Maximalism v. Clutter v. Hoarding, as I See It

(The decorative things on and behind a medium-tall bookcase in my living room)

(A closer look at the Earth Dragon painting by Charlotte Fung Miller, which is obscured by glare in the first photo. It deserves better treatment than that)

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Okay, I realize that the top photo is full enough of things that you may have some questions. I want you to know that it's one of the most high-density areas of intentional decoration in my house. There are other spots that might be competitive, but not many. Things are relatively sparse, decoration-wise, in other areas, but who knows... I keep finding and making decorative things, and they have to go somewhere.

I like maximalism. I'm so into maximalism that I'm going to give you another link with more photos of maximalism. Color, texture, pattern, artwork, blankets, rugs, lanterns, plants, mirrors, candles, yes, yes, YES. I think that when it's done well, it's absolutely luscious to have the kind of visual stimulation I'm talking about, the kind where you can see a whole new vista simply by taking a step forward or turning your head a few inches. I would not say that I'm even close to the dream yet in the sense of intentional decorative density, and part of the problem, as I've partially shown in a previous post, is that I also struggle with clutter and having too much of the wrong stuff. While some people might not like the maximalist style because it's visually busy, that's not the same as clutter, which is unintentional, messy, and disorganized.

There's a difference between clutter and hoarding, too, although one can eventually lead to the other. There's a range of how well people tolerate a mess. What I see as "messy and disorganized," someone else might see as either kind of tidy or deserving of a diagnosis, depending on what they can stand. I tend to think that in a messy house, if all the doors and hallways of a house are clear and functional, there's more than one way to navigate through each room, and all the spaces can be used as intended, you're just dealing with clutter. If you have to squeeze through tight pathways between tall, random piles, that's hoarding. If there's stuff piled up in the bathtub and/or appliances to the point where you can't use them, that's hoarding. If the person who is living in a decreasingly functional home insists that they can't possibly get rid of their things because they might need them - especially if there's no chance they could dig out any particular thing in the event of needing it - that's definitely hoarding. 

I can see how it might be tricky to tell when you're crossing from having clutter to hoarding, because the concept of possibly needing something later is just plausible enough that reaching a new level of anxiety might make the difference between finding it hard, or finding it impossible, to let things go. But ultimately the accumulation of things in a hoarding situation makes life harder enough that it cancels out any benefits of having things around "just in case."

I think it's important to maintain some breathing room, and push back against having too many unused possessions. At the same time, I am 100% willing to cover all of my walls entirely with things I like to look at. IT'S CALLED BALANCE. Thank you and good day.

A Good Weekend for Art in Madison, WI

(Artist Erica Engebreth gave me permission to post this photo of her awesome booth.

Check out her art at Little Bit Lacey)

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This post is late in the day because I spent the afternoon looking at art in a couple of different places. The photo above is from an art & craft show in the High Noon Saloon in Madison, WI. It was a free event with at least a couple dozen booths featuring art, jewelry, clothing, and other things by local makers in a wide variety of styles. The DJ was absolutely on point with fun-but-chill music. I did not get anything at this show, but that's because I knew I was about to go to a bigger show, the Winter Art Fair Off the Square in the Monona Terrace. If the two events hadn't been competing, I know I would have talked myself into buying a couple of things at the smaller show. It's very sad to want all of the things but only be able to get some of the things.

The larger show did charge a small fee to get in (regular price $5 per person 13 and older, but you could get a discount with a coupon through Facebook). It also had 134 booths, plus a concession stand and live music being played on a grand piano (although I was a bigger fan of what the DJ played at the smaller show). The selection and the prices were both much larger here, but there were reasonably-priced items to be had. After looking around for a while, I bought a small painting of an Earth Dragon from Charlotte Fung Miller, who was very friendly and enthusiastic about explaining the meaning behind her paintings; once she saw that my son and I were interested in the dragon ones, she showed us around to see every dragon painting she had. The one I got was on metal instead of canvas, and I'm looking forward to finding a prominent place to display it in my house.

