I'm a little bit bored tonight, and the internet is proving uninteresting, so I thought I'd write about the kinds of things that float around in my head all day long-- the stuff I find interesting that I want to learn more about, or see more of, or make more of.
I think about....
future home.
This is kind of a broad category. Since Arthur and I have no idea where we'll be in a year, probably either Austin or LA, (but let's face it, the possibilities are wide open) I often try and imagine our future house. It could be small and cottage-y or small and boxy or a duplex. How many rooms will it have? Will there be a baby's room? Since I read a lot of design blogs, I star my favorites, usually with pictures I like, as though to say, "File for later-- good idea." It makes me feel a lot better about the future when I can picture things as though they might be. Like a baby's room-- got that one figured out completely. Unisex. No pink, no blue. Zebra throw on the floor. White as the primary color, sea green as the second color and with a pop of mandarin orange as the accent color. See? Not so scary, no unknown.
Is it good design?
This stems from being a designer's daughter. My father is constantly remarking about the quality of design of an object or thing. Usually, sports equipment gets a remark like, "Nifty design, huh?" (which means he thinks it's good design) and computer related items (especially printers) get remarks like, "This is just unparalleled BAD design." Good design has the hallmarks of being easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and purposeful. Bad design is characterized by redundancy in usage, jarring or flat out ugly to the eye, and overwhelmingly frustrating to use. So why do I think about this all the time? Everything falls into either/or--good design or bad design. And while it's easy to look at an object and judge it's good or bad design, the judgement can move beyond objects. For example, my boss' method of doing Laundry is good design. It's a smart organizational system-- efficient, purposeful. (2 laundry baskets 1 clean, 1 dirty. 1 load of laundry every day, first thing in the morning. By the time you leave the house, clean dry clothes exit the dryer to be folded in clean laundry basket. There are never clothes on floors or beds, clean or dirty, there are never unfolded clothes.) Arthur and I's office is entirely bad design. There's too much going on in one room, a shortage of storage and no plan to accommodate new stuff. Bad design. Thus, I'm always trying to reorganize my life to fall into the "good design" category. Even if I'm doing something mundane, I always try to improve on my usage of time. Like now-- while blogging, I could be running the dishwasher. Much more efficient. brb.
The wants vs. needs game-- to do style.
Now that I work full time, I don't have 2 plus hours to clean up the house every day. Before, I would just suck it up and clean, and do chores and be done with it. But now, I have to balance errands and chores with lesiure in a limited amount of time. I can't just suck it up and do it all at once--because I just won't do it. There has to be incentive. So, I create a game of if/thens. If I put all the items away in the bathroom, then I can paint my toe nails. If I scrub down the counters, then I can read my blogs. If I vacuum the floors, then I can watch a movie. There always has to be a reward for doing the work. You can go ahead and say it-- I am five years old.
The story.
When I was unemployed, I made several references to writing something. I wasn't lying-- I have a massive, huge, epic story in my head. It's been percolating in my brain for months. Sometimes I ignore it for awhile and it comes back to me in dreams, in visions of the places in the story, in the sounds and even the smells and textures of the beginning. It is a very real place, with real characters. The problem is, the characters aren't fully formed yet. It's like they have shells, but they're hollow on the inside. I know who they are, and what they represent, but their voices, they aren't talking yet. Maybe my fellow writers will understand-- but the characters just aren't talking yet. I've never had this problem with my writing before-- if anything strong, distinct and different voices from my characters are my strength. And they've always just come. Maybe it's because I haven't done a lot of writing in a long time, but when I write, they all sound like me. Its devastating. I feel like it undermines all of my writing. Any tips or suggestions on how to move past this?
Well....those aren't all the things I think about, just some. Glad to give you an inside look to my head.
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