12 frogs

So far:

Thinking about art and doubt and all the time I am not spending in my studio, and I’m reading books and stories.

How my mind gets quiet, then gets open, when I pick up the camera and go for a walk (which I am still doing, I’m just not in the studio as much as I anticipated). I always feel better when I do it, and when I’m back at home later, on the computer, weeding in iPhoto and processing in Photoshop.

Thinking about writing and how I’m not (except at this moment, when, obviously, I am, if you remove any worries about quality or arguments about “real” writing and concede that typing your own words technically qualifies) and that I miss it.

How I have exciting new books as a result of the holidays. I sense a short story reading kick coming on. I’m in love with Dangerous Space at the moment, because the stories make me uncomfortable and stay with me. I picked up the improbably named Demons in the Spring and Dreams of a Dancing Robot Bee even more improbably at Barnes and Noble this weekend, for only ninety cents more than the total of the gift cards I had. There was a special satisfaction in handing over a single dollar bill and getting a dime back and still getting to leave the store with two books.

It’s January and cold and there’s actually snow on the ground, threatening to stick around for more than forty eight hours this time, and this pleases me. (I don’t drive in it, or have to shovel it, and no I don’t have the kind of job where I get snow days, but still I love snow like I did when I was a kid and brought my roll-up blue plastic sled to school.) By the end of the week, the high temp will be in the teens if the forecasters are right. I hope they are. I will wear my flannel-lined jeans.

Realizing the photo project is really winding down, only a few weeks left, considering what project(s) I might do next.

Best thing I read online this weekend wasn’t anything new. An essay about doubt. Another by the same author on the unsayable is open in a tab, I will get to that soon. That’s a new thing I’m doing this week: actually reading through the things I pop open in tabs. Really reading them. It feels like I’m looking for something, not sure what. I’m reading the likely suspects, too. (O’Reilly’s Work on Stuff That Matters — which I liked, but some part of me is always suspicious, these accomplished folks for whom money presumably isn’t a major worry, telling everyone to work on what really matters — not saying he is wrong, in fact I don’t believe he is. But the working class kid in me snorts a bit and hearing it, and thinks nice work if you can get it despite the fact that I went to college, three times, three degrees! so that I could get nice work, perhaps not understanding entirely the indentured servitude aspect of the debt involved in doing so.)

It’s late, I’m already up too late for the alarm, and I have the dentist in the morning. I’m grateful this is just a cleaning and there won’t be any terrible news involved. I already know at least one more crown and probable do-over of another root canal is in my future. This confers immunity at my cleaning: how can hearing about cavities possibly bother me?

So, photography, good books, ideas, looking for something, not-so-secretly enjoying the bitter cold. Things are off to a good start.