Because January was the longest year.

Also because:

I increasingly feel less drawn to this space, this notes page started 10 years ago. Same with sharing a long list of year end reflections -- which relates to what takes me longer each year to get this out into the ether, along with other things seeming more important, urgent or desirable calling my time and attention.

I'll continue to do my annual reflection on my own, but feel less motivated to share all my highlights from the previous year in this public way. I may be drifting toward a different mode of sending out regular posts -- will I finally follow the trend and get a Substack? Something else? However, so not to leave this spot empty and devoid of explanation, below are some highlights from 2025, also some low-lights and a few goals for the next two years.

Highlights:

• I moved into a house where my roommate and I hosted a living room reading of my new full-length play TrapDoor: A multi-dimensional romp across space/time. 

• My play New Eden got semi-finalist ranking in the ScreenCraft Stage Play Competition.

• I spent four months unlearning and relearning who I am through Imaginisma's alternative educational collective. 

• Tiara Thompson and I brought a staged reading of my play Wolf/Girl to the Liberty Theater in Hailey, Idaho, collaborating with The Liberty Theatre Company and Wood River Wolf Project.

• I shared a reading of Take Me Away: A train wreck with monsters at Boise Contemporary Theater's 5X5 Reading Series -- my first time back in that series since 2016!

• I read my weird poetic narrative Thoreau the Crow: An Origin Story at MING Studios and Address Book.

• I read four excerpts and pieces on the theme of Silence -- by myself and others -- on the Something I Heard show for Boise State Public Radio.

• I sold out my first edition of 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle. 

• Nick Jaina and I released the second edition of 12 Lifetimes -- with some updates inside and on the cover. 

• Chris Mathers Jackson wrote a sweet review about both editions, as did some kind readers on Goodreads.

• I read from the new edition in the midst of two Nick Jaina living room shows.

• The Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program (that went on hiatus in 2024) joined forces with PlayPenn to find a resurgence as the PlayPenn Certificate Program in Writing for the Stage -- so I got to pick that program back up again.

• I stayed at the Hemingway House in Ketchum, Idaho as a Writer-in-Residence for two weeks in May, untangling a new...something...that started growing in Imaginisma, or the previous year, or for decades of slow simmering incubation.

• I talked with George Prentice about my experience in Ketchum. 

• Thanks to Imaginisma, I started unwrapping a new workshop series along the lines of Untangling Your True Voice.

• I tried various parts of them out through Imaginisma, then at Hemingway House and the Water Bear Bar later in the summer. 

• I got the new red edition of 12 Lifetimes stocked at Chapter One Books in Ketchum, Kuna's Book Habit, Rediscovered Books and Flying M Boise.

• I returned to Alaska's Valdez Theatre Conference with my play Take Me Away.  

• At the conference, I also shared my ten-minute play You Light Me Up, micro-play Tree People and took part in the Valdez Fringe Relay with a ridiculously surreal western serial contribution.

• Thanks to fellow Valdez artist Shawna Medford Kelty, Take Me Away got featured on the KC-ACTF (before the American Collegiate Theatre Festival pulled from the Kennedy Center) Summer Reading List recommendations.

• Boise Contemporary Theater started a Locals Only Summer Reading Series, where I shared TrapDoor.

• I had an invitation-only Zoom reading of TrapDoor with some of my favorite performers, all of whom used to live in Boise and moved away (though one moved back, yay!).

• I got more into body/brain connections through another Alexander/Klein Techniques workshop with Fabio Tavares -- and a few with Lisa Lechner's Gravity installments too! Plus another somatic breathwork session at Exhale Boise and tuning sessions with CL Young.

• I realized I've practiced Alexander Technique Constructive Rest Pose in a daily way for 10 years.

• I took an excellent script analysis class on "difficult" plays by women through the new PlayPenn Certificate Program from Pandora Scooter. 

• I got to serve on the James Castle House selection team for 2026 residencies.

• I talked with Wally on the Content Warning Podcast about 12 Lifetimes and theater -- especially what it's like to write plays in Boise since the pandemic.

• Nick Jaina and I performed an evening of words and music at the Hemingway Center at Boise State University.

• Julianna Kelsey wrote a lovely feature story about that night and about my work as an artist for the Arbiter.

• I contributed a short article about courage to The Dramatist Quarterly.

• After years of talking about it, I made (and am continuing) first slow steps toward forming a Playwrights Collective in Boise.

• I read another weird poetic narrative called Rabbit at MING Studios and, when they selected the story for publishing, at the Paper Plane Press Volume 3 release event.

• I wrote/unearthed new short plays Eat Your Words and hope is the chest with feathers.

• I wrote a number of new centuries.

• I continued picking at a larger piece/thing/project that I'm still calling the Play Yet Unwritten, not sure if it's really a play, a facilitated workshop-ritual-ceremony-experience, or some hybrid of the above. I'm leaning toward hybrid.

• I read a new century at The Star Public Library Branch's Writers Read series and at a private holiday party.

• I got to see a client's fantastic doctoral dissertation about using fiction-based research to understand how teaching theatrical devising in educational programming also helps teach empathy.

• Thanks again to artist Shawna Medford Kelty, I got a staged reading of Take Me Away scheduled at SUNY Plattsburgh, coming up in March.

• Thanks to another fellow Valdez artist Greg Romero, my play see in the dark: a new myth got featured on the University of Houston Playwrights Winter Break Play-List series recommendations.

• I got news that my play TrapDoor is a semi-finalist at Local Theater Company's Local Lab.

