Intentions and unintended developments

One year and a few days ago I started a project. On the day after my 58^th birthday I began posting daily on Instagram under the hashtag #58plusdaily. My intention was to post mostly about my creative activities, with a little bit of ‘life’ thrown in. I figured my love for taking photographs, although it has never developed into anything reaching any kind of artistic standard, would always enable me to post at least some creatively taken photograph. The ultimate aim was to boost my creative activities which have been suffering, I think, since I started the nursing course and then working as a nurse. A post a day is a minimal time investment but would always give me a line to keep my eyes open for something interesting to photograph. In the beginning of April 2023 I had reduced my working hours and dreamed I would be back to quilting lots and lots, finally finding a way back into making mode. I did not count how many posts I did, I did not actually post every single day, but I did not miss too many.

The intention of boosting my creative activities, which I, mostly, wanted to turn back into the fabric realm, didn’t realize to the degree that I had hoped for. There was a lot of life going on, and many reasons kept me from sitting down at the sewing machine, putting my mind to a quilt design wall, picking up a few pieces of fabric. I was making, making something with my hands every day – I completed a sweater, socks and a few other knitting items, I handspun yarn, I did some hand stitching, relatively mindlessly putting scraps together which might turn into something eventually, it is good company to take along on a train or on travels.

 I even completed quilts.

This piece became a section in my entry for the 'Ocean' challenge by EPM.

The Essence of the Haiku, for 20 Perspectives

A baby blanket from orphan blocks for a little girl

This became "Seeing Red", my entry to Brno Festival Challenge

"Family Histories in Textiles and Books" for 20 Perspectives

My contribution to the Round Bobbin Challenge
for the Swiss Patchwork Guild's 35th anniversary

 

Searching for the hashtag now shows me that the pictures are mostly indeed pretty good, but there is much more of ‘life’ being shown on Instagram than ‘creativity’. Looking at the photos in my gallery the overall pictures changes – there are a LOT of very very good and creative photos indeed. (Not intending to brag, but hey, it’s true.)

 

As the year of that hashtag is over simply because the number changed recently I am still trying to get back into the creative regularity I used to have – but who am I kidding? Even if I am not working full time, I am working 50%, and have set up a rather strange commute situation. I can’t expect to be able to make so much time for creativity as I could when I was not working outside the house at all, ‘only’ doing the small fabric dyeing business and bringing up a child.

What did happen during the past year, however, were a lot of changes I had not foreseen or envisioned. And some consequences of these changes I cannot fully grasp yet. And there are more to come – ageing parents (we have had dramatic developments on both sides of our family, my husband’s mother as well as my father), an extremely difficult-to-deal-with colleague for my husband, who has now decided to draw the line and move to a different position (problem ahead: emptying out and moving house after 19 years in one place), sending my son off to university, adapting to the changes Long Covid has brought into our lives as my husband is dealing with it, a ‘mild’ version that is still a very unpleasant experience for everybody affected and involved. All this while I am still adjusting to the new work environment, colleagues, that extreme bi-weekly commute I willingly inflicted on myself.

Many people have told me before that they admire how much I seem to get done. I think I have mentioned before that I never have the feeling I am actually getting enough done of all the things I set myself up to. But that may be the problem, resulting from my philosopher-father who, of all things, constantly worked on the topic of achievement. I have to be kinder to myself – I have indeed achieved a lot during the last year, and I need to be gently with myself to be able to tackle whatever lies ahead in the near and not-quite-so-near future.

I won’t be doing another daily-photo-thing on Instagram, mostly because I am less plussed with Insta than I used to be. I do intend to make daily, I will report about it here and sometimes on Insta and I hope to get through these very challenging times ahead of us without a burn-out, freak out or complete collapse. But making is important, and daily making indeed. Some idea I had about getting into a daily regular habit has started but not achieved the regularity or continuity yet. Perhaps, soon...

Establishing a new Work-Life-Balance

 

Looking across a section of the lake towards the Roman Cathedral at dusk

The change of job with the arrangement of two weeks there, two weeks with my family has led to a new way of counting time. Not sure how long that will last, but so far I have been going by “1^st phase in Ratzeburg”, “1^st phase home after Ratzeburg”, “2nd phase…” etc. Right now I am in the middle of “3^rd phase home after”, and that means that already half of my probationary period is over. I have arrived at a point where I have the feeling that I have pretty much acquired the necessary knowledge to work the kind of machine I did not know already, I remember mostly where things are and I am no longer itching to follow processes of dealing with patients as they were done at the former place, but am getting used to doing it the way as it is done there. I have begun to understand some of the more intricate dynamics within the team relationships and think I know whom to be aware of. I tell myself that I go there to work, not to make close friends, getting along with them in the working environment is the important thing. The head nurse is straightforward, no fiddling, and so far we have communicated very well, which is rather different from what I was used to before.

One of the reasons why I chose Ratzeburg is the fact that it is situated in lake country. And I wanted to go far a daily swim. Depending on the work schedule I go before work, or on a long and extended walk after work. In January I started by wading in the water up to my knees and thought I would continue to do so until sometime in the spring. But in February, after my return and a first wade I decided to not wait any longer and have been immersing completely since. It is cold, indeed, and the first three times were very very difficult. After that, it has become easier and easier and as the water has warmed up a little – from 2 degrees centigrade to just above 7 last time I was up there – my swimming time has increased a bit, too. 

Bike trip to Schaalsee

 I love the lake, I listen to the birds and use my app to identify bird songs and enjoy the walks. 