I also collected cards from several of the artists' booths, especially ones where my son was interested in the items they were selling and they had websites I could visit later, because CHRISTMAS IS COMING. This year I'm trying to focus more on quality than quantity in gift-giving. I want to be attentive enough to give a few things that people really want, and sneaky enough to make some of them surprises. That's something I feel good about being able to do. Even when I was a child under the age of twelve, my mom would comment that I was good at choosing gifts that other people would like. It's a matter of being observant and comprehending what it is that they like about the things that they like.

Okay, I had better post this before it gets even later. I'll be back tomorrow with another post!

I'm DOING the THING. Here's What It Is and Why I Took so Long to Do It.

("A Colorful Cat #2," by Nayad Monroe, in the extra-fancy embellished version.)

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For years, I've been vaguely saying that I should post my art online somewhere, to make it available for people to buy. I've sold my art before - to complete strangers, even! That was back when I painted in acrylic, on canvases. I had several coffee shop and restaurant-level shows, where people bought paintings every time. Then I had babies, and felt a combination of less time and interest in painting, and worries about having paints with not-so-healthy pigments around where toddlers might get the notion to eat them. I also had the ambition to write fiction and get it published, and I did THAT thing repeatedly for a decade. I expect to continue writing short stories once in a while, but it won't be my main thing. I like it, sometimes a lot, but I don't get absorbed in it the way I do with art-making. 

My problem with art was that I couldn't decide on how to approach it. Return to painting? Draw on paper? Make upcycled garden ornaments from thrift-store materials? Learn how to do tile mosaics? (I still want to learn how to do tile mosaics.) Make digital art? AHA. Yes. Digital art! And I made bunches of abstract digital art a few years ago. If you scroll down a bit on my Instagram page, you can see it. But I also got involved in editing my anthologies, What Fates Impose and Not Our Kind, back around then, and I was still writing fiction.

Then I went through a big ol' creative slump for a long time, after a certain election here in the United States. You know the one. I dragged some fiction out of myself, but only a tiny bit. The thing that turned me around was participating in the Inktober challenge in October of 2017. I drew my daily ink drawing every single day of that month, and I posted each drawing online. They were in a new medium for me, alcohol marker, and I enjoyed the process. A few people commented that they'd be interested in buying some of the drawings (which were mostly creepy, Halloween-inspired images). Since they were small drawings in a casual sketchbook, I decided I should do some digital work on them and offer them as prints somehow. 

BUT HOW??? That was the final problem. I wanted to find a way to not have to produce, package, and ship things out myself. I'm willing to do that on a limited basis for friends, but I didn't want that to be a big feature of my life. So I glanced at a bunch of print-on-demand sites, and decided that I would start with just one for now: Zazzle. Since I was working on it, I started to look at other artwork of mine that I could post, and I ended up making two Zazzle shops for the very different styles of art I was posting.

As it turns out, the brightly-colored, whimsical art like the cat above is now my main focus, in my shop called "by Nayad Monroe," and I've been drawing lots of new images for it! Every time I draw one thing, I get ideas for approximately seven new things to draw, so my to-draw list is huge. The smaller selection of Inktober art is in "Nightmares by Nayad." I still like those drawings, and I may do another round of Inktober this year to add to them.

The way Zazzle works is that you can make shops for free, and you have the option to add images and text to a staggering array of product types. You can actually design a product just for yourself and buy it, but you can also offer it for sale to other people. Then, if someone else buys it, you get a royalty. It's a well-established site where you can reach people worldwide, but it also takes work to get your stuff noticed among all the other stuff. I've been reading advice and watching tutorial videos, and I think I'm making progress, but I know there's more I can (and will) do. For whatever reason, I find this type of effort more appealing than having to fulfill orders myself. Things I post now can stay on the site and have the potential to sell for as long as the site exists. I want to expand to other sites, too, but I want to get a good start on this one first.