Lowlights:

• I got hit by a truck (my third time getting hit by a vehicle on my bicycle), breaking my right (write) hand, separating my shoulder at the A/C joint and tearing my rotator cuff. 

• Because of that (and the too-much I'd taken on before that), I found myself at the bottom of my well, overwhelmed and depleted.

• Because of that, I had to cut out of Imaginisma early and cut travel plans to Maine for that program -- but I was doing too much anyway.

• Because of aftermath from that accident, I also couldn't fulfill my original intentions at the Hemingway House, but the pivot I took ended up being what I needed.

• Because of the accident, I had to reschedule my reading in Star for December, but that ended up being the best time for that event.

• Because of the accident, I didn't start a new full-length project -- at least not the ones I planned.

• After starting back into my certificate program, the class I chose for fall had to postpone to begin in January -- but this one (The Art of Theatrical Imagination with Mathilde Dratwa) is making the start of this year much better and helping me find shape for The Play Yet Unwritten/Into Your Wild.

1. My high school drama teacher and major theater community member Tom Willmorth (Mr. Tom) died of complications related to early onset Alzheimer's, Parkinsons and lewy-body dementia. 

2. I spent all year moving through grief of relationship changes after letting go of my previous home/partner/our cat daughter.

3. All the low-lights related to Trump, that inauguration, watching the devastation unfold, big hits to education, arts, humanities, grants, science, medicaid, human rights, people with disabilities, women, LGBTQIA+, science, immigrants, people living legally in the US but deported (or killed) anyway, friends suffering, nation/world suffering, animals and planet more endangered than ever...

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Start submitting 100 things a year again

• Adapt my feature screenplay script into a large-cast, full-length puppet horror play that explores the cycle of abuse through a possessed boarding house

• Take next steps of this Play Yet Unwritten -- that might be called Into Your Wild? -- and move it toward a public showing

As the year of the wood snake moves into the fire horse, I see 2026 as my year of finding emotional clarity and trusting myself to let go of what I don't need, embracing fiery audacity in my creative curiosity and moving forward with big joy and passion -- turning emotional insight into real-world, empowered embodiment. Let's hope!

I'm asking:

• How might I trust my whole self?

• What does freedom (from stuckness, past patterning, survival mode...) look like for me?

• What happens when I plant what I long to grow and tend my garden in the way I want?

No photo reel in this reflection, at least not yet. Maybe I'll add that as I move forward, but if I try to do that now I may never post this. Instead, I'll leave you with this carved Octopus/Kraken wrestling a lighthouse at the Valdez harbor, which may or may not feel poignant to you too.

Highlights:

• I enjoyed some sweet radio, video, podcast and print interview time with George Prentice for Boise State Public Radio's Morning Edition, Joe Golden for an upcoming documentary, Ned Buskirk on You're Going to Die, Koletta DiDio for The Arbiter, Joshua Adler on For the Wild Ones and Daphne Stanford on Radio Boise.

• I finished my 100 drawings project, part of the 100K Praise Project led by Erik Ehn. They got shared at La MaMa on Leap Year Day (!).

• My play for young audiences Wolf/Girl was produced at Boise State University. Having been a playwriting student there starting around 2004, and teaching in that department since 2017, I have hoped for a main stage production through at BSU for a long time. The moment felt at least 20 years in the making. It was an especial highlight working with the remarkable, empathetic leader Tiara Thompson.

• Three from the cast of Wolf/Girl spoke up at an Idaho Fish & Game hearing on behalf of wolves, who are facing some of the worst threats they've experienced in the last century, especially here in Idaho.

• We were able to participate in the above because of meeting the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, some of whom saw Wolf/Girl and invited us to help wolves in this tangible way.

• Then that amazing group (IWCN) procured a grant on Wolf/Girl's behalf to take a showing of that play to the Wood River Valley -- Tiara and I will be bringing a staged reading to The Liberty Theater in Hailey, in partnership with The Liberty Theatre Company and IWCN, this February 12th at 6:30pm.

• I had the official release event of my first book, 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle at MING Studios and a few pop up events that followed (with more to come in 2025). We sold most of the first printing, with just a few copies remaining through Modern Mythographer and at a handful of select stores. Mega thanks to my publisher and editor, Nick Jaina!

• I got 12 Lifetimes in stock at Flying M, Rediscovered Books, The Lit Room, Kuna's Book Habit and Magnolia's Books (in Seattle). I believe there are still copies at the first four locations (or will be soon for any sold out). There are many people and places I got to meet because of this little blue book, some of those connections being quite meaningful and if not life-changing, at least life-affirming. And some people I got to reconnect with for the first time in many years, which felt quite special too.

• I read from one of my new full-length plays Take Me Away: a train wreck with monsters at Storyfort.

• I served a six-month term as Boise City Writer-in-Residence, using that time to share my six-part workshop series on Refilling Your Creative Well as well as write a bunch.

• I also got to teach Refilling Your Creative Well (combined as part of the three-part series with Exploding Your Creativity and Creative Salon) for a Boise State University Theatre Arts class, my favorite teaching experience there to date.

• My micro-play DreamSong got performed live and on a podcast through Goucher College.

• My ten-minute play lift got a reading through City Theatre in Miami.

• I boogied my feet off in a combined 40th/50th birthday dance party with Kate Kraay, co-DJ'd by Ed Kraay at West of Lenin.

