As dear ones to me know, and as many of us are facing in one way or another, this transition into the new year was also met with large personal change. In this January threshold space of 2025, I feel myself sitting in the flames (while sending loving thoughts to all those now in literal fires), feeling massive shifts within, prompted by and instigating these outward reroutings. While I won't go into all that now, mid-processing, here are some highlights from another big year of learning, a few goals for the next two years and some favorite images from 2024.

Highlights:

• I enjoyed some sweet radio, video, podcast and print interview time with George Prentice for Boise State Public Radio's Morning Edition, Joe Golden for an upcoming documentary, Ned Buskirk on You're Going to Die, Koletta DiDio for The Arbiter, Joshua Adler on For the Wild Ones and Daphne Stanford on Radio Boise.
• I finished my 100 drawings project, part of the 100K Praise Project led by Erik Ehn. They got shared at La MaMa on Leap Year Day (!).
• My play for young audiences Wolf/Girl was produced at Boise State University. Having been a playwriting student there starting around 2004, and teaching in that department since 2017, I have hoped for a main stage production through at BSU for a long time. The moment felt at least 20 years in the making. It was an especial highlight working with the remarkable, empathetic leader Tiara Thompson.
• Three from the cast of Wolf/Girl spoke up at an Idaho Fish & Game hearing on behalf of wolves, who are facing some of the worst threats they've experienced in the last century, especially here in Idaho.
• We were able to participate in the above because of meeting the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, some of whom saw Wolf/Girl and invited us to help wolves in this tangible way.
• Then that amazing group (IWCN) procured a grant on Wolf/Girl's behalf to take a showing of that play to the Wood River Valley -- Tiara and I will be bringing a staged reading to The Liberty Theater in Hailey, in partnership with The Liberty Theatre Company and IWCN, this February 12th at 6:30pm.
• I had the official release event of my first book, 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle at MING Studios and a few pop up events that followed (with more to come in 2025). We sold most of the first printing, with just a few copies remaining through Modern Mythographer and at a handful of select stores. Mega thanks to my publisher and editor, Nick Jaina!
• I got 12 Lifetimes in stock at Flying M, Rediscovered Books, The Lit Room, Kuna's Book Habit and Magnolia's Books (in Seattle). I believe there are still copies at the first four locations (or will be soon for any sold out). There are many people and places I got to meet because of this little blue book, some of those connections being quite meaningful and if not life-changing, at least life-affirming. And some people I got to reconnect with for the first time in many years, which felt quite special too.
• I read from one of my new full-length plays Take Me Away: a train wreck with monsters at Storyfort.
• I served a six-month term as Boise City Writer-in-Residence, using that time to share my six-part workshop series on Refilling Your Creative Well as well as write a bunch.
• I also got to teach Refilling Your Creative Well (combined as part of the three-part series with Exploding Your Creativity and Creative Salon) for a Boise State University Theatre Arts class, my favorite teaching experience there to date.
• My micro-play DreamSong got performed live and on a podcast through Goucher College.
• My ten-minute play lift got a reading through City Theatre in Miami.
• I boogied my feet off in a combined 40th/50th birthday dance party with Kate Kraay, co-DJ'd by Ed Kraay at West of Lenin.
• Through my Writer-in-Residence summer (plus a little spring and fall), I wrote my new full-length play TrapDoor and two new ten-minute plays, You Light Me Up and On Time (is late). The two ten-minutes got public readings through two non-traditional theater venues, as part of Address Book and Beth Norton & Friends.
• Natalie Disney (the first inaugural Boise-City Writer-in-Residence), Kerri Webster (the Idaho Writer-in-Residence) and I shared stage time at Lit@Lost, a reading event put together by all the programs who make those residencies possible. (Thanks to Lost Grove Brewing, The Cabin, Boise City Department of Arts & History, Boise Public Libraries, Idaho Commission on the Arts and Rediscovered Books.)
• I took three classes through the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program before that program seemed to stall in hiatus -- everything is in transition, right? In Steve Harper's class (Channeling Your Dreams), I wrote and workshopped the first drafts of You Light Me Up and On Time (is late).
• I spent time playing in Washington's rainforesty woods with Kate Kraay as we worked on our upcoming (long term) project, currently titled For Rest (A Homecoming).
• I stayed at a few non-traditional retreat spaces in Boise as I worked on some of the above plays.
• It was such a treat to see Starball at West of Lenin in July after one of two mini-retreat/workshop/devising sessions with Kate.
• I completed my second time through The Artist's Way.
• I got more into body/brain connections through another Alexander/Klein Techniques workshop with Fabio Tavares, somatic breathwork sessions at Exhale Boise, another tuning session with CL Young, playing around at Ecstatic Dance with Meg Freitag (who also gave me a stirring natal chart reading around my birthday time) and learning about the Action Types Approach framework with Brie Katz through Imaginisma's Atelier. And always lots of yoga (sometimes with Sarah Gardner), meditation, constructive rest practice -- now combined with trying on the Five Tibetan Rites upon Kate Kraay's introduction, as well as some breath practices learned from Breath by James Nestor.
• I got introduced to the team at Imaginisma, a collective of humans interested in amplifying aliveness -- and decided to join them on their journey through the first half of 2025.
• My micro-play Tree People was published through Climate Change Theatre Action's Arts & Climate branch.
• I joined up with a group of fellow Natalie Goldberg lovers and devotees, who started a weekly writing practice using Goldberg's particular methods of sitting/walking meditation (zazen) mixed with writing practice and sharing without feedback. It's wonderful to be practicing with other human beings in this way.
• In the fall, I realized I started practicing Natalie's methods of writing in a daily way for 15 years.
• I took a one-day virtual workshop with Natalie that, as always, made me thirsty for more.
• I sent Natalie Goldberg a copy of 12 Lifetimes -- who put it on her required reading list for her upcoming January retreat in Taos! What a thrill. I had no idea she'd read it.
• Who knows what will come of it, but I finally (after several years thinking about it) got my application together for The Jerome Fellowship and submitted that to The Playwrights' Center.
• Sandwiching a summer of not teaching (quite  gift, thanks Boise-City Writer-in-Residency), along with my regular classes at Boise State, I got to do some dramaturgical work with University of Idaho's Playwriting MFA Program (Thanks Robert Caisley!) and guest teach with Jenny Sternling's fabulous Creative Writing class at Bishop Kelly High School (thanks Jenny!).
  