So what I'm going to do now, since I'm here, is post links to some items I've designed, since that's recommended by Zazzle as a way to make my shop more visible. PLEASE BEAR WITH ME. I promise this blog is not about to go all selly-sell 24/7. These WILL be affiliate links, fyi. Thanks for reading this far! 

Embellished Hopped-Up Hare #1 Illustration Metal Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Illustration with Swirly Lines Canvas Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

No Ordinary Owl #2, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower, by Nayad Monroe Acrylic Print
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Hopped-Up Hare #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

A Colorful Cat #3 Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Dragonfly Key, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

The Reach of Light, by Nayad Monroe Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

Be Your Own Kind of Flower Notebook
by By_Nayad_Monroe

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Note: This post contains affiliate links to products that will earn me royalty money if you buy them. I hope you will, because I worked hard on them! But no pressure. :)

I've Been Making Some Art!

"The Dragonfly Key" by Nayad Monroe

"The Reach of Light" by Nayad Monroe

Sometimes I get absorbed in making pictures, and I forget to use my words! But here are some new-ish artworks I have made lately. 

About the "-ish" part: I actually drew and painted small, somewhat different versions of both of these compositions back in 2014. Those are 6" x 6" acrylic paintings on canvas, and I'm keeping them unless someone can figure out and fork over my "make me sell" price for the originals. I'm not actually sure what that would be, but I guess I would know it when I saw it! I tried to scan them and turn them into prints, but a combination of issues -  their size, square shape, and the texture of the canvas - made the results displease me.

For these new, print-worthy versions, I re-drew the images on larger paper, with some composition changes, and scanned them, and then did a lot of digital development to the color and texture of each until I got them looking the way that I wanted them to look. I have a couple more from the original group of little paintings, so I'll probably give those a similar treatment before moving on to adding completely new compositions. I'm working on building up a selection of images before choosing some online venues where I can make them available as various products: definitely prints, but I'd like to get into some other things, like t-shirts, coffee mugs, and other nifty swag like that. I've also been creating print versions of some of my creepy black and white drawings from Inktober 2017. I think it would probably work out best to create separate shops for the different styles, though... THERE IS MUCH WORK TO BE DONE.

Tracking 2018: What I Did In January and How I Recorded It

(Here's my monthly "hair-growth progress" photo. Um, not much progress yet.)

Happy February! I hope you're having a good 2018 so far. I am! Since I ended last year feeling like I couldn't remember much, I set up a system to keep track of my activities this year, and here's how that worked out in January.

I needed to come up with a system that I would actually use. While I like the idea of putting everything in a digital format, I know that I'm more motivated by being able to write things on paper. I like to make lists and cross things off, and fill boxes, and make check-marks. So just know that I recycle and buy recycled paper products and try to be as efficient with my uses of paper as possible. 

The system I came up with is a binder with three pages for each week: one page for noting how much time I spend on the activities I want to do, as well as ones I'm trying not to do as much; one page for nutrition (like how many servings I eat per day of fruit, vegetables, nuts, etc); and a page with spaces to write the notable events of each day of the week. This might sound incredibly tedious to people who are motivated differently than I am, and that's okay! But when I want to put in a certain amount of exercise each week, for example, I enjoy writing that I did it, and I find that I'm more likely to fit it in if I look at the page for that week and see that I haven't done it yet. 

I'm probably not going to post much detail about exactly how many minutes I did this or that, but I may sometimes write about how a certain category is working out, especially if I find it particularly helpful or particularly vexing and in need of an overhaul! 

Generally, I have an idea of how much time I want to spend on various things each day or week, such as blogging, reading fiction, reading non-fiction, making art (which can be either visual art or any artistic form of writing I'm working on), meditating, exercising, crafting, and doing "life maintenance chores" like cleaning the house and doing the dishes. I'm starting the year with just tracking what I do, and I hope to improve on my stats as I figure out better ways to arrange my time.

