Finally, a good work day!

Feeling good today. Well, mentally good; my shoulders really hurt, and I’m not sure why. I’ll do some stretches before bed.

Started the day with morning pages and weekly review, which helped me figure out that (a) January was actually a tremendously productive month, in spite of my time-management frustrations of the past week, and (b) I’m still feeling tension between the non-timebound action lists and wanting a short, manageable daily to-do list. David Allen says the action lists are better than daily to-do lists, because they remain unchanged day-to-day, eliminating the need for daily recopying (and accompanying feelings of failure). I agree with this, but I’m still having trouble remembering the top priorities in each day without a daily list. I’ve been dealing with this by jotting down very brief daily goals in my morning pages, but I’m afraid one of these days the action lists and daily to-do might come to a showdown. I’ll report it when it happens!

I’m proud and pleased to have photos to share of the yoga tote I told you about yesterday, made for Tierra Yoga‘s giveaway. Click on the photo below to go to the rest of them (in my flickr album, Crafts):

I really fell in love with this tote while I was making it. I emailed photos to Ilia, Tierra’s owner, today, and she likes it too, so I’ll bring it in when I go for my Yin Yoga class on Wednesday evening.

After going craft-supplies shopping with Jinny last week, I’ve been eager to restock before starting on my Craft Happy inventory. I ordered some vintage buttons from brizelsupplies last week, and they arrived today! The faceted black glass buttons are my favorite (SPARKLY!), but the clear and white plastic ones are lovely too, and I’m delighted with the two red and gold beauties she threw in for free. I’m going to use these buttons to decorate some of the brooches I plan to make for Craft Happy. They’re so eye-catching!

Over lunch, Erik and I discussed making daily practices of some of our pursuits. Erik is experimenting this week with composing daily from 1:30-5 PM; he’s been focusing on software for so long, I’m glad he’s going back into music for at least a little while. My creative stamina isn’t up to Erik’s level yet, but I said I’d join him by doing some drawing practice every afternoon for an hour. Today I took out Scott McCloud‘s excellent Making Comics and did the first three exercises in chapter one, which turned out not to require much drawing beyond rough stick figures (which I always love, anyway!). I felt smarter after doing them, though, which has to be a good sign — I must have been using thinking skills I haven’t accessed in a while! After I finished these, I ran out to the post office and the supermarket, and marveled at how satisfied I felt with the day just after doing those fifty minutes of comics-making exercises. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s practice!

I think I really did want to do more drawing this afternoon, though, because when I came back from my errands I found myself at the desk again, facing down some blank papers. I did a bit of calligraphy practice, then made this card for my friend Huy‘s birthday. I like how it came out. I used a very wide black calligraphy pen for the lettering, which looked incredibly bleak and Goth to start with — until I overlaid it with swirls and dots in blue and pink paint pens. Gotta love the Japanese art pens!

I also made Huy a bookmark for a little birthday gift, using recycled sari ribbon and one of my favorite quotations from Pema Chödrön. For the photo, I stuck the bookmark in one of our mutual favorite books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 🙂 I’ll mail the card and bookmark out tomorrow… I don’t know if Huy reads this blog, but my cards always look better in person than in photos, so I’m not too worried. 😉

My day was not only full of good work, but I also found some new inspirations and events to look forward to. This weekend, Wei-Ling and I are going to the Bay Area Models Guild’s monthly Drawing Marathon. We’ll stay for three hours and figure-draw to our hearts’ content! I’m hoping I’ll get to draw some of my favorite models I met at the RAC, but I could also really use practice in drawing men. We’ll see how it goes!

Speaking of men, I’m dying to go to the Asian Art Museum in April to hear Coco Zhao perform. His voice sounds exactly like how I feel these days, now that I’ve cut my hair and remembered to wear skirts again. 😉 I found out about Zhao when Shra sent me this amazing calendar of events: San Francisco is hosting a yearlong Shanghai celebration! I am absolutely beyond excited about this. Not only is Shanghai a fascinating city in its own right (and no, I’ve never been there!), but my family has strong genetic and geographic ties to the place and culture. I’m hoping I’ll be able to make it to many of the events, particularly a SFPL exhibit of Shanghainese embroidery and, of course, the museum’s giant Shanghai exhibition.

I also ordered Anita Mannur’s latest book today, Culinary Fictions. Mannur and I had a brief blog conversation several years ago, and I’m looking forward to reading her book and getting back into her blog. I’ve been thinking I should reintroduce Asian American readings to my regular diet… after all, being Asian American is a huge motivating factor in my creative life, but I don’t get a whole lot of critical AA-ness through Etsy! Sigh, that previous sentence just sounds so trite, but I’m completely exhausted, and this is a post for another time.

Good night! Here’s to a productive work week for us all!

And oh! Happy February! 🙂