  

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Get my project with Kate Kraay (For Rest: A Homecoming?), an environmental experiential experiment that parallels the stress of the human body/humanity's body with the earth's body, onto its feet
• Draft an adaptation of my play Rajpurr: Tale of a Tiger into a children's book that examines how we deal with grief with elementary grade readers -- with an extra-special illustrator collaborator (to be announced...)
• Adapt my feature screenplay script into a large-cast, full-length puppet horror play that explores the cycle of abuse through a possessed boarding house

This is my year of stepping into the unknown with care, into my power with audacity, finding miracles through brave curiosity and entering into new connections with adventurous joy and delight, while experimenting with creativity. May dreams become real as I stop hiding and simultaneously become my own sanctuary.

I'm asking -- how might I ignite magic by becoming myself?
What happens when I water what grows?

In December, Modern Mythographer Press published my first book, 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle, a collection of memoir-adjacent poetic-essays in the ancient century form. Below is a reflection of my process of this project, from inception to release, also in the century form.

Yesterday, on Leap Day, a bunch of people presented a bunch of stuff at La MaMa.
The work I sent to share is below -- 100 drawings with text (and color on occasion).

It's been an almost yearlong project, prompted by Erik Ehn, who strove to get 1000 people to make 100 things with the topic of praise in mind. I'm not sure how many ultimately signed on and crossed the finish line, but after some glances at the giant collective document...

There is a tsunami of stuff made by a boatload of people. Let's leave it there.

About yesterday's event, Ehn said: "The gathering at La MaMa centers on the peacefulness of time gone by. We’re catching breath together at a finisterre -- taking off our shoes and looking at the wear and tear and steady-on in the lot of them after a nice long walk."

I was able to pop in briefly to witness the happening over Zoom yesterday before my afternoon classes and agree that even through the screen, that is how the time/space appeared/felt/seemed.

My scanned drawings are below.
If you click on them, you can see them expanded.
I opted for the gallery layout, versus slideshow, to see them all en masse.

You can see more thoughts about this project below the images
(in a reflection that might have gotten read at La MaMa yesterday),
which puts together a lot of the thoughts I had while doing this series
(so lots of repeats if you've been following along thus far).

Previous posts, with just the image first drafts (no text, no color)
you can see here and here and here and here
(I posted them in increments of 25).

Moments from a year.
Time spending attention with intention.
That's all they are, really.
I could probably say more, but would rather let the images speak for themselves
(and that bunch of text at the bottom, if you're just joining and want context).

Enjoy!

For this shared experience, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't a discipline I've much cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination.

I wanted to let myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I wanted to lower judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I set the bar low enough for myself that I could trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from playwright Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, the plan was to go back and add text, and then in a final step, go back and add to either the drawing or the text in each piece -- again, without erasing. That could mean adding color, tending to shading, form, line, detail. In pairing text and image, I wanted to tend to the overarching theme by praising of everyday things, primarily by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This process came from an exercise I learned from writer Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

In pursuing this project, part of me rebelled. "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a new play this summer (and fall, when writing one in the summer didn’t happen). Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

At the same time, I felt myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I found that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like art pieces in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. That makes me approach the world and that day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

By paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I started to uncover what unfolds from within. Not moving toward any finished product, I was able to discover what I uncovered: a way of seeing that I want to keep developing.