• Through my Writer-in-Residence summer (plus a little spring and fall), I wrote my new full-length play TrapDoor and two new ten-minute plays, You Light Me Up and On Time (is late). The two ten-minutes got public readings through two non-traditional theater venues, as part of Address Book and Beth Norton & Friends.

• Natalie Disney (the first inaugural Boise-City Writer-in-Residence), Kerri Webster (the Idaho Writer-in-Residence) and I shared stage time at Lit@Lost, a reading event put together by all the programs who make those residencies possible. (Thanks to Lost Grove Brewing, The Cabin, Boise City Department of Arts & History, Boise Public Libraries, Idaho Commission on the Arts and Rediscovered Books.)

• I took three classes through the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program before that program seemed to stall in hiatus -- everything is in transition, right? In Steve Harper's class (Channeling Your Dreams), I wrote and workshopped the first drafts of You Light Me Up and On Time (is late).

• I spent time playing in Washington's rainforesty woods with Kate Kraay as we worked on our upcoming (long term) project, currently titled For Rest (A Homecoming).

• I stayed at a few non-traditional retreat spaces in Boise as I worked on some of the above plays.

• It was such a treat to see Starball at West of Lenin in July after one of two mini-retreat/workshop/devising sessions with Kate.

• I completed my second time through The Artist's Way.

• I got more into body/brain connections through another Alexander/Klein Techniques workshop with Fabio Tavares, somatic breathwork sessions at Exhale Boise, another tuning session with CL Young, playing around at Ecstatic Dance with Meg Freitag (who also gave me a stirring natal chart reading around my birthday time) and learning about the Action Types Approach framework with Brie Katz through Imaginisma's Atelier. And always lots of yoga (sometimes with Sarah Gardner), meditation, constructive rest practice -- now combined with trying on the Five Tibetan Rites upon Kate Kraay's introduction, as well as some breath practices learned from Breath by James Nestor.

• I got introduced to the team at Imaginisma, a collective of humans interested in amplifying aliveness -- and decided to join them on their journey through the first half of 2025.

• My micro-play Tree People was published through Climate Change Theatre Action's Arts & Climate branch.

• I joined up with a group of fellow Natalie Goldberg lovers and devotees, who started a weekly writing practice using Goldberg's particular methods of sitting/walking meditation (zazen) mixed with writing practice and sharing without feedback. It's wonderful to be practicing with other human beings in this way.

• In the fall, I realized I started practicing Natalie's methods of writing in a daily way for 15 years.

• I took a one-day virtual workshop with Natalie that, as always, made me thirsty for more.

• I sent Natalie Goldberg a copy of 12 Lifetimes -- who put it on her required reading list for her upcoming January retreat in Taos! What a thrill. I had no idea she'd read it.

• Who knows what will come of it, but I finally (after several years thinking about it) got my application together for The Jerome Fellowship and submitted that to The Playwrights' Center.

• Sandwiching a summer of not teaching (quite  gift, thanks Boise-City Writer-in-Residency), along with my regular classes at Boise State, I got to do some dramaturgical work with University of Idaho's Playwriting MFA Program (Thanks Robert Caisley!) and guest teach with Jenny Sternling's fabulous Creative Writing class at Bishop Kelly High School (thanks Jenny!).

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Get my project with Kate Kraay (For Rest: A Homecoming?), an environmental experiential experiment that parallels the stress of the human body/humanity's body with the earth's body, onto its feet

• Draft an adaptation of my play Rajpurr: Tale of a Tiger into a children's book that examines how we deal with grief with elementary grade readers -- with an extra-special illustrator collaborator (to be announced...)

• Adapt my feature screenplay script into a large-cast, full-length puppet horror play that explores the cycle of abuse through a possessed boarding house

This is my year of stepping into the unknown with care, into my power with audacity, finding miracles through brave curiosity and entering into new connections with adventurous joy and delight, while experimenting with creativity. May dreams become real as I stop hiding and simultaneously become my own sanctuary.

I'm asking -- how might I ignite magic by becoming myself?

What happens when I water what grows?

1. Find yourself in a global pandemic that extends months, a year, years longer than first estimates.

2. After a year of pandemic university teaching, find yourself desperate for creative fulfillment, anything to beat the burnout.

3. Get an email from Carolyn, the writer who was chair of your graduate department during your MFA studies, about a month-long silent virtual playwrights retreat led by Erik Ehn.

1. Agree to apply. Thank Carolyn for the idea and subsequent recommendation.

2. Schedule to teach two summer virtual theater classes that same month—because why not extend the burnout?

3. The first day of retreat, sit in the same Zoom room as Sarah Ruhl, Liz Duffy Adams, Erik Ehn and others you admire to celebrity-playwright-degree, adding up to fifty-some playwrights altogether. Hear a yelp of imposter syndrome shriek in your chest.

4. Realize the first week, though the silence and creative journeys are intended to function alongside your other obligations, you could have spent the whole month doing just the retreat and still not get to everything offered each day.

5. As though your two-year Creative Inquiry, Interdisciplinary Arts MFA program got smashed into 30 days.

6. Each day, open emails from Erik loaded with prompts, PDFs, links and potential new directions to take.

7. Each day, open a box, package or envelope he and his wife hand-wrapped in brown paper tied up with string before the retreat began, that they packed into a larger box and mailed to participants nationwide (if not also internationally) from their New Mexico home. Notice that they labeled each package with a number in Sharpie, corresponding with each retreat day.

