🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄 Merry Christmas🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

We "celebrate" (by giving the cats treats and making nice food to eat), but not really, not traditionally, because we don't go to church (though we have in the past) and I am more into Yule and Solstice celebrations than Christian ones. We also always watch a lot of Christmas movies and TV episodes (like Psych. which always makes me laugh, which is awesome). This year we watched three different versions of A Christmas Carol. Scrooged, with Bill Murray and Karen Allen, which I haven't seen in umpteen years, so it was kind of like watching it for the first time again; a Hallmark movie version (that I forgot the name of) that was actually pretty cool; and (probably the best one) A VHS Christmas Carol Live!, which is a musical theater version with original songs. That one is by the theater group "StarKid," who have a lot of their performances on YouTube, and are extremely talented. 

I was looking at one of my old journal notes that was musing about how cool it would be to have that experience that Dickens describes of the ghost visitations and time travel into your own past and future. I wrote how much I would love to see myself as a baby with my mom, dad, and sister, on Christmas. To see myself being unconditionally loved by my family, and them loving each other too. How cool would that be?  Then I realized that a lot of people actually do have that, and get the opportunity to watch themselves on video because they had movie cameras (or phones now, of course), that their parents used to film them.

It would be such a good perspective revelation to see yourself from the outside, in the past, future and present. This might be not that hard to do with visualization exercises, if you can enter the right, open state of mind, and have the awareness and objectivity to be willing to see things or learn things that aren't pleasant ... but teleporting and time travelling with ghosts sounds a lot easier and more fun.😊

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL, AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT. Peace and Love, Be excellent to one another. 💖💖💖 If you decide to watch this, I think you'll be really impressed! ♫♬🎜🎝🎶🎶

 I don't know or rather can't decide what to write today, so I let an AI write me a post:

P.S. Photos are not mine, but from a house listed on Zillow in California that I was drooling over!

Writer's block is incredibly frustrating, especially when you've set a goal to post regularly.

Since I know you've been working hard on organizing your art room and resurrecting your blog for regular Wednesday Thursday posts, I've drafted a post centered on that journey. It's often easier to write about the process of getting ready to create when the creativity itself feels stuck.

Here is a draft you can use, edit, or completely scrap if it doesn't feel right:

---

Title Ideas:

• Finding My Way Back to the Easel

• The Great Art Room Reset

• Clearing the Clutter to Find Creativity

Body Draft:

They say the hardest part is just showing up, but I’d argue the hardest part is sometimes just finding your supplies so you can show up.

Lately, I’ve been on a mission to resurrect this blog and, more importantly, my creative practice. I set myself a goal to post here every Wednesday, a small promise to myself to keep moving forward. But before the watercolors could flow and the sketches could start, I had to face the reality of my art room.

I’ve realized I’m what some might call a "Butterfly" organizer. I need to see my things—if they are tucked away in opaque boxes, they might as well not exist. The challenge has been finding a way to keep my beloved supplies visible without letting the room devolve into chaos. It’s a delicate balance of open shelving, clear bins, and a lot of tough decisions about what stays and what goes.

It hasn't just been about cleaning; it’s been an archaeological dig through past projects and forgotten ideas. It's overwhelming, but also inspiring. Clearing physical space really does seem to clear mental space.

I’m not all the way there yet. There are still piles to sort and labels to make. But I’m here, writing this today, which means I’m one step closer than I was yesterday.

It's not my writing, but it says what I feel, so that's 'good enough' for today. Perfection is unattainable anyway, and I feel better just knowing I posted. Here's another scene from the house I was dreaming about for when I win the lottery! ;-)

Kats n' Jammers

 Our cat, Doctor Crush, from a few years ago in a peaceful, snow-filled scene. I was/am always surprised he doesn't mind the snow or cold too much (But he always comes back inside when he's ready). 

I have been thinking about the jobs I have had that made me wish I could do something like that full-time. Not all parts of the job, but certain aspects of it that I really enjoyed, that had me thinking, if only I could do *this* all day, instead of all the other parts.