Anyway... In January I:

• Went on a six-day trip to Michigan to attend ConFusion SF.
• Finished reading four novels: Seveneves, by Neal Stephenson (which I had started to read in December), and the first three Dublin Murder Squad books by Tana French, which are In the Woods, The Likeness, and Faithful Place. I don't usually read mysteries, but my current favorite author, Jeff VanderMeer, posted that he had really enjoyed reading Tana French's novels. So I thought I'd better give those a try, and they turned out to be extremely good and hard to put down. One thing I especially like about them is that the main character is different from one to the next. You get to know them as a side character in one book, and then they become the main character in the next (and the impression you've gotten of them from the outside can change a lot once you get to see things from their perspective: this series is a master class in character development). Speaking of VanderMeer, btw, I am super-psyched to see the movie Annihilation this month, which is based on his Annihilation: A Novel.
• Got the new tires my car needed BEFORE going on a road trip in the middle of winter, because that's the way to be an adult in spite of much preferring the idea of spending that money on, say, ANYTHING ELSE.
• Also read most of Better than Before, by Gretchen Rubin, which is an outstanding book about making and changing habits, and I think it will deserve its own post after I finish it. It was a lucky find on the day that I was walking around while waiting for my new tires to be installed. Anyone who knows me understands that I can spend hours in Barnes & Noble. When I worked there (over 20 years ago! Jeez!) they said that they wanted to encourage people to read the books in the store. I have learned exactly how effective it is for their sales, when they let people get attached to a book and then feel the urgent need to buy it.
• Went on a few fun outings with my boys, mostly involving restaurant food, because that's what teen and tween boys are talking about.
• Spent many lovely hours with the man in my life, who is shy and doesn't want to be written about, but deserves the occasional mention for being awesome nonetheless. :)
• Achieved my goal of losing one pound this month. I'm trying to be more about changing my eating habits for long-term health, and less about dieting to get to a certain weight as soon as possible, but I think it's reasonable to adjust my eating habits to aim for losing a pound a month for a while.
• I exercised every week. Not quite as many times as I think I should (I want it to be three, and I mostly managed two), but that's better than not at all, ever. I'm trying to make my exercise about benefits other than weight loss. There are so many benefits, and it's more encouraging for me to focus on those. Maybe this philosophy will become another post!
• I meditated one single time in the whole month of January, right on the last day, because I didn't want to have to say I never did it at all. I don't know why I resist it. I like it when I'm doing it, and it's usually only ten to twenty minutes. So I'll be working on finding a good time and/or trigger to get myself to do it more frequently.
• Finally, I'm very pleased with the illustration I drew for the story I co-wrote with Maurice Broaddus, "What the Mountain Wants." I really want to post it to show you! But I'm saving it for a more impactful reveal sometime in the future. I may post a smaller detail portion of it before the full thing, though!

It was a good month! I do have ups and downs in my moods, and I don't want to give the false impression that nothing bad ever happens in my life. January was a happy time, though. :)

I Went to ConFusion and Found that ConFusion Is Great!

(Check out this beautiful print by Rachel Quinlan! I bought it at ConFusion.)

Weekend before last, I was away at a speculative fiction convention I'd never attended before: ConFusion SF. It was in a suburb of Detroit. Normally, the idea of traveling from Wisconsin to Michigan in the middle of January would be a non-starter for me, but when Maurice Broaddus tells you it's a must-go convention, you must go. That's just the way it works. He was right, of course. It's a well-run event, in a good space, and I lost count of how many pro writers were there after the first couple dozen I saw.

I find it very mentally stimulating and creativity-boosting to hang around with writers and artists, and to be around books and art for sale. Even though I didn't participate in or attend a single panel, I had conversations with amazing, creative people - old friends and new - all weekend, and looked at so much artistic goodness that I came home with a whole new battery full of creative energy. And some goods. It was really hard to choose which things to buy, but in addition to the beautiful print above, I also got a lovely, embellished key pendant made by Sara Goodwin, and some awesome-looking new reading material from Apex Book Company.