 

I have received my rental agreement for the apartment I will be moving into and hope that the windows will really get exchanged soon enough that the moving-in date stated in the contract is actually going to materialize.

Thus I can say that the work side of life is on a very good road. I feel much happier in that arrangement than I have felt in the previous work situation, and I am much happier in that town than I have been in many years where we have been living for the past 19 years.

So far, however, I have not been able to seriously commit to a daily art practice when I am up there, although I meant to. I am making something every day, but often (only) knitting or spinning, because the room in the nurse’s dormitory that I am staying at right now does not really have enough space for creative activities, nor did I bring a whole lot of materials.

But I try to get serious about it when I am home.

I did finish, enter and ship one quilt for the competition of former Prague Patchwork Meeting, now Brno Patchwork Meeting, as I mentioned in the last post. I am going there next month (during “phase 4 after”) with an exhibition of 20 Perspectives and wanted to be a part of the competition “Zero Waste” as well. I also finished my quilt for the Ocean Contest of European Patchwork Meeting in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines, which I also wanted to enter in Wide Horizons and will finish the digital entry tonight.

And I need to get going about my contribution to EQA’s challenge “Imagine a Bird” (in Germany we called it “alle Vögel sind schon da” in quotation of a well-known German song). My first idea of a derivation from a photo I took on one of my walks along the lake 

 

has been substituted for already by another and I will see how it works out.

And then there is a SAQA Benefit Auction piece that needs to be made...

Changes coming up...

 Yesterday I took an outing with a friend of mine, enjoying the sunshine, training our resilience in terms of reliability and punctuality of German Rails, and visiting other friends.

I posted this picture on Instagram yesterday, as 'Picture of the artist taking a picture',
because that is what happens when I am waiting for the late train at Landshut main station
- usually it is one of the graffitis on the waggons, but this time it was ...

this gorgeous piece of found art.

It was a nice day, and the train issues were the preparation for my upcoming more frequent travels when I start commuting on a bi-weekly basis by the end of this week. My last three days at work this past week were two thirds ok, one third straight from hell in terms of stress and enjoyability, fortunately that was not the very last one. So I went out of there with a sigh of relief and a bit of regret at leaving a number of nice colleagues who were indeed pleasant to work with, but couldn't even out the brat's misbehaviours. Now I am ready to start the new. And hopefully get back to some more concentrated making in the textile and fiber realm. I can't quite oversee how the daily routine will work out when I am up north, but I am planning to do daily art again, and will decide later today just what it will be that I am doing.

Right now I am getting ready to pick up my son at the airport after a few days with his friends on Malta, and then a quiet New Year's Eve with my husband after a visit to a small local theatre.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, all the best for 2024, and looking forward to what this year will bring!

Not a crystal ball, so not suitable as a means to tell the future... but certainly
good enough as a container for all the good wishes to all of you,
and the hopes and wishes for myself!

“Daily Somethings” in SAQA’s Virtual Gallery (Diary of recovery 4)

As I was walking to the bakery the other day I saw this little piece on the sidewalk and instinctively stopped and stooped to pick it up. 

Yes, it is Covid19 times and you are not supposed to pick up stuff because it might be contaminated... but I didn't care. The action, and the instinctiveness of it, reminded me of last year’s project “Daily Somethings”, which had started as a Daily Art project, then I got behind, then I decided to cut it short by limiting it to 100 days, and finally I added some more things when I was picking up and collecting stuff in South Africa. However, I was extremely behind on the dailiness of it all, and then I started doubting the quality of what I was producing. At some point I was very close to putting it in the bin, but Kathy Loomis’ insistence that it was well worth finishing helped me push it through. I still wasn’t sure I liked it, but at least it was finished, and I was going to give it a chance for a public appearance. 

detail of "Daily Somethings"

So at first thought I would enter it for Birmingham, but then the Festival got canceled, then the virtual galleries were initiated, and then a SAQA call came up first. So I entered it there, thinking it could always still be entered for Birmingham after it got rejected from the SAQA virtual gallery.

Then I had almost forgotten it and the announce-by-date when Claire Passmore sent me a message last week congratulating me for being chosen. I once messaged Claire from a show where she had won a prize congratulating her before she had been notified by the organizers, who knows, we might be establishing a tradition here… I hadn’t seen the message by then but checked my mail and was quite pleased to find out that I was one of 28 chosen from over 150 entries. Not a real in the terms of physical exhibition, but it was a good piece of news to receive in the context of a week that was full of mood swings.

In my mess on my desk I have since found two more items that could easily qualify for inclusion in Daily Somethings, one of them being this label that was attached to a jacket I bought in the fall for its bright yellow color only. 

Even then I wondered about this label – there had been another paper one on the jacket declaring it ‘vegan’, and that almost put me off buying the jacket entirely because I don’t really believe in veganism, and certainly not in clothes. And I am old enough to remember when clothes like this would have been disapproved of as being ‘100% polyester’ in certain parts of the population, back in those days when ‘natural’ was the total hype. Times change, don't they? But I wanted this yellow, so I denied all my principles and went ahead and bought it. (Despite my ‘not buying any new clothes’ mantra.)

But I am not doing anything daily right now, and because I still remember vividly how hard it turned out to finish this one that I have only opened a little box where stuff like the metal piece and the plastic label will be living for a while. Something might come of them, but right now I am only keeping them.

Thank you, Kathy, for making me persist by believing in this piece.