Once I got halfway through the drawing process, I started thinking more about seeing and attention. Not just what I'm seeing and paying attention to (in that moment and throughout the day/week/season/year), but the idea that whatever anyone is making, whether creatively (a play, a film, a painting, a novel), relationally (a conversation, a touch, a connection), things big and small we make in all parts of our lives (avocado toast, a plan for the day, a baby) and even what is destructive (a hate crime, a bomb, an insult) is an assemblage of what we pay attention to, what we see and what in turn pays attention to us.

Thinking about that, the simultaneous ultra-simplicity and overwhelming complexity of that, I start to pay more attention to what I'm paying attention to, how that impacts me, how that object or way of seeing makes me feel or what it makes me think about. Which makes me think about the space between those focused blips of attention: when I'm distracted, unfocused, floating away into daydreams, answering emails or sleeping. Even in those moments I'm paying attention to something (which makes me want to pay attention to whatever that might be).

I wonder if this mindset is getting me paying attention with better intention, to what that means in action and what that feels like. I hope that's what's happening.

Because I'm paying attention to that intention (of how to pay attention with greater intention), then perhaps that intention is also paying attention right back to me. Magnets pulling each other closer together.

Once I got toward the end of the drawing period in my last 25 drawings, I felt the pull to be done. I had to push myself to stay present instead of rushing through to the end, especially when other creative projects were fighting for my attention. I felt how much of a durational project this was and I started getting more tired, bored and impatient. I had to find more ways to treat myself for drawing time. While I knew it wasn't, this started feeling more like a waste of time ("What? Go draw? I have a book to finish and promote! I have a play to finish! I have another play going into auditions and starting rehearsals! My students need me!").

That sense of resistance alerted me all the more that I needed to continue. In the middle-to-end stage of any process worth doing, I can feel lost at sea. This reminds me that the last 10% of a creative act can take 90% of the time, or how I can get caught up in discursive thoughts in the midst of meditation, or perhaps how an ultra-marathoner might feel in the middle-end of a long race.

Having reached 100, then having gone back to add text and then having gone a third time to add in more detail, I feel quite joyful at this stage of the work, whatever it may be. If nothing else, here is a moment of praise (not to me, but to the universe) for being able to reach 100 somethings.

This 2023 reflection is coming a bit later than planned, as 2024 has started in a full-throttle way. For that reason, it's short on the reflective side, with fewer processing thoughts than usual. Regardless, here are some highlights from a big year of learning and moving forward, a few goals for the next two years and some favorite images from 2023.

Highlights:

• I traveled overseas for the first (and second) time, first to London, then to Iceland. In London, I got to see my sister Kate Kraay perform in David Glass Ensemble's The Brides and check out other shows that were part of the final London International Mime Festival (sniff) after five decades.
• I got to meet the Nervous Theatre people and learn new devising practices from them in their residency workshops at Surel's Place.
• Thomas Paul and I put out a chapbook album of poem-songs called Drown to Resurface, which Grant Olsen listed on his top ten albums of the year for his show It's Now Right Now on Radio Boise. We shared tracks from it at Couch Surfer Series, Treefort Music Fest, Campfire Stories and performed the album in full at MING Studios 7o'clock series. MING played tracks from it for their podcast My on Mondays, too. I got to feel a bit like Patti Smith with a live band behind me during our performances.
• I was commissioned for the second time for Climate Change Theatre Action. I wrote them a new micro-play Tree People that was performed worldwide, specifically in Texas, Minnesota, Ireland, Massachusetts, British Columbia, Georgia, Austria and Pennsylvania.
  
• I facilitated the last of my three-part Refilling Your Creative Well workshop series I created through The Cabin, finishing off with a Creative Salon workshop. Then, our new Department Chair Raquel Davis at the Boise State University Department of Theatre, Film and Creative Writing let me design that series into a class for the Theatre Department. We started this week.
  
• My play for young audiences Wolf/Girl was selected for production at Boise State University. Director Tiara Thompson and I worked with our incredible, brilliant, inspired design team in pre-production, assembled a fab cast of student actors and started looking excitedly forward to our rehearsals (that started the first week of January) and production (we open February 8).
  
