Summertime
The sweet feeling of summertime seems to be creeping up on me. One of my best moments this week was a simple walk to the neighborhood park. It was just hot enough out that by the time I got there, a stop to rest in the shade under a big tree seemed to be in order. What a delicious feeling to lie in the grass and look up at the tree branches and the sky above while listening to children happily playing!
House Repairs
The last week, I’ve been working on the on-going project of getting my house ready to sell. Moving has been such a large task, but little by little I am making progress. It’s taken a lot of my time and energy lately and while it’s something that needs done to get me to where I want to be, it’s not something that I’m particularly thrilled about doing. Like many things in life, it’s also taking longer than I would like.
State of Mind
Lately I’ve been feeling in a bit of a funk of sorts. I don’t feel depressed in the least. There is no melancholy tinge to my mood what-so-ever. There is really nothing that is going poorly for me. It’s just that I don’t feel super passionate about anything at the moment. There are no topics that are begging me to write a blog post. I don’t wake up and feel a sense of excitement for some cool thing I’m working on for the day. I don’t have any projects that I’m really into or things I’m learning that I’m super passionate about.
My life lately has just felt very routine lately even though many of my routines have been shaken up a bit with moving. I’m sure this lull won’t last and soon enough I’ll find the next new thing that I’m into. My sense of creativity will revive and I’ll have new things I want to write about, things I want to read about, things I want to learn and go do.
I went to the book store over the weekend looking for some sort of inspiration. I looked at the books on business but thought that if I want to improve at work I should spend the time working instead of reading about how to be more productive. I looked at some programming books, but figured that if I actually wanted to learn more programming I could find the info I needed for free online. I looked at books on finance, but figured I’d be better off saving the cost of the book than reading whatever was in it. I even looked at a book on creativity, but thought that if I wanted to be creative I should come up with something creative on my own.
I feel like I’m getting this message from the universe that I should turn inwards for inspiration. Like I already know all that I need to know to accomplish… what I’m not quite sure.
I did almost have some stirrings of inspiration while browsing. I found a 5-year journal that had enough room for one sentence each day. I glanced at some baby books (the type you fill in info about your baby, not ones for babies to read). I found a few books with the premise of writing letters about various things for one’s child or one’s lover to read at a later date. I didn’t feel a need to buy any of them, but it did get me thinking that maybe I should figure out a cool way to document the early years of my child’s life.
Finding Inspiration
It’s funny how things work out. As I was writing the above bit of stuff, I felt like something was starting to coalesce in my brain. I think better when I write things down. But I’ve also had some inspiration kind of drop into my lap in the last day or so since I actually wrote about feeling uninspired. (Blog posts frequently aren’t something I finish in one sitting.)
First off, the book on creativity that I was looking at in the book store Steal Like an Artist showed up for sale on Amazon Kindle for $1.13. I decided this was a price I was willing to pay for it.
Second off, Sarah Wynde posted on her blog about the Zuni Cafe Cookbook being on sale on Amazon Kindle for $1.99. (The sale has since ended.) Just reading the intro to it made me want to cook something! I also recently invested in a small salad spinner after playing with one at S’s mom’s house where there was also some talk about how S and I should grow our own salad greens. Half the pain of making salad is drying off lettuce leaves. (Of course, one can buy prepackaged salad mix, but it seems like within a day and a half at least some of the lettuce pieces always start turning black.)
I also picked up the perfect jar for mixing salad dressing, deciding that I wanted to learn to make my own. I was aware that it’s really supposed to be totally simple. Mix oil and vinegar. Done.
Of course, there are dozens of types of vinegar on the shelf of any given grocery store and I have no idea about how to pick which one. While that makes it a little intimidating, it is also the appeal. I get to experiment and try things and just see how it goes. There are also many, many other optional ingredients one can add- herbs and sweeteners and mustard and citrus things and I’m sure many more.
Suddenly, all of this sort of clicked together for me and I felt inspired by salad. I want to play with ingredients, to mix my own dressings, to find things to spice up salads- fruits and nuts and cheeses and herbs. I want to start growing a few of my own ingredients- lettuce and sprouts. So today’s plan involves getting a few things so I can start growing my own lettuce. I feel excited by the prospect of getting to watch my little seeds grow up into thriving green plants that I can then munch down. Little plants growing always seems like such a magical thing.
This is the way of inspiration for me. I’ll suddenly find myself totally excited about something that I couldn’t have cared less about a few days before… and it’s one of my favorite feelings in the whole world.
