Month: April 2021

Schedules

Fallton Havenstonne

Schedules keep us organized, keep us cognizant of what to expect throughout the day. But what about when we’re not at work? What if we go on vacation, or have time off from work, such as on the weekend? Do we still live by a schedule?

To a certain extent, we do. Because of the work week, it has conditioned us to sleep at a certain time and wake up at a certain hour. We might even have the same routine of eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a certain time. We could have a “weekend schedule” where we do bulk shopping at the grocery store. The weekend can be the time we watch a new movie or go on a hike.

No matter what day of the week it is, there is a schedule we follow (aren’t we creatures of habit?). At work, the schedule is obvious because that’s time we’re getting paid. At home, chores need to get done, and there is a finite time to eat, relax, and read before we go to sleep.

Shelf Life

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Some time ago, I had made a reading list of about twenty or so books. Like most reading lists I’ve made, it was more ambitious than I could actually accomplish. In reality, I only got through a few of the books before I took a break from reading. Then I started to write, and the unread books on the list remained unread.

Now, when I see those unread books on the bookshelf at the store, library, or online, they don’t appeal to me as they once did. There was a shelf life to them–a window of time when I was open to reading them, learning from them. Now that years had past, they no longer pique my interest.

That’s how most things are in life. Any wish list we had two, three, or ten years ago, will seem outdated by today’s standard, even unnecessary. The things we wanted to buy, the clothes we wanted to wear, the books we wanted to read–they all have a momentary significance to us.

Of course, not everything has a short shelf life. Maybe the places we wanted to travel to are still on our wish list. Long term goals still remain such as buying a new car, owning our own place, learning new skills, etc.

But with every passing year, technology changes, new products are released, property value changes, and so do our values to varying degrees. In a way, everything has a shelf life.

Procrastination

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I don’t know why procrastination is one of the easiest things to do. It takes almost no effort to procrastinate. In fact, procrastination comes almost naturally to us, as naturally as walking, breathing. It’s as if we were born to procrastinate.

Of course, we know the consequences of it. It’s usually bad. It can set us back in life, keep us from accomplishing our goals.

Is procrastination the result of laziness? Lack of interest? An aversion for the things we need to do? Or is it more like a ghost, existing everywhere and nowhere, waiting to possess us when we’re feeling lazy, tired, or disinterested?

Procrastination sucks the life out of us, makes us feel like there’s no reason to get up off the chair and write, fabricates excuses to clean not the dishes or to make a plate of food. It sinks discouraging and negative thoughts into our mind, whispers into our ear like a ghost in the room.

But sooner or later, reality will come stomping its foot down, waking us up from the daze of procrastination, scaring it away.

Bills. Chores. Appointments. Meetings. Work. Food. Drink.

We cannot avoid the necessities of life. Reality hands out consequences irrespective of the excuses that procrastination fills our mind with. When we’re hungry, thirsty, and beset by late bills, we get back to reality, get back to work.

As we mature, we learn to respect reality more, learn not to listen to procrastination. But procrastination doesn’t disappear, but rather, hides and waits in the corner.

Hurry

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We hurry, racing frantically around our house or the office as if the world is about to end. We hurry because time is running out. And if we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the meeting, appointment, deadline, whatever pressing matter it might be.

Hurry can be a positive or negative, depending on the way we respond to it. It can be positive when it pushes us to get something done and to not procrastinate and miss an important opportunity. For example, we hurry to board a plane on time, and to make it to a job interview. If we didn’t hurry, we’d be stuck at the airport, or without a job.

Hurry can have a negative side effect when corners are cut on the job, or when the standard of quality has been reduced for the sake of finishing a project. Even though the job will technically be done, it was completed at the cost of quality and craftsmanship.

Hurry can push us, incentive us to put forth more energy and focus and creativity into finishing something. But when fear creep in our hurry, that’s when mistakes and cutting corners happen. We must be careful to not let fear get the best of us, lest it multiplies our problems, making the situation even worse.

Keep Going

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When we’re close to the finish line or the end of a project, we’ll hear a voice that says: “Keep going.”

Why is that, though?

It’s because if we hesitate for a moment, or stop to take a break, it’ll cost us time, resources, or even the prospect of finishing our goal.

More importantly, we keep going because if we don’t, we might end up quitting. And if we quit, what’s to say we’ll ever start on that project again?

Obviously, there is a limit to anything we do. Time. Energy. Focus. We cannot keep going forever. We cannot stay awake 24/7. At some point, we have to rest, recharge.

But to “keep going” doesn’t mean that we do the impossible. Rather, it’s to encourage us to finish what we started. Because when we’re close to the finish line, close to the end of a project, it’s not uncommon for us to slack off, to take it easy because we’re almost there. But we’re not there until we’ve crossed the finish line.

Sculpture

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When we sculpt something with our hands, it’s as if we’re bringing something to life. When we carve it, mold it with our fingers, or click the pieces together (as with Legos), we give reality to our imagination–making it physical, tangible.

