It has been super rainy for the last few days (with an atmospheric river on the way), and today is the first day off I’ve had in months that has zero appointments or tasks scheduled.
Finally, I am getting that fall feeling that I love so much. It’s belated this year due to ridiculously long-lasting summer weather and a busy social calendar, so it’s nice to have a chance to curl up under a blankie and think about what I want to do over the next few months during the indoor seasons.
Here’s what I’m thinking:
Art
Over the past couple of years I have spent some time (especially during the lockdown/laid off portion of the pandemic) working on stained glass, drawing, printmaking, pottery and mixed media artwork. These things used to be part of my daily life until I went back to school for Interior Design and didn’t have any free time left.
After I finished school, I think I was a bit burnt out and also no longer in the habit of making art. It took me quite a few years to realize I missed it, and probably a few more to consider the idea that I might still be an artist.
A couple of weeks ago, Michel and I visited a few stops on the New Westminster Cultural Crawl. It was very inspiring.
We visited the house of a woman who had been a high school art teacher for the past 20 years and had retired during the pandemic. She now rents a space in Vancouver where she is prolifically making all kinds of art, including printmaking and mixed media work. I loved that she was doing so many different types of work and it’s definitely a use of retirement I can get behind.
We also stopped at a house that had several artists showing in the garage, adjacent to a beautiful, serene yard with a lovely covered patio and water feature. One of them is a collage artist that I had admired the work of at the last cultural crawl and I found out she sometimes runs workshops. Since I had already been planning (for the last year) to do some collage work, but have not been self-motivated enough to actually do it, taking a workshop might be just the thing I need.
I still have a big goal of turning our garage into a studio space to help facilitate spending more time making art. Fall and winter are not the best times to try to get back to this project since we will need to work on the exterior first, but I am really hoping that 2023 is the year that we can get this completed. It is really the only reno project on our schedule, so it should be feasible.
For now, I would like to get back to my 2022 goal of spending time listening to music and making art just for fun. I started off strong at the beginning of the year and then dancing came back and it fell off my radar. No regrets there, but I want to consciously make time for this again.
Creative Writing
This is another thing that I do in waves. This very blog started as a way to schedule more writing into my routine 3 years ago.
For my birthday week off this year I have some goals for a writing project I want to spend my time on, which should be a good trial to see if it’s something I am likely to do more of, or just a fantasy that I imagine would be enjoyable.
Beyond the fall, I also have some grande ideas:
Balboa
In case you are not familiar, balboa is a sub-genre of swing dancing that is my very favourite dance. It is danced in close embrace, usually to a fast tempo and, compared to other swing dances, it takes up very little space. The footwork is small and it is great for crowded dance floors. It is often jokingly (and accurately) described as hugging and shuffling. That probably doesn’t really make clear what the appeal is, but those who love it, love it a lot. Me included. (Here’s an example from a recent competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d8zICnuJFw – as a fun side note: I have actually danced with 3 of the people in that competition video.)
For the past 6 months we have been part of a balboa practice group that meets every 2 weeks (or thereabouts) for a couple of hours. It has been very enjoyable and I would like to work on building a larger community of balboa dancers. I have tons of ideas for events, workshops and socials for 2023, and I know others in the group would be on board to help with the organizing so it is a very real possibility that we could make some or all of them happen.
Because I am already spending a lot of time organizing for Uptown Swing Collective, I would like this to be more of a grassroots effort with a variety of things happening due to different people’s efforts, instead of having one organization that runs it all and has to agree on how to move forward. I would rather just see a bunch of things thrown out there and the community will decide what works and what doesn’t based on whether or not they show up.
Permaculture
If the timing works out, I would really like to do the Permaculture Design Certificate next year. It is a course that is offered in various formats at different places and the one I have been eyeing is a few weeks of Fridays and Saturdays through Burnaby Continuing Education. This would have been a great thing to do when my calendar was blank and there were limited options available due to the pandemic but when I thought to look it up I had already missed the course for the year, and it’s only offered once each spring.
OK, that’s enough from me and all my big ideas. Time to get dressed.
Dancing In Irreverence 