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Posts by Miranda

Aug 26

9 Comments

Miranda: Multi-tasking my way to a new low

If you’re a mother, you know how to do at least six things at once.

But should you?

Apparently, it depends on just which six things you have in mind.

Yesterday, Lifehacker posted an interesting take on the pitfalls of multitasking in an interview with Dave Crenshaw, author of The Myth of Multitasking: How “Doing It All” Gets Nothing Done. “Crenshaw explains the difference between ‘background tasking’ — like watching TV while exercising — and ‘switchtasking,’ juggling two tasks by refocusing your attention back and forth between them, and losing time and progress in the switch.” The Lifehacker blog post centers on how this issue plays out in the business world.

Interestingly, Simple Mom posted the mother’s analysis of the same topic yesterday:

A Mama’s Challenge
Here’s the irony. With children at home, it often feels impossible for us to focus on anything more than two minutes at a time, because we’re constantly interrupted. As soon as I sit down to update our bank accounts, my daughter wants me to sharpen her colored pencils, or my son has dropped his toy for the umpteenth time and needs help retrieving it.

It’s the stage of life, and it is what it is. Small children require a lot of hands-on, interactive parenting, and while it’s a short-lived job, it leaves you utterly exhausted come bedtime, doesn’t it?

Even though I’d love to single-task most of my day jobs, it just isn’t going to happen. What mom doesn’t multi-task all day long? You’ve got to change the diaper and answer the phone. You oftentimes need to read to your older one while you nurse your younger.

For Simple Mom, the bottom line is that “There are more important things in life than getting things done.”

While multi-tasking is often our only shot at snippets of creativity and seeming productivity, each of us has to determine our own threshold here. I happened to find my own personal limit yesterday. I share this publicly only in the hope that my story will serve as a cautionary tale to other mothers attempting the Superwoman thing.

At noon, I was finishing up the week’s menu plan, trying to make the grocery list, fixing an issue with the blog, answering e-mail, greeting my mother who’d just arrived at my house, nursing the baby, and trying to make sure my 3-year-old didn’t run off by himself for an opportunity to poop privately in his Pull-Up (we’re still toilet training). My daughter called from a friend’s house, asking for a ride home. She was in our neighborhood, within walking distance, but the timing was convenient so I said, “Sure — I’m running out to the grocery store with Grandma. We’ll pick you up on the way, in 15 minutes.”

What happened? I forgot to pick her up.

As in, I went to the grocery store without picking her up as planned. When she called me on my cell phone to ask where I was, I slipped into a heart-stopping abyss of guilt. Thankfully, since my own mother was in the car, she helped me strategize how to explain the situation to my daughter (as we drove at top speed to retrieve her) in an attempt to save her from a life on the therapist’s couch. My daughter (12 years old) gave me a good-natured ribbing, but even though she was gracious about the situation, I knew it had to have hurt. What is more painful to a mother than causing her own child pain?

I have never actually “forgotten” any of my children before, and I desperately hope never to do it again. I’d like to use sleep deprivation, an infant, a tally of five kids, pressing client work, and having my house on the market as some kind of defense. But sadly, there is no defense, and I know that. Perhaps, if I slow down just a little — and stop trying to do 34 things at one time — my brain will function a bit more efficiently. Until then, I have a lot of making up to do with my one and only daughter.

[Photo courtesy Foxtongue.]

Aug 25

4 Comments

Making time to create

At the blog Abundance, I came across an interesting post on making time to create. Marelisa, the Abundance blogger, includes many good ideas for getting yourself to show up and be effective — although you may find that many of the ideas are not altogether relevant to someone at home with little ones.

Children or no children, the author points out the necessity of prioritizing your creative time — and references that guru of business/life organization, Stephen Covey, with a reminder that we need to spend time on the important things in our lives, not just the most urgent ones. A significant distinction. While taking care of all the things that “need” to be taken care of, it’s easy to lose sight of the creative work that is important to you. This work is important not only because it satisfies you and moves you closer to realizing your creative dreams, but also because spending time being creative has a positive ripple effect in so many other areas of your life.

In helping to increase one’s focus on being creative and making the most of creative opportunities, I was intrigued by the following suggestion:

Establish a Clear Purpose for Every Creativity Session
When you sit down to create make sure that you have a clear sense of what you aim to accomplish during that particular creativity session. For instance, your goal could be to spend forty minutes researching an article on the effects of stress on creativity, to spend fifteen minutes creating an outline, and to spend the remainder of the time allotted to get started writing the article.

I really like this idea, and I don’t think I’ve thought about it quite so concretely before. Sometimes just “spend time writing” is a little too open-ended for me. Sure, it feels good to actually meet that goal and do some writing, but it feels even better if my goal is “finish chapter four” and I actually finish it.