I did talk business a little bit, but mostly I was there for the social time. I plan to return next year!

Oh, and I have to report an actual miracle. I can be confident in this because I've been back for a week now. You ready? I went to a large convention, in the middle of winter, and didn't catch any illness of any kind! THAT NEVER HAPPENS. I used my standard precautions, but nothing extreme. I am amazed.

Here's What You Get for 2017

(It's me, age 46!)

Well, People of Earth, here's a little summary of what I can remember of what I did this year (because as you may or may not have noticed, I did not blog. Except for today).

Let's just get this out of the way: I spent the entire year being mad about political things in the United States, because I'm a proud liberal and I like diversity, equal rights for everyone, taking good care of the environment, and sharing our resources to lift up people who don't have enough. I'm not seeing those things getting enough support. This entire paragraph has been the most understated expression of my feelings I have ever achieved. 

Big things I did this year:

• Attended the event formerly known as Mo*Con, which will again, in 2018, be called Mo*Con.
• Repainted the entire exterior of a playhouse/shed in my back yard, which was a bigger project than I thought it would be! Several hours a day for over a week (the priming and multiple colors added to the time, but it looks fantastic).
• Co-wrote a short story with Maurice Broaddus, which will be included in the Do Not Go Quietly! anthology in 2018. Click the link to see the impressive list of authors involved!
• Traveled to southern Illinois to watch the total solar eclipse, WHICH WAS AWESOME.
• Participated in Inktober for the month of October, creating one ink drawing each day for the entire month. You can see all 31 of my drawings in my Instagram gallery, but one of my favorites was Wednesday Addams:

I've also read 32 books this year! Some of my favorites:

• Borne: A Novel, by Jeff VanderMeer (I also went on a short road trip to see him read from this book, and that was well worth my time. He is a great reader. Also, his outstanding editor wife Ann VanderMeer interviewed him afterward, and it was hilarious).
• Provenance, by Ann Leckie.
• Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel.
• And a set of books by Leigh Bardugo: Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.

And all through this year, that kitten I got in November of 2016 (Annabelle) has been tremendously entertaining, not to mention increasingly LARGE. From a tiny, wee iddle thing, she has turned into the biggest cat I've ever had. Tall, long, solid, muscular, and around 11 pounds the last time I weighed her. As far as I can tell, she is simply a basic American Shorthair cat, but she has personality plus and she caught her first mouse when she was about four months old. I don't get mice in here often, but when one shows up, it is nice to have a team of cats to get it under control while I go and fetch the Mouse Removal Kit, which is a piece of cardboard and an old plastic storage container that is now dedicated to this one purpose only. I put the container over the mouse, slide the cardboard under, and take the mouse across the street to a conveniently-situated field. I assume none I've taken that far have ever returned since there's always been several months in between mouse invasions, so it seems the field is far enough away.

Plus, you know, day-to-day life stuff and knitting a few blankets on a really clever, twisty-shaped knitting loom I found in 2016. It gives me an easy way to make full-bed-sized blankets while watching my way through all the Netflix shows I can take in, which turns out to be a LOT. I just finished Season 2 of Travelers. It's a good science fiction show that I don't hear much about from other people, so check it out if you're interested in time travel!

Even with all this stuff I've listed above, I feel like I've forgotten way too much of how I spent my time this year. That leads me to my plan to briefly jot down what I do each day next year, and to summarize each month for myself, to keep track of it all better. I have a system in mind that I don't want to describe right away; I just want to use it for a while and see how it works out. Taking the premise of "underpromise and overdeliver" to the next level, I guess, wherein I promise nothing and you're happy to get anything. Right?! MAKES SENSE, YES???

