Ojalá, Selah, Lateda

First Artist’s Date

I can’t believe it is Tuesday and I am just now writing about the end of my first week working through “The Artist’s Way.” -sigh- I have a lot of good excuses but I’ll skip them for now. I am happy to report that I wrote morning pages, or early afternoon pages if necessary, every day this week. I wrote a lot of affirmations and worked through several of the tasks. I didn’t get to go on my artist’s date until Sunday and I didn’t go where I originally wanted to go, but at least I made it.My family and I live in a very small town (we just got a Wal-mart in the last 2 years) north of Atlanta and we don’t get out all that much. My husband is a huge American football fan but all we have hooked up to our tv is a vcr and a dvd (read: no cable) so he asked if we could go down towards the city to a sports bar where he knew that supporters of his non-southern team congregate to watch the game Sunday after church. We went and had lunch and a beer and then I left my sweet family to watch the game with the fanatics and I went to spend an hour at the new Barnes and Noble. It was lovely. First I just wandered around, not sure what to do with myself in a store without whining children asking to either be bought something or to be taken home. I browsed the bargain books, the art books, the Christian books, the general spirituality books and spent quite a bit of time comparing prices and designs of blank books, journals and moleskines. I debated on just how much a good cup of coffee was worth to me and then found the magazine section. I had forgotten just how many magazines are out there. I secured a rather comfortable (though not padded) seat near a window and pile of magazines. I leisurely looked through 3 art magazines and a design magazine. No one distracted me in any way what so ever. Weird. Very weird. I was not very moved by the art I found in the magazines but as I was putting them away and getting ready to leave I walked by the craft magazine section. There a magazine called the “Artful Blog” jumped off the shelf and into my hands. It was a full color magazine printed on high quality coated stock featuring photographs and text from web logs! I was flabbergasted but fascinated. I sat back down and studied it for a while. I was familiar with one of the blogs featured, but all of them were beautifully presented. I jotted down a lot of urls to add to my reader for future inspiration. I can’t even pretend to understand the state of media these days. What a confusing yet exciting time to be an artist, everything seems to be in such flux.  I could go on and on, but, again, I won’t. I bought myself a small hard bound blank book that I can carry around in my purse and a Spanish translation of a Magic Treehouse book for my son and headed back to the sports bar to pick up my children. Overall I am very satisfied with my first artist’s date. I hope the next 11 will be as good. I have some other issues from week 1 that I consider significant and would like to discuss, and week 2 already has my mind racing but it is bathtime so I am done for now.