Attaching a specific goal to your anticipated output also helps to raise its importance. It’s not just that you need to spend some time painting this week, you need to finish a sketch for a new still life you’ve had in mind. I think that this level of specificity helps to legitimize your work — which is vital in the battle of finding time for what’s important, not just the things that are urgent.

What do you think? Do you like working for something specific, or do you feel like that squashes your creative spark? When you’re working on a larger project, does it help to break that project into manageable pieces, and then focus consciously on each one?

And while we’re talking about time management for domestic life, here’s a nice refersher course for moms, from Simple Mom, if you need a little mentoring.

[Photo mosaic courtesy Leo Reynolds.]

Aug 22

3 Comments

Kelly faring OK with Tropcial Storm Fay?

Cathy just pointed out that Kelly Warren’s most recent blog post included a photo of her girls kayaking in their backyard. Sending thoughts and prayers that Kelly and all her neighbors are weathering the flood without too much damage!

Aug 22

13 Comments

Breakfast with Elizabeth

If you’re looking for a dose of inspiration, voilà. I guarantee that what artist Elizabeth Beck has to say is going to hit you like a double espresso. When you finish reading (and laughing), you’re going to leap up and get busy. (Just don’t leap up so fast that you twist an ankle.) So here, for your bloggy delight, is the latest installment of Breakfast.

Elizabeth

CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
EB: I’m Elizabeth, a wife, a mom, and an artist—those are the big ones, anyway. I was a teacher before I started staying home with my kids more than 11 years ago. When I was ready to go back to work, I decided to pursue art as a fulltime career choice—or, as fulltime as I could manage it. Andy and I started dating in college, dated a LONG time, and have been married for 18 years. We have boy/girl twins who are 11 and start middle school this week and a little one who is 7. I would be remiss in discussing my family if I left out the dog. We have a five-pound Maltese named Dixie. My twins asked for a dog, and I gave them a baby sister; the baby sister asked for a baby brother, and I gave her a dog. I wonder what the dog is going to ask for?

CC: Tell us about your artwork and your Etsy shop.
EB: Eep! I’m kind of slack on my Etsy shop. I have some prints of my art there, and have sold some—like five! But I’ve sold about 200 of those prints at art shows and such. I think the groovy thing about them is that they can be completely personalized. I have an Etsy shop because it seems like the thing to do, but I never really got on board with the marketing of it. Those prints are from original collages that I make on stretched canvases. I sell my canvases through a GREAT gallery, Lola’s in Roswell, Georgia. A couple of other galleries carry my work as well, on a smaller scale. I also do a couple of art shows a year, have some decorators who sell my work for me, and have quite a few word-of-mouth buyers. My collages are not the typical collages that are prevalent now. I primarily do NOT use other people’s imagery. Instead, I paint groovy papers and use them to make my imagery. I tend to have traditional compositions done with a non-traditional kick.

CC: What prompted you to start a blog? What keeps you going?
EB: when I started REALLY trying to be an artist, the hardest part was the business end: the marketing. I could paint a thousand paintings, but I worried that they’d all end up in my basement if I didn’t tell the world I was making them. I started with flickr, just putting my art on my page. My signature line on my e-mails had my flickr site, so everyone I had any e-mail contact with knew I had “started” being a REAL artist. That flickr community was a perfect way of networking with other artists and I even sold some pieces online when people who found a piece on flickr contacted me.

Moving on to a blog from that was a natural progression. I wanted to write about my art: what I was doing, how I was doing it, how it made me feel, what I was planning. It took me a while to figure out that I wasn’t doing it for my friends and family to read, but for an art community that has developed in the blogosphere—and I do think that someone interested in investing in art is more likely to do so if they “know” the artist, even if that knowledge of them is from a blog. Why do I keep on blogging? I think it is partly accountability. Nearly every day I can say, yes, I did something artsy today and can post it. Having that blog keeps me from having long stretches of no creativity. I’m always working on something. I also do it because I like it. I enjoy it; it makes me happy.

CC: Where do you do your creative work?
EB: I have a very groovy basement. I even have a whole flickr set of its evolution from messy to tidy to messy to tidy to messy. It is currently on the rapid descent to disaster area. After my next art deadline passes, I’ll do a big cleanup. It’s a cyclical thing I have going. When we bought this house, the basement was an unfinished, unwindowed, dank, dark, yucky spot. But it is now finished out. I put in a sink and yummy yellow happy walls. It has perfect cement slab floors that give me no angst when I spill or splatter paint. It has lots of organizational drawers and bins and cupboards—and it is ALL MINE. It used to be my kids’ playspace with a tiny nook for my art. But as they’ve grown, my space has expanded and theirs has shrunk. The nice thing though is that my kids are all artsy, fun, and usually have their own projects going in my art studio.

CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work? Tell us about your leap to fulltime art.
EB: When my youngest child was nearing the age for kindergarten, I had a fleeting “oh-my-gosh-what-am-I-going-to-do-without-my-baby” thing. I considered going back to work as a teacher. Then I figured that I could actually give fulltime artist a try. It was a very conscious decision. Before the kindergarten year started, I had signed up to participate in an art show that fall with no paintings to show!! But it was a plan, and I love a good plan. That show went very well I sold loads. And all it takes is one sale to make you want to sell another. I have all this art in me trying to get out—but I think it would manifest itself differently if I weren’t selling it. Because I am fortunate enough to sell my pieces, I take risks, like painting giant canvases or doing a series of 18 canvases. if they were collecting dust in my basement and not getting sold, I’d be working smaller or less or in different media. I actually love sewing and ceramics and painting furniture. I’m pretty sure I’d like woodworking and welding and wedding cake decorating if I had a go at them. So if I wasn’t selling what I create, I might be creating something altogether different.

That was my leap to fulltime art. I skipped the “do you have a schedule” part of the question…Yes, when my kids are in school I try to do art EVERY day, skip none. Sometimes that time is an hour or less but some days I walk the kids to school, walk the dog a couple of miles, and then start art at 9 o’clock. I can get in six hours with just a couple of dog-walking breaks. I try to do more than 20 hours of art a week. Some weeks I can do 30 or more, especially if I’m building up for a show. It took me a while to figure out that my art time is not actually JUST while a paintbrush is in hand. All the business parts of it need to count. During the school week, when my kids are home, I am not painting—instead, I’m busy doing that mom thing that really takes full attention.

The best thing that I have going for me is that my best pal, Allison Strine, is an artist too. We paint at each other’s houses frequently. She pushes me to be more and better and riskier and cooler and groovier. We do a lot of our shows in side-by-side booths. We talk each other through the rough spots of being artists. She’s my biggest cheerleader. She gets it.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
EB: Wow, I’m pretty struggle-free. My big picture is very, very happy. So the stuff that isn’t so easy doesn’t seem like too big a deal. I’m pretty laid back but I do have struggles, of course, everyone does. Three kids and all their activities keep me hopping. I don’t much like to cook, and yet I cook dinner for my family every night. Maybe that’s their struggle, not mine (spaghetti, again?). I’d join a nudist colony if you promised I’d never have to do another load of laundry in my life. That won’t happen because my family shouts me down every time I suggest it (do you want to join a nudist colony or help me with laundry?).

And art wise? I’m so happy to be doing art that it never feels like much of a struggle. My biggest art struggle at the moment is a September 1 deadline for two four foot by six foot canvases. SO big is not SO easy, but “struggle” might be overstating. It’s more of a procrastination thing at this point. Another struggle is a gorgeous green canvas that I made about two years ago, four feet wide. At the moment is has a cow I cut from a map taped to it, waiting for me to be brave enough to move on with it, glue it down. Rather than actually work on it, I expend all my moments dithering on it. So, considering I started the paragraph saying I’m pretty struggle free, that’s a lot of struggles—but all low-rent struggles, as struggles go.

CC: How much does guilt factor in your life?
EB: I don’t really do guilt and I don’t know why. I think it is actually a pretty unique thing about me. Nearly every woman I know feels guilt about something or other, or even about multiple things. Mostly I do what I think is right—and what I need to do and what I love to do. So where’s the need for guilt? I think I don’t bother to take the time for guilt. It’s just not productive enough. Rather than feeling guilty about eating another bowl of ice cream, I just enjoy the ice cream. Same with chores. Oh, I didn’t go to the bank for the ninth day running—I hope I go tomorrow—now where is that check I’m meant to deposit? Hmmmm, what should I have for dinner? Noodles are easy, and we didn’t eat them last night. Oh! Here’s a true confession. My son had noodles all three meals yesterday. In his words: for the first time in his life! Leftover mac ’n cheese for breakfast, leftover tortellini for lunch, spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner. You might think I’m a bad mother, but I have no guilt—and he did have a banana with that mac ’n cheese to make it a bit more breakfast.

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
EB: This is the hardest question. I don’t KNOW where I find inspiration. I THINK I find it everywhere, in maps and dictionaries, in the perfect red paint (Van Gogh’s), in the perfect paintbrush (feathered), in huge canvases, in tiny canvases, on flickr, in my backyard, in my heart, in my head, in colors, in books, in letters, in stencils, in stamps—it kind of just happens. I’ll work on this answer and see if it is conscious or subconscious and where it comes from. So ask me again later.

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs?
 EB: My read-it-every-day-and-feel-so-enlightened-and-smarter-for-having-read-it blog:

My never-met-in-real-life-pals-who-are-artists-and-have-happy-artsy-blogs-that-I-try-to-visit-every-day blogs:

I know that’s too many, but I’m not much for rule following and those are all artsy happy blogs that I really enjoy.

