The sloppiness of process

I was never the hare but, until recently, I was never the tortoise either. I am amazed at how slowly I am progressing through this semester and through this work in general. Sometimes, it seems my body and mind are the obstacles, other times it is as if the materials themselves are at war with my intentions.

I am failing to make connections between my reading and my work - which is most frustrating because it was I, after all, who chose the reading to partner with my work. So, I feel like I keep heading in the wrong direction. Or, an event like occurred again this week slows my work. I worked for over twelve hours on Monday - all productive - read, wrote, and created. Tuesday, similarly productive - I didn’t feel the pace was fast and I felt, for the most part, everything was going rather well. Wednesday came - and the more I moved forward (or at all) the more I felt as if I was almost undoing the two previous days work. I spent five hours on two (yes, 2) very small little sculpted pieces of furniture. AND the little wall pieces and the “yard” I had made were cracking and falling apart.

I know, logically, this cycle is normal for someone with my health condition - and I am quite frankly - just pissed off about how it creates this grand permanent problem of physical pain and exhaustion, emotional anxiety, and short term memory loss - which will cause for several hours wasted on the backwards way I have to read in order to remember anything. I also know that the reason it doesn’t happen every day is due to the fact that my central nervous system seems directly connected to the barometer. A small blessing if you live as a farmer - but, I don’t. Fortunately, I did not “unread” anything but, all the doubts started raising to the surface. “Is this really going to work?”, “Does this idea really apply or am I just co-opting the idea for convenience sake?”, “Do I actually believe this or am I just trying to adapt the idea so that it looks like I did the work?”, “ WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!!!”, “This sucks, I suck, This has all been done before - what is the point!” “I should just get a job doing data entry.” And this keeps happening. I think the biggest doubt I have is if I am going to be able to pull off enough work to show that the tortoise is in fact, slow and steady - and not napping under a tree. And then there is the actual failures of the work. The clay cracks, the image fails to pass on the proper ethos and/or pathos, the technology is unavailable to doing the work I want to do - or the idea seems to only be half thought - thus the piece is incomplete.

I know I need to develop a baby thesis for each idea - it is the only way I can sort of check myself - and this is the first place I can start to improve the work. I also feel like I have recently made a breakthrough in both general vision and direction - but, it's that doubt again.

I also know, that given enough patience - I will work out the "kinks" and fill in the "cracks".

I also know that I feel like I have begun to make a HUGE break through with the overall vision. The doubt, I think is that fear of success thing - but, also, that the vision "feels right", but I cannot define the "Why?", and that means I am at risk of creating another half-thought. So, today I am assigning myself to answer"Why?". And then to web them with a salient purpose.

Why
#1. White
White is symbolic of blank, cleansing, pure, beginnings, clarity, reflects all colors,

#2. Dolls
Developmental tools for understanding one's environment, culture, body, relationships, love, touch, self, imagination, god

#2.1 different dolls, dolls in different positions
Dolls have been around since before recorded history, they reflect our culture, our homes, our environment, our society and since they represent all these aspects of our lives and we are forever looking for ways to understand these things - children have been using dolls to understand and communicate about our lives for ages - adults have also used them - in the form of puppets, miniatures, mannequins, sculpture, etc . . . and in the history of playing with dolls . . .
In children's play with dolls they will abandon them in strange places, positions, they will torture them, cuddle them, fling them, burn them, cut them, dress them, undress them, poke them, pinch them, spank them, beat them, throw them, swing them, hold them, stomp on them, kick them, draw on them, dismember them, behead them, and then cry when they are hurt, laugh as they destroy them, and then apologize to them and bandage them up

#3. Mirrors
Reflection of self, backwards world, opposites, alludes to another dimension/place/world

#4. Glitter
implies dreams, fantasy, magic

#5. Miniature
controlled environment, playing god, same purpose as dolls, a way to look at our world/stories without having to be harmed by it/them

#6. Story
the origin of our questions, the reason we look for explanations, the explanations, what it is we are looking to understand, what it is we are presenting before ourselves in miniature in order to understand better