Some examples were when I was working at the college library at art school, and in between the tasks I was assigned, I would just sit in the stacks in between shelves and shelves of art books and look through books of photography and paintings. I just wanted to do that all day long (and also make art). Then, when I worked in the book room at an elementary school, doing categorizing, filing, and labeling, I would stop and read the children's books ... and I just wanted to do that all day long (and also make art and illustrations, and write). That was a cool volunteer job, as was reading to kids with the S.M.A.R.T (Start Making a Reader Today) program at the same school.

Whenever I got to do art class projects with kids at the high school (especially in ceramics), I felt like I would be happy if I could just do that all day long. And when I got to play outside and do craft projects at the other elementary school for the after-school program "SHINE" I enjoyed everything about it, but missed reading and writing. And then, also at the high school jobs, I would be doing some research that was related to a curriculum I would need to present, or things that were specific to a student I was working with, and I would just be enjoying the process of learning, disseminating information, and researching, and I was always sad when I had to stop.

When I was at my other college jobs involving flat-copy slide photography, data entry, and other computer work, I really enjoyed doing that, and was content to perform the office and photo studio side of the tasks we had, but it was sadly only a small portion of the work shift.

I dislike the same things about working at schools as I did as a student: the bells, the rush, the scheduling, the early starts, being indoors all day, and the large classes. It would be so great if you found something you liked and could keep doing it until you were done, instead of having to stop and go start something completely different. I read something about Montessori schools and Reggio Emilia schools today that made me realize that not only would that have served me better when I was a student, but also would fulfill me more as a teacher.

Here's to being able to do what suits you best, all the time, every day. Peace. 

            Doctor Pepper posing

Retail Madness

 Soho Video

                 and

                         Paper Zone

These two jobs were connected in a way, because when I was still at Paper Zone I had yet to return to school by starting at PSU; and I worked at Soho while I was at school again (for the first couple of years). I remember the phone call I had from Judith at Soho inviting me to work there, that I took on my break at PZ. The rest of the details are too fuzzy to recall. PZ was interesting. It was an office supply and craft store. They had oodles of rubber stamps, tons of paper of every style imaginable, and other supplies (pens galore). I wasn't hired as any type of supervisor, fortunately, but was eventually fired nonetheless for sharing my wage rate with another employee. I assumed we (the regular associates) were all making the same (around $7.25 I think) but the person was so upset (rightly so, as they'd been there awhile) that they went to the manager about it, to raise an understandable fuss. 

I'm still confused about why this was a "me" problem—why not just raise their wage and give them the difference to make up for the time they were at a deficit? Underpaying valuable employees is bad management practice. I was mad and disappointed, naturally, who likes being fired? But yet again, like OMSI (which came much later), I was better off. It was a small crew, with a couple of good natured people, and also some less friendly types. One supervisor, a woman younger than myself at the time called me "Dork" on a regular basis and didn't understand why it bothered me so much. Then there was a woman who was extremely perturbed when I attempted any small talk. I specifically recall asking what she was planning to make for dinner while we were stocking shelves one day, and she said "chopped salad," which I had never heard of, so I asked her more questions about it, and she's like: "why do you want to know about what we eat?" So I was taken aback, because it was just small talk, but I explained that we both liked to cook and I was interested in recipes. She was quite curmudgeonly for a twenty-something married person. She also never said "Thank You" or "You're Welcome," explaining when I mentioned it one time, that it "wasn't necessary" to do with other employees, just customers. I remember that clearly despite it being almost 30 years ago. WTF. Rude People, am I right?

Soho Video was much better by all accounts. It doesn't exist anymore, the owner having moved to California, but at the time it was the best, most complete and eclectic indie video store in Southwest Portland. The East side featured a similar place, Movie Madness, which was much bigger, still exists today, and is now owner (I think) of the Historic Hollywood Theater

I liked working at Soho so much, I remember thinking I could be content to stop going to school if I could only work there full time. To give an example of how cool Soho video was, I once signed up Gus Van Sant as a customer for a new account. How cool is that. The best part was that I made a friend for life in Adrienne, the owner's daughter who worked there on her college breaks. She now lives in Mexico, but we text regularly. I don't remember how much I made per hour, but there were always videos to borrow for free, as well as screeners of new movies (VHS only ... this was on the cusp of DVDs and the store closed before they were mainstream, so the owner never added any to the inventory). Peace and Love, and may all your retail experiences be either behind you, or going well.