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
EB: At the moment? Tennis. I had to think for a while about if that was just too weird to write, but it’s my favorite thing right now. I’ve been playing not quite two years and I’m not very good, but I play on a team and I take lessons. I scheme with a best pal, Dana, how to play more, more, more. It takes up some very precious commodities: time, money, and energy.

she: e, what are you doing today?
me: oh, I’m planning on spending 9 to 3 in my art studio, yada, yada, big plans, green canvas, map cow, yada yada
she: can you play tennis at 9:30?
me: yes

Without batting an eyelash, it seems I’ll drop anything for tennis. That’s indulgent, right?

CC: What are you reading right now?
EB: I am reading Snakehead, an Alex Ryder mystery, by Anthony Horowitz. It’s teen fiction. My 11-year-olds have both read the whole series—this is number seven for me. I finished Ark Angel yesterday and am already on page 100 or so of this next one. One of my most favorite joys is that my kids are growing up and matching my interests. I love playing games, and they all are happy to play the games I love (Rummikub, Life, Sequence, Yahtzee, Apple to Apple, Ruckus, Set) and the big two are finally reading books that I can read and love too. Another series, Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan, was awesome. I think we’ve read four of those. They are smart and interesting books, made all the better because I can talk to my kids about them.

Redux on indulgences: Books are my indulgence. I don’t just love READING books; I love buying them, I love having shelves and shelves of them. When I was a kid, my parents had books in every room. When I had to read a book for school, my parents ALWAYS had it on a shelf somewhere. My freshman year in high school I started reading Agatha Christie—and probably read fifty of them that year, just because my dad had them sitting there available to me. (I just googled it: Agatha Christie wrote 79 mysteries, 6 romances under a pseudonym, and 4 nonfiction books! Gosh, I love google.) So, that said, I hope to have loads of grand books in my house for my kids to choose from. I want everyone to always have a good book available.

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to find the time and means to be more creative?
EB: Be happy. Find the things that you love and do them. If you love playing on the playground with your kids, play on the playground. If you HATE playing on the playground, skip it. They won’t grow up thinking themselves playground deprived; they’ll remember the great stuff you did do. My kids have logged in countless bike miles, because that’s what I love. Some people think that taking your seven-year-old on a ten mile bike ride is torture. My seven-year-old thinks she’s lucky I let her come. She knows she’s strong. My kids had used more paint by the time they were three than most people use in a lifetime. We painted because that is what I love. My kids know our bookstore as well as I do. When they were especially little, we did what made ME happy and it made all of us happier. When the kids were little, I did NOT enjoy (or play) Candyland but I loved Hi Ho Cherry-O, Busy Town Bingo, and Concentration. My son has been beating me at Concentration since he was 2. My husband played a lot of Candyland—it didn’t bug him.

So, while you are with your kids? Be happy, do great things, have fun, be happy. And, just as important, make a point of not being with your kids. Whether it’s naptime, after bedtime, with a babysitter, a girls night out, or a date with your husband, be a grown up with interests and a life. Find what you love and do it. Be happy make a point of being happy.

CC: Thank you so much for sharing. You are truly an inspration, Elizabeth!

Aug 20

Please wrap your arms around Alana

One of this blog’s friends, Alana, is experiencing a painful personal loss right now. Please join me in sending Alana and her family your thoughts and prayers.

Aug 20

13 Comments

8/20 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

Two entries this week for the prompt “chocolate.” Since there were only two, I thought the fairest judge would be a coin toss: and our winner is Kelly Warren. Congratulations, Kelly! (Good things come to those of you who are prolific! Your $10 amazon.com gift certificate is on its way.)

Kelly writes: “I’ve been playing around with digitally framed TTV photography and created this shot of our chocolate lab Isabelle. I can’t believe she actually sat still long enough for me to catch this portrait. She’s just over a year old, but still a puppy…..a very large puppy.”

 

 

From Cathy Coley, an ode:

Dear Chocolate

It’s all about the cocoa content:
The higher the better.
I can forgo the sugar.
Forget the milk.
I’d rather eat the beans,
Inhale the Dutch powder
Meant for comfort after skating.
Let it drip bittersweet on
The back of my tongue.

Take me to Brazil.
Let me lick the bark.
Salza, Rumba in your branches.
Warm my soul with your night heat,
Chocolate. Chocolate, chocolate!

 

From me, Miranda. Since we have a little extra space this week, I’m hogging up all the room for myself. That’s kind of what chocolate does to me. It turns me into a ravenous, truffle-sniffing pig.

The haiku version:

In Paris
Velvet chocolate
wrapped in lavender papers
brought me to my knees

And here’s the full story, in case you’re wondering what that haiku was about. The following piece was published last year by Sun Magazine for the prompt “fame and fortune.” Really, it all comes down to chocolate. (Apparently, if you eat enough of it, you wake up with a rather unpleasant reality check.)