2015: I Had a Super-Eclectic Year

I recently read a post by Amanda Palmer, in which she mentioned Henry Rollins. I don't even know if this is true, but what she said is that Henry Rollins is in the habit of taking an Inhale Year, followed by an Exhale Year, meaning that when he inhales for a year he is reading, absorbing, thinking, relaxing, and getting his mental state ready for a year of exhaling bunches of cool artistic output in whatever form it may take for him. I hope that's a fact, but I don't care if it is or not because it is a damn good idea either way. I want to try that system, but maybe on a shorter-cycle plan, like monthly. That's because, in looking back at 2015, I feel like I've been subconsciously trying to make that happen for a long time, but fighting it because I felt guilty about not producing enough. I'm starting to feel that I would produce more if I fought that less. If I planned to mentally respirate in a sensible manner and stopped feeling so stressed about it.

So! What did I actually do in 2015? Here you go:

• Got a pretty decent grasp of how to speak basic Swedish by studying it for a few minutes a day with the FREE, and AWESOME, Duolingo app, which offers bunches of languages you can learn in a very useful, fun format. If you are interested in learning a new language, you should absolutely try this. Jag tycker om Svenska!
• Started the writing of two different novels, and did not finish either (yet). 
• Wrote one story for an anthology after being invited to submit one, and it was published: "Tipping Point," in Ghost in the Cogs, which contains steampunk ghost stories. My story got a nice mention in this very positive review of the whole book!
• Made over 200 digital abstract images that I posted on my Instagram account.
• Put many of those images into my DeviantArt print store, where they're available to buy in a variety of formats. I used my discount to get a framed canvas print of one of them, to check out the quality, and it is BEAUTIFUL. It's printed with acrylic paint and it looks like a very smoothly-rendered painting, and the frame looks good, too. So if you're looking for abstract art, please check it out because your purchase will help me make more stuff to put out there, both for sale and for free.
• I read 50 books for my 2015 Goodreads Reading Challenge! And here is my Goodreads Author Page, where you can friend me and follow along as I attempt to read 60 books in 2016.
• Posted a bunch of tweets on Twitter, even though I took a big break from that in the summer.
• Posted different items of interest on my Facebook page. My policy on social media is to diversify my posts so that it's worthwhile for people to join forces with me in more than one place. 
• I blurbed a book for the first time, too! A comment of mine can be found on the cover of Indelible Ink, by Matt Betts.
• Worked at an EXCELLENT and very scary haunted house called The Insanitorium, in New Glarus, WI, for all of the weekends of October.
• That's on top of, you know, getting my kids fed and to school on time day after day and having them at home for most of the time in the summer and taking them to see their grandparents and all the life maintenance stuff that goes on, and whatnot, so I am feeling pretty good about my 2015!

So now I'm thinking about the things I want to do in 2016 (hint: one of them is posting in this here blog on at least a weekly basis), but I think this post is long enough for now! Happy New Year! 

ART POST: Ouija Board

Since I mentioned my artworkings, it seems only right that I should show you what I've been working on. Therefore, I present this design for a Ouija Board. It's a fairly large picture in its full glory at 12" x 18", but I have some space limits here, so you're getting the small version with some detail pics.

You can click these to see them a bit larger.

The color version!

Detail 1
  

Detail 2
  

Also in black and white!


I'm not sure how I would go about this, but I think it would be fun to figure out how to transfer this image to an actual board, and design a planchette to go with it, to make it a usable Ouija Board.

Using Multiple Talents: Freedom or Folly?

(I almost called this post "When Art Mind Attacks!" You'll see why in a minute.)
  

I struggle with wanting to do All The Things. I have many, many, many, many, many, many, many interests. But for the purposes of this post, I'm going to write about the main two interests at war in my head: art and writing. Or writing and art, depending on the day. I'm going to throw aside such social niceties as humility and modesty and say that I'm good at both. Not OUTSTANDING at either, you understand, but definitely good. With time and practice, maybe I could be really good at one or the other.

The trouble is that they keep stealing time from each other, the brats. How am I supposed to make forward, linear progress when I practice one thing for a while, and then switch to the other thing for a while, and keep going back and forth?