Sculpting can be as simple as binding sticks together, or as complex as building a robot. The fun part about it is that we see it come to life before our eyes, interacting with it during the creative process.

When we mess up, we can take the sculpture apart, or just a piece of it. With clay, we roll it up into a ball, stretch it, pull it apart, then press it together again until it’s the shape we want it to be. With wood, it’s cut and sanded and glued together with other pieces of wood. Regardless of the material, whether it be metal, glass, or plastic, raw material is turned into something creative, coexisting with us and the environment as an entity drawn from our imagination.

Posted in Art

Drawing

Fallton Havenstonne

A drawing can take a variety of forms. It can be a sketch on paper, canvas, napkin, or in the digital canvas of a computer screen. A drawing can be realistic, abstract, cartoonish, or geometric.

It’s different from writing in that it illustrates our ideas rather than symbolize them with words. A single word has the power to evoke a number of images in our mind, whereas a drawing concretizes thoughts into images. It gives our ideas a particular shape, form, and texture.

Like writing, drawing is a craft that requires hours and hours of practice. The more we practice, the easier it is to illustrate what we want, and to give it the right size, shape, and texture. Likewise, our muscle memory and motor skills become adept to creating an accurate representation of the object we’re drawing. Like anything someone is an expert in, it becomes more polished with time.

But even if we’re not professional illustrators, drawing gives us the ability to put our imagination down onto paper. And whether it’s there in the form of ink, graphite or pixels, we can see, to varying degrees, what the mind sees.

Posted in Art

Building a Story

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When building a story, it starts off with a bunch of ideas that become the foundation for it. Even though we don’t know yet who all the characters are, what the story arcs are, or even how it will end, it will become clearer as we add more layers and ideas to the story.

Since we’ve had the story in our mind for awhile, we know what kind of story it will be (i.e. what genre), where it will take place (i.e. the setting), and what events should occur (the basic plot). But what’s unclear to us is how all these parts integrate, such as the chapters, and how they connect and lead up to the resolution.

Some ideas won’t be in the story at all. It could be chapters, dialogue, or characters. It would be similar to looking at a palette of colors to paint a house with, reducing them to a handful, then deciding on a couple to use throughout the house. The rest of the colors are discarded.

Building a story is a similar process. Fortunately, if we don’t like something, we can just edit it in the drafts. And even then, we might have to add more into the story as it takes shape and evolves into something that is real to us.

Writing

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Writing can be daunting and or exhilarating. It can feel like we’re staring at a blank page for hours on end, or it can come easily as we type everything that comes to mind. When we’re typing at a measly 1 word per minute, or deleting everything on the page, it’s because we aren’t sure of where to start. But if the goal and the topic is as clear as day, we can hardly contain ourselves as we pour our thoughts and ideas onto the page.

But whatever the case may be, one thing that I’ve learned about writing is that it’s a discipline. It’s something that must be practiced in the same way a sport requires practice, or learning the piano or math requires practices. When we don’t practice, it’s hard to keep up with where we left off. It’s as if the muscle memory in our fingers haven’t been trained in awhile. It needs practice to maintain the same level of word count and speed that was cultivated from previous writing sessions.

Some days will be hard, and some days will be easy regardless of how long we’ve been writing. Some days we won’t want to write. We’d rather take the day off, make an excuse not to write. But that doesn’t help us to reach our goal, which is to become better writers, and to finish short stories, novels, essays, whatever it may be.

I like to set short, easy goals in the beginning. 500 or 600 words to start with. Then build up the word count from there. Overtime, it’ll get easier to reach the goal, and then we’ll have to increase it to a 1,000 or 1,200 words. And if we keep writing, even that will get easy.

At some point, we’ll reach our limit: a feasible but challenging amount of words to write each day. We’ll know we got there because of the hard work and discipline we put into writing. After that, writing a lengthy book or a series won’t seem impossible as it once did.

New Goals

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Pursuing new goals isn’t as easy as it sounds. We often get habituated in the routines and goals we’ve already pursued–doing what comes familiar to us–sticking to our comfort zone. New goals can be intimidating as a result. To pursue them is kind of like admitting to ourselves that the old ones are flawed or aren’t good enough.

New goals can set us on a path of self-discovery, as well as one of struggle or disappointment. Examples of new goals include learning a new language, learning a musical instrument, traveling somewhere new, getting a new job, moving to a new location, or making art that is different from what we’ve already done (maybe commercially risky). There is risk to all of these, and there is no guarantee of their being positive outcomes or success either.

But pursuing something new can reveal something about ourselves. We could discover things that we do or don’t like, talents we might not have known about, and see the world in a completely different way.

Usually, a new goal springs from a need that isn’t being met. It could spring from curiosity, or because we’re unhappy in our current situation. Either way, if we don’t at least consider new goals, we might remain stagnant where we are.