I moved to Paris when I was nineteen with the goal of becoming an actress or a model. I’d already been rejected by several New York City modeling agencies, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I’d studied acting, dance, and voice. I was reasonably pretty and on the tall side at five feet nine — though not tall enough by New York standards. At 132 pounds, I wasn’t as thin as I needed to be either, but I was working on that.

I had an agent waiting for me in Paris. Well, maybe not waiting, exactly. While having dinner at a close friend’s house, I’d hit it off with her father’s visiting colleague, whose brother François was a casting agent in Paris. I got his number, packed my suitcases, and headed for France.

It all went well at first. I slept on the floor at a good friend’s apartment, in a tiny room that smelled strongly of tea and soap. Every day I walked for hours through the cold gray city, practicing my high-school French. I sat in real French cafés, drinking grand crème and smoking cigarettes, and I went to parties where I was surrounded by glamorous, creative people.

François was working on a television project that he said would be the first French miniseries. The star was the aging singer Johnny Hallyday. I was to be an extra in a bar scene. I arrived at the studio early and, after hair and makeup, moved to the soundstage, where the other extras and I were placed around a bar facade. Johnny Hallyday’s arrival on set was greeted by an awe-filled hush. The filming was just as I’d imagined, with the director yelling, “Cut!” — only in French. He yelled it quite a lot, as Hallyday had difficulty remembering his lines.

After my successful turn as an extra, François gave me the name of a talent agent, whom I met with in a blindingly sunny office on the Rue Marbeuf. He nodded approvingly at me and got me a job performing at a shopping mall in the northern suburb of Sarcelles: six girls parading through the mall to promote a live race-car demonstration on the promenade. The event ended in disaster when the race car lost control and swerved into the crowd, injuring several onlookers.

Next I auditioned for a TV show. When I discovered that the script called for me to flash my breasts, I only mimed exposing myself for the production staff. I didn’t get called back. Then my agent sent me to try out for a necklace advertisement, but the woman across the desk coldly observed that I seemed to have gained some weight since my pictures had been taken. You see, I’d discovered that the corner market near my new apartment sold Milka, my favorite chocolate bars, by the three-pack. They’d become a staple in my diet.

As my social life slowed to a crawl, I stopped marketing myself and instead read Nabokov novels and ate Milka, reveling in its heady, velvet sweetness. I slept on a thin foam mattress and woke in the morning to stare at cracks in the ceiling and the mess of lilac-colored candy wrappers on the floor. I sometimes rallied and took a walk in the Paris air, but the glimpses of other people’s glamorous lives only left me feeling more adrift.

I began dating Adrien, a photographer I’d met on the race-car job. He was wonderful company but smoked too much pot and always looked emaciated. We had little money, and I had to scrape together my centimes to buy a baguette and a small jar of Nutella. Otherwise I would go to Adrien’s apartment and eat his roommate’s food.

Deciding I needed a change, I cut my hair myself. It came out short — very short — and patchy in the back. It did not look good.

Adrien and I parted ways. My agent stopped calling. My father’s most recent wire transfer — which I’d assured him would be the last — had run out. I was overdrawn at the Crédit Lyonnais. I found a job waitressing at a macrobiotic restaurant, but I couldn’t understand the Japanese cooks, and they couldn’t read my handwriting on the orders. After two shifts, I admitted defeat. Some Italian girls let me sleep on their sofa, and I spent my days cutting pictures from old fashion magazines. Twenty-five pounds heavier, my shorn hair growing back unevenly, I flipped through the glossy pages and ached with desire for what I somehow still believed could be mine.

 

This week’s prompt: “The wedding”

Use the prompt however you like — literally, a cue for color, or a tengential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 26. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

 

9/10/08 UPDATE: Brittany Vandeputte sent in an entry that never arrived. Deepest apologies, Brittany! Her acrostic:

C an it get any better than this?
H olding a fork-speared marshmallow
O ver the lit flame from the grill lighter.
C hocolate bar at the ready
O n the kitchen counter.
L ift the sticky singed goodness
A dd four squares of Hersheyʼs finest
T hen surround in walls of graham.
E at when no oneʼs watching.

Aug 18

1 Comment

Bittersweet, dark, white, or milk?

Ladies, I KNOW that I’m not the only one here who has a love-hate relationship with chocolate. But as of Monday night, we only have one submission for this week’s creativity contest. If we don’t receive a few more, I will be forced to drown my disappointment in a large jar of Nutella. Save me!