8. Notice that the attachments, links, packages, readings, topics and prompts never fit directly within the play genre.

9. Poems, jazz, dance instructions, essays about green therapy, meditation invitations, games reminiscent from childhood playgrounds, tarot cards, sound maps, colored pencils and trading cards of wild birds represent a small sample of the gifts.

10. Among the emails, invitations and packages, learn about the century, a form of writing stemming back to the 4th Century AD, at least.

11. This list of 100: a container like a prayer that contains too much and not enough, that goes in surprising directions, that teaches you about yourself and the world where you live as you write it, a form that explores autophenomenography as you discover more about yourself as a body within a certain ethnography through an autobiographic lens, while you dig as archeologist dismantling the crust of yourself/your life/everything surrounding that self/life the longer you study your findings.

12. Take Erik’s invitation for all participants to write one century. Get hooked.

13. Write another. Then another, another, another.

14. When you talk with Erik in your weekly meeting, listen to his encouragement that centuries be the thing you work on as your primary project in this 30-day exploration.

15. Listen to his advice to follow where the centuries take you, that they needn’t be preparation for another project but can be the focus of your attention in and of themselves.

16. When you hold five centuries at the end of the 30 days, feel a longing to continue.

17. Do just that over the following months, with an aim to split those five centuries into 10.

18. Wonder what the point is, what you’re making, why. Continue all the same, pulled by some force deep within. Pulled too by an unseen force without, a higher, upper self, something beyond.

19. Learn a lot about yourself through the way you write these centuries. About what you pay attention to, what matters to you here and now, there and then.

20. Also learn from the subjects that arise as you divide these explorations into 10 specific themes, topics, conversations.

21. Learn from surprise tangents that squeeze in without warning, from how you as a person living a life weaves within and throughout all the other events that happen, things that exist throughout the course of the universe, the history of the world as you know it and as you don’t, the unknown future, the places you have been and have yet to see and may never know.

22. Learn about yourself and the world and the nature of existence by what comes up.

23. Start thinking of this as a cycle of centuries. Let your mind drift to August Wilson’s very different Century Cycle, a collection of 10 plays, each one taking place in its own decade within the 20th century.

24. When you see an opportunity to make something out of an object sent to you by your former MFA program and to talk about your process making that thing on their podcast Artifact, respond to your former adviser Cindy right away. Express your interest in using that object to help you finish your century project. Hope that having a subject you didn’t think of yourself will allow for some unexpected randomness, like the chance operations you love to incorporate into performances.

25. When the program agrees it’s a good fit, set up time to talk with the podcast’s host, Neil, about your plans and the journey ahead.

26. Receive a shadow box mailed by Cindy.

27. Look at this artifact with dumbfounded wonder and oblivion.

28. Ask yourself how you’re going to write a century about a shadow box. What to do with the wood, the panels.

29. Put the box on the shelf as you wonder aloud on your phone recorder.

30. Continue writing and rebuilding the centuries as you were doing before, talking about your process and the century form until you figure out what to do with this new element.

31. To help your figuring, write a new century entitled “What to Do with a Shadow Box,” listing 100 different possible ways to use the thing.

32. As you come up with ideas outrageous and obvious, think, what if each panel is devoted to one of your centuries, featuring a few words, phrases, stray images from that century? Simple as that?

33. Count the panels on the box. Add up more than 10, when you count the front facing edges as a panel, which seem big enough to count.

34. Start to question the number 10.

35. Because of the shadow box, but also out of love and respect for Wilson’s Century Cycle. Decide your cycle should contain a different number, because the projects are so different.

36. Decide to make 12 centuries and split the front facing edges of the shadow box into two panels, visually speaking, to place images and words from two different centuries there.

37. Let what draws you to the number 12 be as impulsive as intuitive as what drives you to continue these centuries. Because, based on the shadow box alone, it could have been 11.

38. Perhaps it’s the mystical quality of 12, even the Biblical roots of the century form itself, or something to do with months of the year.

39. Go to the craft store for art supplies.

40. Get white primer and paint markers with brushes in a limited pallet—black, red, blue.

41. Finish writing the 12 centuries, include the preface that describes what this process, and introduces the project and serves as acknowledgments.

42. Prime the box in white.

43. Find key images, words, details from each century to include on the shadow box.

44. Use the markers, magazine clippings and occasionally a Sharpie to draw images, paint words and paste tiny photos on each panel, corresponding with each chapter.

45. Treat the shadow box century as a bonus, lucky 13. Don’t make a shadow box panel for that one—there isn’t room and the shadow box is the full representation of that century.

46. Record audio notes of your entire process on your phone, resulting in a daunting amount of narrative to piece together.

47. Try to converge the clips in a way that’s interesting enough for podcast listeners,  realizing that your meticulous account may be too detailed, too inside baseball to be listenable.

48. Send the files to Neil anyway so he can finalize the episode. The deadline approaches.

49. Decide that obsessive detail, scrutiny and too-much-ness fits the nature of this project and resembles how your brain works, so at least podcast audiences can walk away feeling that sensibility.

50. Move on to make text revisions and edits. Compile the book itself.

51. Learn to use Scrivener—sort of.

52. Take photos of the shadow box, one panel at a time, as well as photos of the notebook in which you wrote the centuries. Aim to include a visual element with each chapter of the book.

53. Even with lucky number 13, treat the book as 12 centuries with one preface.

54. 12 lifetimes.

55. Remember your poem that contained the phrase, “I have lived 12 lifetimes.”

56. And the song that your partner/spouse/person wrote, inspired by that phrase.

57. Include the song lyrics and poem in the book, too.

58. Assemble the whole thing: 13 centuries, poem, song lyrics, shadow box and notebook photos. Prepare to read a few at an art gallery called MING Studios through their weekly series, where artists can experiment for an hour in front of an audience.

