Fieldwork: Day 1

Already feel succesful this morning. I've exercised, submitted a recipe to a contest and ate a healthy breakfast. Today is vitally important as I will establish the format for my daily blog posts. I vascillated on what information I should include, but I've decided to bare all and keep myself honest.

AM Weight: 220

Exercise: 30 minutes on treadmill and mild stretches afterward.

Significant chore: Put away Christmas decorations

Creativity goal: Start destroying a journal and exploring the world!!

End of the day report--
Wow, this has been a good day. Christmas put away, napped, got some good planning and organizing done, make progress on my church calling and put some positive social activities on my calendar. I even have time now for a personal movie in bed. I'm feeling good about who I am today.

Fieldwork notes:
Wrecking the Journal - well today's assignment was rather administrative. Number pages of the book. Now that did present somewhat of a creative challenge. Regular books are numbered on each side of the page, but this book is going to require me to tear out, burn and othewise destroy some pages, which will mean the whole leaf - not just one side. So I made the decision to number the leaves. I went ahead and numbered them in the book I bought, along with the journal I will actually work in. At this point, I numbered only up to 20. It occured to me that the book isn't written to be an "activity a day" kind of thing, so I may run out of things to do by the end of the year. I'll take Sundays off, and allow occasional holidays as I wish. I may even make up a few destructive activities on my own. It seems strange to talk about distruction as a creative process. I'll mull that over somemore and when I do my first destructive deed I'll share some of what has come to mind. Planning for destruction seems like an oxymoron, but has some interesting implications for progress and improvement.

Exploring the world: There is alot of beginning instruction in the book for this. There is an emphasis on collecting random things, things that catch your fancy -- I already do this, but now have justification -- I'm exploring. My challenge will be on how to store and explore the materials. There was one page with some ideas for tools to use, I marked it with a sticky arrow. Here again, the book is not set up as an activity a day, so my mind is free to expand on the project. Already I think I would like to take a collection or two and use them as inspiration for painting projects. I want to learn to paint, I have started a painting, but I need some justification for this. Maybe justification isn't the right word -- I need, a starting point, a purpose, a theme to work in... that is closer to what I mean. I can work on a collection, explore it on canvas with paint. That'll accomplish exploration and expression together. I like that idea (came up with it right now).
Today's book activity was to do a quick write about where I was sitting. I realized that everything I am interested in is right in my little corner. It is very crowded, but comfortable for me. I am constantly organizing and adjusting it - it is like it is alive for me. I feel productive here, creative, satisfied. I do have to be careful though. I can spend so much time working here, that my muscles become stiff. My bad knee needs me to walk around sometimes. Maybe I need a timer for occasional marathon sessions. I did realize I have alot of lamps here. I have a desk lamp, a lamp on the night stand next to me. A gooseneck lamp, also on the nightstand (has a cool dimmer switch), and a clip on booklight. Not to mention the candle sitting on the desktop drawer unit. I have two lights on right now. I like the way the lights cast shadows. It is not overly bright, but bright enough for my work. The room behind me is dim. This kind of feels like a little stage area. A little cricket just started chirping quietly. Sounds like a background sound effect. This is my happy space, my personal place.