Aug 15

3 Comments

Breakfast with Brenda

We have a few “Breakfast” chefs-d’oeuvre coming your way in the next few weeks, and here’s one of them. Squeeze yourself a fresh glass of OJ and sit down with Brenda Ponnay, perhaps better known as the blogger Secret Agent Josephine. Brenda is also a mother, freelance graphic designer, illustrator, and painter. Brenda says that her secret to being creative is “I drink a LOT of coffee and I’m not a perfectionist (obviously). I think perfectionism hangs up a lot of talented people.” She may not be a perfectionist, but she certainly is talented.

Brenda (aka Secret Agent Josephine)

Brenda (aka Secret Agent Josephine)

CC: Please give us an intro to who you are, what you do, and your family headcount.
BP: My real name is Brenda Ponnay but I go by Secret Agent Josephine on the web. It’s a silly little name I made up when I first started blogging when I had no idea what I was doing. It’s since become my own little identity and freelance business. You could say I’m a mom first, illustrator/graphic designer second. I just try do what I love and make sure it pays for itself and doesn’t take away too much of my time from my family. Balancing my freelance career and my family life is a constant struggle but I don’t think I could stop being this way even if someone unplugged me from the internet and forced me to live in some commune in the desert. It’s just who I am. As for my family, they are my husband Toby and my daughter Helena but we call her Baby Bug.

CC: Tell us about your design business and other creative pursuits.
BP: I mostly illustrate banners, logos and various web graphics. From time to time I help someone design business cards, brochures, etc., but I prefer not to work in print anymore because it takes up too much of my time outside my home. I like doing web work because it is just me and the customer and I don’t even have to meet them face to face. Business by e-mail works best for me. My customers don’t care if I work at midnight as long as the work gets done!

Painting al fresco

Painting al fresco

Right now my other creative pursuits are limited to a few paintings that I sell in my Etsy shop. I don’t have any up right now because they sell pretty quick. Someday I’d like to do a children’s book and perhaps some games (like a matching game for toddlers). I’d also like to do a second version of my alphabet cards. What I’m really working on though is getting my website up and running again. I had to take most of my pages down a while back when I had an illustration theft scare and it’s taken me quite a while to even think about getting them back up. I also have quite a few side websites swirling around in my head that need to be created.

CC: Your blog is something of a phenomenon. What got you started?
BP: I wrote about this on my Who is Secret Agent Josephine Anyway? page. But really all I want to say is that I started the site on a whim. I wanted to write about my personal life somewhere that was electronic and easy to use. Blogging fit that need perfectly and I have never looked back. I never realized it would become what it is now.

CC: Where do you do your creative work?

Brenda's office

Brenda at work

BP: Ha! I work in a box. Seriously. I have issues because I do not have my own space in my house. My husband promises me that I will have a studio someday when we buy a house…where I can paint and make big messes but right now I do not have that. I had to put my laptop (where I do most of my work) in a box in order to keep out the glare from the bright windows in our living room. What happened was really strange. I found that having my own space, no matter how small it was, gave me tremendous creative freedom. I feel more motivated to work when I am in my box. I love my box. As Virginia Wolfe says, “a woman must have money and a room of her own…” Mine just happens to be really really small.

CC: Do you have a schedule for your creative work?

BB

Baby Bug

BP: I get two hours every day to do “me” stuff. These two hours are basically my daughter’s nap time so they are not always predictable. But life is what it is and I make the best of it. Most of that time I spend trying to get work done because I’m always behind. But sometimes I do what I want because I’m the boss of me and I can. I also try to do fun crafts with my daughter (when she is awake of course!). Firstly because it’s a great way to burn hours when I don’t know what else to do besides the endless housework and picking up after a toddler and secondly because it is fun for both of us. I really want her to grow up to enjoy being creative as much as I do.

CC: What do you struggle with most?
BP: Balancing. Every time I think I have it all figured out and I have a routine that works and keeps everyone happy, something changes and I have to start over again. Those first few days of a change (like two naps a day turning into one because my daughter is growing up) are terrible and I whine and complain like nobody’s business. But then I learn to adapt and things get better. I think the hardest part for me is realizing that this is all a cycle and I have to roll with it. I need to remember that I’ve been through it before and what didn’t kill me made me stronger. Being a mom of a small child is only a short amount of time when you look at the big picture. I have to make sacrifices. I can’t do everything I want to do. But I know there will be years in the future (I plan on living to 102) when I will have more time. I’ll only have this time with my daughter once. So I have to do a good job for her sake.

Desk

Desk (note slippers & Hello Kitty mousepad)

CC: How much does guilt factor in your life?
BP: Hahahaha. What kind of question is that? Guilt. Well, after the screaming monkey that is my child is asleep, I often feel guilty that I got so cross at her when she was awake. I think feeling that guilt makes me try harder to be a better mother the next day. I think that is why God made children so adorably cute, so we wouldn’t kill them when they are being horrid.