59. The thing feels raw, vulnerable and outside anything you’ve done/shared before, so only invite the people you most trust to come see/hear.

60. Display the shadow box, original green notebook and other papers at the reading, revealing the works in process. Play some favorite instrumentals from your “Writer Music” playlist on Spotify.

61. Feel the heat of a spotlight as you read when there isn’t such a light, as though you’re holding your breath that full hour, as though your life is changing in that moment.

62. Feel the audience’s attention as time slows. Embrace the laughs and tears you absorb from their chairs.

63. Hear your friend say afterward, “That was the best writing I’ve heard in a long time.” Hug him.

64. Hear the parts that resonated most with others, how their lives followed similar patterns in certain lifetimes. Hug them.

65. Agree to record a few centuries for MING’s podcast My on Mondays.

66. When you do, listen to the audio engineer’s family story that he shares in response after he says, “You’ve been through a lot.”

67. Take a road trip and land in Oakland for a week.

68. Listen to your friend Nick, a writer/musician hosting you and your partner, talk about how his next book is one that wouldn’t make sense for the indie press he signed with before, so he’s starting his own.

69. Remember his experience with publishing and with self-producing albums when he likewise tired of the limits from his former indie label. Trust that he can do it.

70. Hear him talk about the writers in the workshops he teaches, how a lot of them have material he could publish in the same small press.

71. Talk with him about the long line most artists stand in, trying to get through the same door of the tall building that was constructed in their field, ignoring the backdoors, the windows, the chimneys, the crawlspaces.

72. Talk about what it would mean to make your own door. Your own building. Your own way.

73. When you return to semi-arid, high desert climate post-vacation, email Nick with his new press in mind.

74. Say Hey, I know you said your book doesn’t fit traditional structures. I also have this project and I’m not sure what it is. Any ideas what I could do with it?

75. Send it when he agrees to read it, expecting nothing, except maybe some consultation about next steps.

76. Hold onto your desk to keep from falling over when he response--This is a book. Thank you for writing it. Want to be my first guinea pig for my small press, the first book I publish that’s not my own?

77. Work with Nick on plans, goals, timelines and revisions.

78. Talk about making the book an art piece, about seeing how small it can be—the book itself as well as the publishing and marketing approach.

79. So that it’s not about reaching the mass market but getting this book—that Nick says is the kind that makes readers want to call their closest friends to see if they’re okay—into the hands of the people who need it most.

80. Share sections that mention family members with them. Make changes as needed.

81. Deal with the expected fallout after writing about things some think you shouldn’t write about. And some fallout that you didn’t expect.

1. Carry on and move forward, because what else would you do?

1. Cut the poem at the beginning but keep the song lyrics.

2. Cut the bonus century about what to do with a shadow box. Instead write a new one called “How to Be a Writer,” which isn’t so much about how to be a writer at all but your individual path to becoming who you are. See how the new chapter pulls the whole collection together.

3. Get a few trusted early readers. Know you could seek out more but this whole process has been about less. The muchness of less.

4. Get a few blurbs from those early readers, people important to you and to this project, without whom the book never would have happened. Prefer this to pages and pages of quotes from reviewers, publishing houses and authors.

5. Approve Nick’s cover designs and internal layout. Collaborate on a contract. Decide a release date.

6. Push that date back. Revise and wait and work on other projects. Inch closer to the new date.

7. When Nick’s life gets turned upside down, shift your collaborative process, put in extra effort on the final copyediting stage. Discover that you’ll need to take over more of the marketing and shipping tasks than was originally planned.

8. Together, despite his major newfound grief and current life without a permanent residence, bring the book out into the world, first in a soft release—while you also get a new play out into the world in its first production.

9. Out of the generous outpouring of people buying the book without really knowing what it is, hear profound heartfelt responses that first murmered in your dreams as people tell you how much the work means to them, how they cry-laughed throughout reading and rereading, how beautiful the packaging, how surprising the insides. Realize that you, Nick, and everyone who helped along the way, really did create an art-object.

10. See the way this form helps you deal with your too-much muchness as you write about too much and too little all at once—to make it just enough.

11. Feel for the first time that you can start moving on from a lot of the stuff you wrote about.

12. Months later, bring the book into the world again in its first live ceremony, again at MING, uniting chance operations, communal co-creation and celebratory food, drink, live music, roses and artifacts into the sharing event. Sit in a circle with the audience instead of facing them in proscenium arrangement.

13. Start thinking about your next live ceremonial reading events. Wonder where they could take place.

14. While you read aloud, hold the blue spine in your hands, see all the parts you’ve played, the marks they make on each page. The lifetimes you’ve lived.

15. Get ready to live some more.

Order 12 Lifetimes

The work I sent to share is below -- 100 drawings with text (and color on occasion).

It's been an almost yearlong project, prompted by Erik Ehn, who strove to get 1000 people to make 100 things with the topic of praise in mind. I'm not sure how many ultimately signed on and crossed the finish line, but after some glances at the giant collective document...

There is a tsunami of stuff made by a boatload of people. Let's leave it there.

About yesterday's event, Ehn said: "The gathering at La MaMa centers on the peacefulness of time gone by. We’re catching breath together at a finisterre -- taking off our shoes and looking at the wear and tear and steady-on in the lot of them after a nice long walk."

