as not to wake the husband who will realize just how long it's been....
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