CC: How has motherhood changed you creatively?
BP: This is a good question. I think Keri Smith answered it best. The only thing that I can really say on this subject is that while my child has greatly hindered my productivity she has also quadrupled my inspiration. So it works out. She is my muse. She is my inspiration. I wouldn’t have half the ideas I have now if I didn’t have her around. I wanted a daughter very badly for a very long time. I felt like a part of me was missing. That sadness hindered me. So now she hinders me in the flesh but I would rather put up with that any day.

Inspiration board

Inspiration board (click for larger image)

CC: Where do you find inspiration?
BP: Wow. I keep answering these questions before I get to them. My daughter inspires me. Her great big eyes make themselves onto a lot of my illustrations. I’m also inspired by the books she reads and the cartoons she watches. There are so many amazing children’s illustrators out there that I never knew about before. I never feel hard up for inspiration. If I do feel a little sluggish, I just drink a cup of coffee and I’m buzzing again.

CC: What are your top 5 favorite blogs—the ones you read every day?
BP: I hate this question because I don’t really have a top five. First I read my friends and family and then I read about five other random sites but they change from time to time. Here are my top random five of today:

Cookies

You know you want some, baked or not

CC: What is your greatest indulgence?
BP: Making cookies and eating about a third of the dough. It always makes me sick and then I hate myself for days afterwards but I still do it.

CC: What are you reading right now?
BP: Hardly anything. I have a stack of books on my shelf to read but I am not reading them. The last really great book I read was Beautiful Boy by David Sheff. This was a good book for me but mostly because I have an addict in my extended family and I was struggling to make sense of it all. This book was an amazing comfort for me.

CC: What advice would you offer to other mothers struggling to be more creative?
BP: My best advice to others is to do what you love. Don’t beat yourself up because you aren’t doing what you think you should be doing. You can only do so much and what you really enjoy doing will rise to the top. Pick one or two things and do them well. Then give yourself a break about the rest.

CC: Thanks, Brenda — er, Secret Agent Josephine. (Brenda is on blog haitus until September 15, so check back soon!)

Aug 13

6 Comments

8/13 Weekly creativity contest winner & new prompt

You guys always come through! A bunch of goodies arrived for the creativity contest prompt “circles.” Our winner is newcomer Carmen Torbus, who sent in two gorgeous paintings, both acrylic and mixed media. (The first is entitled “Thy Will Be Done” and the second is “August.” Visit Carmen’s blog here.) I just love the icon-like design quality, don’t you? Congratulations, Carmen — your $10 amazon.com gift certificate will arrive momentarily. Welcome to Creative Construction!


 

From Juliet Bell: “I had several ideas for the ‘Circles’ competition but none came to the fore until I fell asleep and dreamed I was having tea with a friend in her shop. On the wall behind my friend was a beautiful china platter, round, with a soft pattern of mixed blue circles and leaves suggesting grapes. The platter hung on a wall papered with a complimentary blue grape design. My dog barked, awaking me with this image sharp in my mind’s eye. This watercolor design (4” x 4”) is based on my dream. I love it when my dreams send me ideas.” (Juliet’s Etsy shop here.)

 

From Sam Hirst: “Here is a card I made using branches from a birch tree that had to be taken out of my yard. I cut the branches and block printed the card using them.” (I love the use of found materials! Sam’s blog and Etsy shop.)

 

From Cathy Coley, a poem. Cathy writes: “The idea is better than the poem, but it’s a start.” (I think it’s all good, Cathy!)

Circles
Going in circles
I re-read old books,
some six, seven times.
I walk with the ghosts
of what I know they’ll do
before they do. Walker’s
Zede relives her past not just once.
Lissie relives every past
over and over since the dawn of time.
We go back again together
to live in the trees.
My dreams breeze fill
with blue green peacock
and red parrot feathers,
three stones in dirt.
Just last week,
gods of every continent.
I don’t usually need help.
I walk hand in hand with goddesses,
elements, even by day.
Gaiman just choreographs them
better than I would dare.
I follow them while he directs.
I read my dreams and thank
all gods Elegba, Odin, Bast, and Balthazar
for the circles of life, the spirals of centuries,
and these authors for
reading my dreams
and writing them down.
 

From Lisa Worthington-Brown, last week’s winner, a bounty of circle paintings! Lisa writes: “Painting circles is relaxing for me, so I find that I have a lot of recent work with circles. Here are a few.” (The first image is a detail from a larger-than-life self-portrait.)

 

From me (Miranda), the usual pair! I took this photo on Sunday at Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Mass. I have to admit I didn’t realize I had snagged a shot for the “circles” prompt until later that evening when I was reviewing my photos. I smacked my head, V-8 style, and said, “Circles!”

