July 31, 2021

So, I went to the cinema yesterday instead of continuing with the Stuff purge because in the morning I wrote out every long-outstanding job that needs doing in here, looked at what I'd written, and thought hey, that's not so bad, I've got time to go to the cinema today.

(Spoiler: I'm deluded, but so are you, and the reason for that is explained in this article: Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t.)

Anyway, today it was back to The Great Tidy Up, attacking a different flank of the Stuff mountain - the arts & craft hoard. 

First, I went through my button tin, wool collection and sewing things, and made it all fit into two boxes instead of three. What came out will go to the charity shop on Monday.

Next up, the magazine pile.

I like making collages, so I keep a lot of magazines. I mean A LOT of magazines. To try and reduce them, I go through the stack from time to time, cutting out things I think I might be able to use. These cuttings go into folders and boxes. There are A LOT of folders and boxes, in several different places, and everything's just bunged in, there's no attempt to organise it.

Until today.

I got halfway through sorting the contents of one box into Sensible Categories before flaking out, exhausted. 

(The reason for that is explained in this article: The three-or-four hours rule for getting creative work done. This is why I bookmark so many articles, so there's always something I can turn to to justify my paltry attempts at adulting.)

But it was a start. And I'm looking forward to picking the job up again tomorrow - it got my creative juices flowing just seeing this stuff. I thought that particular spring had dried up long ago.

I found my anxiety doodles from April and May 2020, when we first went into lockdown and it felt like the end of the world:

A blank A5 piece of card, a fine-nib pen, and I could forget everything for a while, quietly absorbed in drawing tiny circles until the white space had gone.

I turned some of them into postcards to send to people:

And I made a whole booklet out of them to post to a niece, because I was scared and trying to reassure myself:

I found collages I'd made before the Dominic Cummings weekend, after which it all got a bit too much and I ground to a halt in everything except basic survival functions:

So this urge to purge, for me it's a sign of life. It's the headspace I was in back in February 2020 before the world closed in; it's about looking to the future. Fresh starts and all that. Out with the old to make space for the new.

The fact I'm turning my attention to these jobs again, after so long of not being able to do anything at all, fills me with hope, it really does.

Today's Photo: Caption