I was able to pop in briefly to witness the happening over Zoom yesterday before my afternoon classes and agree that even through the screen, that is how the time/space appeared/felt/seemed.

My scanned drawings are below.

If you click on them, you can see them expanded.

I opted for the gallery layout, versus slideshow, to see them all en masse.

You can see more thoughts about this project below the images

(in a reflection that might have gotten read at La MaMa yesterday),

which puts together a lot of the thoughts I had while doing this series

(so lots of repeats if you've been following along thus far).

Previous posts, with just the image first drafts (no text, no color)

you can see here and here and here and here

(I posted them in increments of 25).

Moments from a year.

Time spending attention with intention.

That's all they are, really.

I could probably say more, but would rather let the images speak for themselves

(and that bunch of text at the bottom, if you're just joining and want context).

Enjoy!

Drawing Attention

For this shared experience, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't a discipline I've much cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination.

I wanted to let myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I wanted to lower judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I set the bar low enough for myself that I could trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from playwright Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, the plan was to go back and add text, and then in a final step, go back and add to either the drawing or the text in each piece -- again, without erasing. That could mean adding color, tending to shading, form, line, detail. In pairing text and image, I wanted to tend to the overarching theme by praising of everyday things, primarily by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This process came from an exercise I learned from writer Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

In pursuing this project, part of me rebelled. "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a new play this summer (and fall, when writing one in the summer didn’t happen). Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

At the same time, I felt myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I found that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like art pieces in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. That makes me approach the world and that day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

By paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I started to uncover what unfolds from within. Not moving toward any finished product, I was able to discover what I uncovered: a way of seeing that I want to keep developing.

Once I got halfway through the drawing process, I started thinking more about seeing and attention. Not just what I'm seeing and paying attention to (in that moment and throughout the day/week/season/year), but the idea that whatever anyone is making, whether creatively (a play, a film, a painting, a novel), relationally (a conversation, a touch, a connection), things big and small we make in all parts of our lives (avocado toast, a plan for the day, a baby) and even what is destructive (a hate crime, a bomb, an insult) is an assemblage of what we pay attention to, what we see and what in turn pays attention to us.

Thinking about that, the simultaneous ultra-simplicity and overwhelming complexity of that, I start to pay more attention to what I'm paying attention to, how that impacts me, how that object or way of seeing makes me feel or what it makes me think about. Which makes me think about the space between those focused blips of attention: when I'm distracted, unfocused, floating away into daydreams, answering emails or sleeping. Even in those moments I'm paying attention to something (which makes me want to pay attention to whatever that might be).

I wonder if this mindset is getting me paying attention with better intention, to what that means in action and what that feels like. I hope that's what's happening.

Because I'm paying attention to that intention (of how to pay attention with greater intention), then perhaps that intention is also paying attention right back to me. Magnets pulling each other closer together.

Once I got toward the end of the drawing period in my last 25 drawings, I felt the pull to be done. I had to push myself to stay present instead of rushing through to the end, especially when other creative projects were fighting for my attention. I felt how much of a durational project this was and I started getting more tired, bored and impatient. I had to find more ways to treat myself for drawing time. While I knew it wasn't, this started feeling more like a waste of time ("What? Go draw? I have a book to finish and promote! I have a play to finish! I have another play going into auditions and starting rehearsals! My students need me!").

That sense of resistance alerted me all the more that I needed to continue. In the middle-to-end stage of any process worth doing, I can feel lost at sea. This reminds me that the last 10% of a creative act can take 90% of the time, or how I can get caught up in discursive thoughts in the midst of meditation, or perhaps how an ultra-marathoner might feel in the middle-end of a long race.

Having reached 100, then having gone back to add text and then having gone a third time to add in more detail, I feel quite joyful at this stage of the work, whatever it may be. If nothing else, here is a moment of praise (not to me, but to the universe) for being able to reach 100 somethings.

Highlights:

• I traveled overseas for the first (and second) time, first to London, then to Iceland. In London, I got to see my sister Kate Kraay perform in David Glass Ensemble's The Brides and check out other shows that were part of the final London International Mime Festival (sniff) after five decades.

• I got to meet the Nervous Theatre people and learn new devising practices from them in their residency workshops at Surel's Place.

• Thomas Paul and I put out a chapbook album of poem-songs called Drown to Resurface, which Grant Olsen listed on his top ten albums of the year for his show It's Now Right Now on Radio Boise. We shared tracks from it at Couch Surfer Series, Treefort Music Fest, Campfire Stories and performed the album in full at MING Studios 7o'clock series. MING played tracks from it for their podcast My on Mondays, too. I got to feel a bit like Patti Smith with a live band behind me during our performances.

• I was commissioned for the second time for Climate Change Theatre Action. I wrote them a new micro-play Tree People that was performed worldwide, specifically in Texas, Minnesota, Ireland, Massachusetts, British Columbia, Georgia, Austria and Pennsylvania.

1. I facilitated the last of my three-part Refilling Your Creative Well workshop series I created through The Cabin, finishing off with a Creative Salon workshop. Then, our new Department Chair Raquel Davis at the Boise State University Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing let me design that series into a class for the Theatre Department. We started this week.

1. My play for young audiences Wolf/Girl was selected for production at Boise State University. Director Tiara Thompson and I worked with our incredible, brilliant, inspired design team in pre-production, assembled a fab cast of student actors and started looking excitedly forward to our rehearsals (that started the first week of January) and production (we open February 8).