Garden in the Woods
The pond is brimming
with turtles and dragonflies,
life in gloss and green

 

This week’s prompt: “Chocolate”

Use the prompt however you like — literally; just a suggestion of color; or a tengential theme. All media are welcome. Please e-mail your entries to creativereality@live.com by 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, August 19. The winning entry receives a $10 gift certificate to amazon.com. Writers should include their submission directly in the body text of their e-mail. Visual artists and photographers should attach an image of their work as a jpeg. Enter as often as you like; multiple submissions for a single prompt are welcome. There is no limit to how many times you can win the weekly contest, either. (You do not have to be a contributor to this blog in order to enter. All are invited to participate.) Remember, the point here is to stimulate your output, not to create a masterpiece. Keep the bar low and see what happens. Dusting off work you created previously is OK too. For more info, read the original contest blog post.

Aug 12

Running in circles?

Only four submissions for this week’s creativity contest (the prompt is “circles’) — but there are more than 6 hours left until deadline, so if you need a kick in the pants, think outside the box and send something in! Come on, you know you want that $10 amazon.com gift certificate!

Aug 12

4 Comments

Miranda: The torch of inspiration

The summer Olympics? Yeah, I’m watching. It’s always a thrill to see the world’s top athletes doing what they do best (and, at least for the swimmers, breaking world records right and left).  Whenever I witness someone at the top of his or her game, it makes me regret that I’m such a slug in comparison want to reach higher. (And who among the readers of this blog isn’t waving a few extra flags for Dara Torres?)

Whether the greatness is a gold medal for synchronized diving or a Nobel Prize for literature, I’m in awe. I went to see Doris Lessing reading at the Boston Public Library in 1997 (on tour to promote the second part of her autobiography, Walking in the Shade) and the place was a mob scene. Rabb, a huge lecture hall, was packed to overflowing and satellite seating areas with closed-circuit monitors were set up to accommodate some of the extra audience. Being in the presence (albeit, distance presence, although she did sign her book for me) of a true great was a thrilling experience. Obviously, Doris Lessing is beloved by many, and the fondness of her audience was palpable that night. While I have no illusion that I will ever approach anything that Lessing has created, it was hard not to be a little starstruck — to want to earn some of that success and popularity, to dream about going to bed at night knowing you are truly “great” at what matters to you. That maybe somehow the external evidence of success makes you believe “yes, I have accomplished something.”

When I watch the athletes in Beijing, I gobble up the “human interest” stories that detail the competitors’ “regular” life. What must it be like to work at your craft for 6 to 8 hours a day? What must it be like to win a gold medal; proof that you are the best in the world at what you have spent a lifetime pursuing?

Yet my life couldn’t be more opposite. Instead of creating a cocoon in which to concentrate all my effort toward a singular purpose, I have given birth to five children, ensuring that I spend a great many hours taking care of other people and their interests rather than my own. However, as Christa observed in a comment yesterday, that isn’t a reason to succumb to “can’t.” But it does add a few extra challenges. At some point, even if it’s decades away, I want to experience what it’s like to be fully immersed in my craft for an extended period of time. To at least live like a “great,” even if I’m just trying it on. Hopefully, at that point, I’ll be able to manage my child-free time better, and not be so adrift without the structure that motherhood brings.

Until then, I’ll keep cobbling my work together in bits and pieces, creating something around the edges. While I’m at it, I’ll keep my eye on the “greats,” hoping to pick up a few lessons on self-discipline, perserverance, and courage to use along the way. (Seriously, I wonder if I’m too old for a second career in beach volleyball…)

Aug 11

4 Comments

Writing advice from friends old and new

A few important reminders from writer Natalie Goldberg, artist and author of the uber-classic Writing Down the Bones. Like Julia Cameron, Goldberg asserts that writing is a basic element of connected existence for everyone, writers and non-writers alike.

Goldberg’s most recent book, An Old Friend from Far Away, was released in February. Old Friend is about writing personal memoir — exploring memories and connecting with the self in a way that opens doors for all who follow a creative path. I haven’t read the book yet, but Goldberg is certainly an “old friend” to many of us.

In this morning’s Boston Globe, novelist Allegra Goodman published the op-ed piece “So, you want to be a writer? Here’s how.” She advises against writing about yourself and advocates reading widely (of course) and finding a peaceful place to work (yeah, right).

And this is true for everyone, but especially for women: If you don’t value your own time, other people won’t either. Trust me, you can’t write a novel in stolen minutes outside your daughter’s tap class. Virginia Woolf declared that a woman needs a room of her own. Well, the room won’t help, if you don’t shut the door. Post a note. ‘Book in progress, please do not disturb unless you’re bleeding.’ Or these lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge, which I have adapted for writing mothers: ‘. . . Beware! Beware! / Her flashing eyes, her floating hair! Weave a circle round her thrice, / And close your eyes with holy dread, / For she on honey-dew hath fed, / and drunk the milk of Paradise.’

Unfortunately, the “don’t bother me unless you’re bleeding” routine really isn’t appropriate for mothers with children under the age of six, to my mind. What do you think?

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