It’s a New Year!

Imagination Farm (mixed media)

I have been disenchanted with social media for quite some time. I finally made the decision to deactivate my FB account. I’m keeping my IG for now, because I have quite a few artist friends whose work I would miss seeing.

I enjoy writing and have been a journal keeper for most of my life – until social media and instant communication arrived. Who has time anymore for longhand?

But for me a piece of paper and my favorite pen allows me to get my thoughts  organized each morning and that’s how I (used to) stay balanced. And just a few minutes scattered throughout the day is enough time to work on some poetry. So here’s a little explanation for those who don’t know me except thru my mixed media work.

My world opened up for me when I met my tenth grade English teacher, Miss Marshall. She looked to be 100 years old at least with her stark white hair and her cane. She required each of her students to keep a daily journal and when we arrived to class her journal entry prompt was written on the chalkboard. Class didn’t begin until each of us had written in our journals.

Now it was 1965 when I was in tenth grade – long before the journal craze began. But it began for me then. I was able to request Miss Marshall for English the next two years. She became my mentor and encouraged me to write, not just in my journal, but to write my stories and poems as well. I joined the school newspaper ‘staff’ and wrote for the school yearbook. My major in college was English and I’ve taken numerous creative writing classes. I’ve also had a couple of jobs that required me to write.

I used to write long drawn out letters to my best girlfriend who moved to the west coast after school. We would write pages and pages back and forth on life, our loves, the state of the world – whatever we were interested in at the time. Pre-internet, it was actually necessary to write and mail letters. The phone companies didn’t offer unlimited long distance so I would prepare my favorite tea, grab my favorite pen and paper and away I’d go. I would write sometimes for hours depending on how much catching up I had to do. I was in love with descriptive words and the structure of sentences and the physical sense of holding the pen and writing in longhand.

And then along came computers and the internet.  Instead of writing for the sheer joy of writing, I became the queen of one-paragraph updates. And at first it was fabulous. I could stay in touch with everyone – send one paragraph to all of my friends and family at one time. I could even add images. I didn’t just stop writing, I stopped thinking ‘visually.’

It wasn’t long until I stopped writing longhand altogether.  I couldn’t remember the last time I wrote a letter to someone. The computer is a valuable tool bringing the world to my desktop. I’ve seen museum exhibits and artwork that I never would have seen without it and being a curious sort, the internet offers me hours of entertainment. I just needed to learn to balance my time with it. And that’s still an ongoing struggle.

I know it’s now February and I should be finished with all this resolution and new year stuff. But I have been wrestling with this for a while and the new year brings new opportunities for beginnings.

I’m not giving up painting. I am adding writing – stories, poems and maybe even a letter to someone in longhand. I am re-creating my blog and I might write a poem and cover it with paint. The word for me this year is authenticity!  I’ll be in my studio writing and painting – having fun being me without worrying about who likes what I do on social media!  And if I’m not in my studio, I’ll be in my garden or taking long walks or perhaps in my kitchen baking. I am making time for all the things that I love to do.
Happy New Year everyone.