1. My micro-play Deer You was published by Literature Today.

2. A monologue from my play Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 (a project Kate Kraay and I still want to make into the fully devised, physical, environmental theater piece we initially envisioned -- maybe this year?) was published in Writing for Change Journal.

3. I applied and was accepted into the Dramatists Guild Institute's Certificate Program. I started in the fall with my first class with the amazing Andrea Lepcio. Thanks to that class, I drafted the play I've been scared to begin for years, Take Me Away: a trainwreck with monsters. I got some of my favorite artists (Jaime Nebeker, Matthew Cameron Clark and Tracy Sunderland) in a room to hear the new play in a private reading.

1. I took part in David Glass Ensemble's The Brides Workshop in Seattle, something the ensemble does during their early connections with a new country for their international phenomenon series of performances. During that time, I played onstage with Kate Kraay for the first time...at least the first time since we were kids and she had us and our brother act out fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel for our parents.

1. I took part in two virtual workshop/retreats led by Natalie Goldberg. Once I shared something for her in a giant Zoom room with hundreds of participants. She asked if I was a poet and said "It's obvious you've been practicing for a while." I could hardly breathe.

1. I had my first real dramaturgy gig, working with Wolfgang Jones on his haunting play A Beginner's Guide to Self-Loathing & Why We Say Goodbye at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. It sure felt good to be back at my favorite company working with those wonderful artists, especially for Jeni Mahoney's last year as Artistic Director.

1. My full-length play Ark, based on Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's middle-grade novel, got its first public reading at Rediscovered Books in Boise. Elisabeth and her family joined us all the way from the UK for the event!

2. I participated in an Alexander/Klein Techniques workshop with the fabulous Fabio Tavares and felt like an infant again, relearning how to stand, sit, walk.

1. I got two poems published in The Cabin's anthology Writers in the Attic: Three. I got to read one of them during the release party, my first time giving a reading at the Gene Harris Bandshell.

1. I had a streak of eight months with at least one public reading/performance scheduled per month.

2. Natalie Disney and I were selected to be the inaugural Boise City Writers-in-Residence.

1. I applied and was a semi-finalist for a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellowship.

1. I published my first book, 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle through a friend, writer, musician and artist I admire and his new small press, Modern Mythographer. Thanks, Nick Jaina! Of the intentionally small first edition printing of 200 copies, we've sold over a quarter in this soft opening stage, before any official events and without publicity (beyond social media and my newsletter). Erik Ehn, Cindy Shearer and Elisabeth Sharp McKetta were early readers and gave me such encouraging blurb quotes to include in the publication.

1. I turned a sometimes meditation practice into a daily meditation practice.

2. I drew 100 drawings in a project led by Erik Ehn. From recent news, it sounds like the final projects might get shared at La MaMa this February on Leap Year Day (!).

1. I had my first and second tuning sessions with CL Young. Highly recommend.

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Travel to 1-2 more new (to me) international countries.

1. Complete the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program.

2. Start a playwrights group or collective that fosters community and helps playwrights in the Boise area support each other -- through feedback, encouragement and/or more formally showing each other's work.

While I do want to continue stepping into my power, letting go of what I don't need and inviting what I want into my life, I also notice that as this year begins, I am in a time of enormous happenings, which may continue all year long. Many are big for me. Many I've wanted a long time, worked hard to receive and have gotten thanks to immense help from loads of dear ones. I am grateful for all of it and don't want to rush through these events tense and intense, without taking stock, appreciating and experiencing in full.

Through this year and all the steps/milestones underway, I want to practice being with those happenings. By this, I don't mean resting on my laurels, but actually enjoying what I'm doing while I'm doing, staying present with those actions as they're happening -- so they don't all pass me by with an attitude of mental frenzy. Therefore, may this be a year of softening inside, to feel the glow of my inner flame amongst such activity and forward movement -- without letting it/me burn out. I want to slow down in my body while going with the flow of the momentum -- while not trying to control the outcome.

Last year was a major time of growth that continues into 2024. Many of those days, I'm feeling the turbulence. I know there will be even greater need this year for finding moments, days, weeks to go on airplane mode, decrease the tempo and go solo into retreats, to see who I am as a human being apart from all the doing. As we/many of us keep walking/running/sprinting forward, in a time with such regional/national/global chaos, change, uncertainty and violence -- I know this year I must cultivate inner peace, so my actions don't just add to the noise, but help us/me pay attention with greater intention...and so my own well doesn't dry up.

May this be a year of finding grace within the fire, while enjoying the warmth of those flames.

In these last 25 drawings, I definitely felt the pull to be done. I had to be mindful to stay present instead of rushing through to the end, especially when other creative projects were fighting for my attention. I felt how much of a durational project this is and I started getting more tired, bored and impatient. I had to find more ways to treat myself for drawing time. While I knew it wasn't, this started feeling more like a waste of time ("What? Go draw? I have a book to finish and promote! I have a play to finish! I have another play going into auditions and starting rehearsals! My students need me!").

That sense of resistance alerted me all the more that I needed to continue. In the middle-to-end stage of any process worth doing, I can feel lost at sea. This reminds me that the last 10% of a creative project can take 90% of the time, or how I can get caught up in discursive thoughts in the midst of meditation, or perhaps how an ultra-marathoner might feel in the middle-end of a long race.

Having reached 100, I feel quite joyful at this stage of the work. We'll see how I feel as I begin the next stage. Stage two is adding text. Stage three will be adding a bit more to either the words or the drawing of each text/image piece. Yesterday I bought myself new pens for the next stages, some replacing well worn instruments, some in color.

