Things To Do While I'm Alive

In my birthday post on 26 January, I mentioned a self-discovery art journal inspired by my good friend, Annee. When the mood strikes me (usually 3-4 times a year), I take a few blank pages of this spiral notebook journal and pick out whatever magazine pictures or words catch my eye and put them in a current moment snapshot collage. It visually represents what's up for me. It has been a meaningful process for me for the ten or more years I've been doing it and I like to review the pages and see how they portend or document personal shifts or changes in my life. It's satisfying and fulfills my yearning to find other ways to express myself, this way through art.

Here's the cover page:

And here's a combination I put together some years ago as a self portrait. It's a combination of a Klee painting and a stone circle in Ireland. This, for some reason, speaks to places deep within me and is still accurate:

I did one in Trinidad on my birthday and then arranged it on the picnic table since I didn't have my journal with me. Now that I'm home I put the pictures into the journal today but tweaked them a bit by adding in some tickets from recent places I'd seen in Rome.

Pages 1 and 2:

Pages 3 and 4:

I'm not sure all that they indicate but they're partly to do with designing a new dream, re-innovating myself and getting back to simple things in a place that's simply spectacular. It is what's on my mind for quite awhile now come to think about it.

As I reviewed the past journal pages, here are the things listed in my illustated discovery journal over the years as things I want to do while I'm alive:


Defy

Dream

Imagine

Chime in

Have taste

Be flexible

Become quiet

Get innovative

Create sacred space

Give art the run of the house

Have a second career goal of changing society

Say "arriverderci" to average

Create domestic bliss

Serve up well being

Forge a new view

Work for legacy

Dream globally

Stay fascinated

Re-innovate

Worship

Share


They're values I resonate with, goals I think are worthy, challenges important to me to work on. And I like having a place to play with them, make art about them, keep them before my eyes and heart.

What inspires you these days?