Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Gone to the Birds

"Your reflective, open-ended approach to life produces far more questions than answers."
Pigeons in progress... and this process is never ending, I swear. It's also how I spend most of my time these days.
In case you're wondering, no, the above statement is not a fortune cookie or a psychics' prediction. This is the last line of a short synopsis I recently read about myself, or more accurately, my personality type. I really couldn't help but identify with the statement, particularly in recent weeks (though it's always true). Truly, I seem to have gone into introspection mode, and I find that often means I don't write as much (oddly). I spend a lot of time thinking, pondering, wondering, reading... all of which (generally speaking) leads to nothing good or, perhaps more importantly, nothing productive.
One of my favorite pigeons in progress... s/he has the most interesting/inquisitive look on his/her face
No profound or eureka moments seem to come from these times of thinking, but I believe it's important for me to go through them. They are the times that allow me to regroup and understand my place in the world, where I want to be, where I'm headed, and the like. What does this have to do with bicycles, or even art? Nothing, and everything.

I am a thinker, and always have been. Even when it seems as though there's nothing going on, the hamster wheel is always turning. I think more than I should, and spend far too much time concerned with what others think of me, what I've said (or not said), or reacting to situations that really don't affect me on any sort of personal or professional level. I easily lose myself in thoughts that lead to other thoughts, which lead to completely unrelated topics, and I can quite easily lose an entire day in the bat of an eye. Literally.

It starts out rather innocently. For example, let's say I'm just reading in the morning to see what other bloggers have posted (have to keep up on these things, you know). I read something that sparks my interest, let's say for illustration purposes here, it's about a bicycle I've never heard of prior to that post. So, I start looking into said bicycle, and it turns out this bicycle is manufactured in (again for illustrative purposes only) Ethiopia. Reading the word "Ethiopia" reminds me of my Art of Africa course, which reminds me that I have a mid term approaching in the next few days and that I should likely be studying instead of reading blogs and researching bicycles. Thinking about classes reminds me that I'm unsure of what I'm going to do when I'm out of school in the next several months, so I start researching career possibilities for my "type" of personality. What do others do who are like me? Are they happy in their career? Should I be getting a teaching credential? Am I the "teacher" type? Will that exhaust me and leave me feeling unfulfilled. I've worked at schools/colleges in the past, so I know the drill. Can I stand up to the "powers" and be the best teacher possible? Reading about burnt out teachers leads me to think I should be in business for myself, but what kind of business? Where would that money come from? What happens when it fails and I have student loans, and on top of it a business loan to repay? New businesses generally require at minimum a couple of years to even turn a profit. Maybe I need to go to grad school? I always wanted to study law, or history, or psychology, or geology and geography. Which reminds me of the earth, which reminds me of bicycles. Maybe I should make bicycle accessories? Maybe I should finally start that wool line for all sizes that I keep looking for to no avail?  And so it goes. My mind wanders, and time flies by leaving me with even more to accomplish and no time to get it all done. While I am aware I need these days, I'm still upset when I know that an entire day has gone by and little to nothing has been accomplished.

Why am I sharing this? I can't really say, other than I'm trying to figure some things out, and posts seem to slow during these times. I'll be out of my funk introspection period soon enough, but until then, please bear with me and know that bicycles are always on my mind (and staring at me from across the room, calling to me to come and ride). Hope you're out enjoying this gorgeous season on your own two wheels!

4 comments:

  1. I'm the same exact way. The internet is dangerous for us folks, as it allows us to "research" things to our hearts whim. Many a day have gone by that I've spent looking things up online, switching from subject to subject, trying to figure something out.
    I'm especially fond of lying in bed and just thinking. When my boyfriend finds me lying there alone he always thinks somethings wrong, but I've always found I can think clearer when I have alone/quiet time. Sometimes I can figure things out better with this alone time, as opposed to the internet. The internet just seems to encourage my neurosis, though there is something alluring (or just addicting) about the surfing & reading things on the internet.

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  2. PS - Beautiful bird paintings by the way. Very well done. I find it interesting that you decided to fill the whole composition with them, pushing them to the edges. Is it for a school project?
    I just recently finished a painting (and might post it on lemondirgopie.blogspot.com later, we'll see). It's so much harder to get the motivation to paint outside of school, without teachers critiquing & encouraging me. Though I only got a minor in art, I found that small framework of support helped immensely in encouraging me to paint.

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  3. Thanks, Lauren! They're coming along... slowly. :o) They're actually my thesis project. The intention is to have several (50-100 of them) by the time I'm done. I'm pondering actually taking them out into the community and getting people's reactions to pigeons in general. Since the art community seems to frown on just painting something, there must always be a concept behind the project (won't get into my thoughts on that here, because I'd be typing for hours!)... anyway, I'm interested in speaking about the idea of finding beauty in unusual places (most people don't think of pigeons as "beautiful"), and the idea of bringing to the forefront something that is normally completely disregarded. We'll see how it comes along, but I'm relatively happy with it thus far. I've had mixed reactions from people about the centered composition and pushing them to the edges, but I say, forget them - it's my work after all. I've actually enjoyed the reactions from most people, as they often wonder why on earth I'd be painting so many of them. :o) By the way, I did see the start of one of your paintings on your blog, and I loved it. Hopefully, you'll post the one you finished so I can take a peek. Always curious to see what others are working on. Oddly, I really love abstraction work, but so rarely paint it myself. Of course, I love a lot of different kinds of art (much like my blogging, my art 'likes' are a bit all over the place).

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  4. That whole thought process you went through describes me to a T. I succumb to that way too often, especially at work, where there is little real work to do. I can spend an entire day on wikipedia reading about the most obscure crap and loving every minute of it, and making plans, second guessing them, coming up with new plans....especially career related stuff. Yep, that's totally me.

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