If nothing else, here is a moment of praise (not to me, but to the universe) for being able to reach 100.

Again, for more context (basically a repeat if you've read any of my last three posts):

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Earlier this year he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He hoped to gather 1000 participants -- a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise, so 100,000 gestures. I don't know how many people ultimately agreed, but there are a lot of us making 100 things.

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail.  This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 100 drawings. See the photos (76-100) as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. You can check out 51-75 in the post below this one, 26-50 in the post below that one and 1-25 in the post below that. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well, here and/or on Instagram.

After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art. That makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle

Officially Releases Today!

I want you all to be the first to know. The book I never planned to write is now available from Nick Jaina’s new small press Modern Mythographer. Thank you to the lovely folx who pre-ordered and helped us smooth out the process early!

I have a lot to say about this little book and will be making regular posts on Instagram and elsewhere to share the story of the project (and what it is) in fragments. For now, I won’t go on long. I know our inboxes are pretty full.

I’m much obliged to anyone who reads and shares about your experience with 12 Lifetimes — and to those of you who already ordered extras as gifts. Early on, Nick and I decided to make this book an art object, something special and wholly individual. We asked, “How small can it be?” With that said, there are now fewer than 200 copies. More printings may come, but who’s to say? The future is uncertain. Like this book (at 188 pages), life is short. Even if a second edition happens, it won’t be exactly like this one.

If you think you or someone you love might especially respond to this memoir-adjacent book of essays (as Nick says, “memoir when it wants to be and poetry when it needs to be”), you might act soon. I hate hurrying anyone ever, but 200 in the grand scheme of things is a small number (only two centuries!).

Most of all, I look forward to my first book finding a home with the people it needs, whenever/wherever that may be. You can order online or get it from me directly.

Thanks to all of you who helped make this creation possible.

XOXO, H

Order 12 Lifetimes

Kind Words

“The form is fascinating, spacious, and inciting. The form (and Table of Contents, which feels a poem in itself) reflects the wisdom learned from a life (or 12!). Reflected too is the ancient philosophy that we learn compassion/wisdom only through loss and suffering. There is really no other way through the human condition.”

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta, author of Edit Your Life

“This book is a phenomenon: It quietly takes my breath away, probes me to see. Each century, 100 moments of honesty and the unexpected. A genuine rarity.”

Cindy Shearer, Program Chair, MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts & Writing, CIIS

“Bee-eyed, relentless, and radically honest, Heidi looks at — everything. She draws together eclectic catalogues of palpable events into compelling, always surprising clusters of wide experience, held together by a wisdom that mercifully suggests hope-without-sentiment…This collection is a discipline, a kata, a repetitive bee dance that guides us to resource.”

erik ehn, playwright

Events to come…

In early 2024, for you in Boise.
Out-of-town reading/events possible.

Feel free to reach out to me or Nick about setting up an event near you.

Contact Modern Mythographer

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While completing the last 25 drawings, I've thought more about seeing and attention. Not just what I'm seeing and paying attention to (in that moment and throughout the day/week/season/year), but the idea that whatever anyone is making, whether creatively (a play, a film, a painting, a novel), relationally (a conversation, a touch, a connection), things big and small we make in all parts of our lives (avocado toast, a plan for the day, a baby) and even what is destructive (a hate crime, a bomb, an insult) is an assemblage of what we pay attention to, what we see and what in turn pays attention to us.

Thinking about that, the simultaneous ultra-simplicity and overwhelming complexity of that, I start to pay more attention to what I'm paying attention to, how that impacts me, how that object or way of seeing makes me feel or what it makes me think about. Which makes me think about the space between those focused blips of attention: when I'm distracted, unfocused, floating away into daydreams or sleeping. Even in those moments I'm paying attention to something (which makes me want to pay attention to whatever that is).

I wonder if this mindset is getting me paying attention with better intention, to what that means in action and what that feels like. I hope that's what's happening.

Because I'm paying attention to that intention (of how to pay attention with greater intention), then perhaps that intention is also paying attention right back to me. Magnets pulling each other closer together.

Maybe these thoughts are starting to spiral in on themselves (or fractal out?) because for the first time I'm reading House of Leaves and that labyrinthine dive is pointing out some uninhabited hallways growing and reconfiguring inside my internal conch shell.

Don't worry about paying attention to all of that. You can just look at some little drawings.

Again, for more context (basically a repeat if you've read either of my last two posts):

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Earlier this year he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he's still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small, ephemeral, even 100 blinks in time...). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 75th drawing. See the photos (51-75) as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. You can check out 26-50 here and 1-25 here. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well, here and/or on Instagram.

Pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple. The way lines curve. That makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

If you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own by February (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he is still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, do let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 50th drawing. See the photos (26-50) as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. You can check out 1-25 here. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well.

In pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

With about as much arbitrary yet focused planning, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't an art discipline I've particularly cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination. So in that sense I'm letting myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. 

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text, as I did on the door (#17) in the more hasty sketch in a recent writing workshop, trying to put all the steps together in under an hour (and letting myself live with the failures in that stretch). After that, I may go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation.

This week I completed my 25th drawing. See the photos as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. When I finalize them more with text and so forth I may share those as well, perhaps scanned, around the time I send them to Erik, but by then I will be deep in my fall-spring semesters at Boise State University and the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program, so no promises.

In pursuing this project, part of me thinks, "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a play this summer. Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

But at the same time, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. This isn't a new thought, but I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), seriously do let me know.