• My micro-play Deer You was published by Literature Today.
• A monologue from my play Unwind: Hindsight is 2020 (a project Kate Kraay and I still want to make into the fully devised, physical, environmental theater piece we initially envisioned -- maybe this year?) was published in Writing for Change Journal.
• I applied and was accepted into the Dramatists Guild Institute's Certificate Program. I started in the fall with my first class with the amazing Andrea Lepcio. Thanks to that class, I drafted the play I've been scared to begin for years, Take Me Away: a trainwreck with monsters. I got some of my favorite artists (Jaime Nebeker, Matthew Cameron Clark and Tracy Sunderland) in a room to hear the new play in a private reading.
  
• I took part in David Glass Ensemble's The Brides Workshop in Seattle, something the ensemble does during their early connections with a new country for their international phenomenon series of performances. During that time, I played onstage with Kate Kraay for the first time...at least the first time since we were kids and she had us and our brother act out fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel for our parents.
  
• I took part in two virtual workshop/retreats led by Natalie Goldberg. Once I shared something for her in a giant Zoom room with hundreds of participants. She asked if I was a poet and said "It's obvious you've been practicing for a while." I could hardly breathe.
  
• I had my first real dramaturgy gig, working with Wolfgang Jones on his haunting play A Beginner's Guide to Self-Loathing & Why We Say Goodbye at Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. It sure felt good to be back at my favorite company working with those wonderful artists, especially for Jeni Mahoney's last year as Artistic Director.
  
• My full-length play Ark, based on Elisabeth Sharp McKetta's middle-grade novel, got its first public reading at Rediscovered Books in Boise. Elisabeth and her family joined us all the way from the UK for the event!
• I participated in an Alexander/Klein Techniques workshop with the fabulous Fabio Tavares and felt like an infant again, relearning how to stand, sit, walk.
  
• I got two poems published in The Cabin's anthology Writers in the Attic: Three. I got to read one of them during the release party, my first time giving a reading at the Gene Harris Bandshell.
  
• I had a streak of eight months with at least one public reading/performance scheduled per month.
• Natalie Disney and I were selected to be the inaugural Boise City Writers-in-Residence.
  
• I applied and was a semi-finalist for a Dramatists Guild Foundation National Fellowship.
  
• I published my first book, 12 Lifetimes: A Century Cycle through a friend, writer, musician and artist I admire and his new small press, Modern Mythographer. Thanks, Nick Jaina! Of the intentionally small first edition printing of 200 copies, we've sold over a quarter in this soft opening stage, before any official events and without publicity (beyond social media and my newsletter). Erik Ehn, Cindy Shearer and Elisabeth Sharp McKetta were early readers and gave me such encouraging blurb quotes to include in the publication.
  
• I turned a sometimes meditation practice into a daily meditation practice.
• I drew 100 drawings in a project led by Erik Ehn. From recent news, it sounds like the final projects might get shared at La MaMa this February on Leap Year Day (!).
  
• I had my first and second tuning sessions with CL Young. Highly recommend.

3 Big Goals for the Next Two Years:

• Travel to 1-2 more new (to me) international countries.
  
• Complete the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program.
• Start a playwrights group or collective that fosters community and helps playwrights in the Boise area support each other -- through feedback, encouragement and/or more formally showing each other's work.
  

While I do want to continue stepping into my power, letting go of what I don't need and inviting what I want into my life, I also notice that as this year begins, I am in a time of enormous happenings, which may continue all year long. Many are big for me. Many I've wanted a long time, worked hard to receive and have gotten thanks to immense help from loads of dear ones. I am grateful for all of it and don't want to rush through these events tense and intense, without taking stock, appreciating and experiencing in full.

Through this year and all the steps/milestones underway, I want to practice being with those happenings. By this, I don't mean resting on my laurels, but actually enjoying what I'm doing while I'm doing, staying present with those actions as they're happening -- so they don't all pass me by with an attitude of mental frenzy. Therefore, may this be a year of softening inside, to feel the glow of my inner flame amongst such activity and forward movement -- without letting it/me burn out. I want to slow down in my body while going with the flow of the momentum -- while not trying to control the outcome.

Last year was a major time of growth that continues into 2024. Many of those days, I'm feeling the turbulence. I know there will be even greater need this year for finding moments, days, weeks to go on airplane mode, decrease the tempo and go solo into retreats, to see who I am as a human being apart from all the doing. As we/many of us keep walking/running/sprinting forward, in a time with such regional/national/global chaos, change, uncertainty and violence -- I know this year I must cultivate inner peace, so my actions don't just add to the noise, but help us/me pay attention with greater intention...and so my own well doesn't dry up.

May this be a year of finding grace within the fire, while enjoying the warmth of those flames.

I completed my 100th drawing in Erik Ehn's 100K Project last week. That means I've finished the first stage of the process I'm undertaking for this big group project. See more context about what the heck that means below the slideshow of images.

In these last 25 drawings, I definitely felt the pull to be done. I had to be mindful to stay present instead of rushing through to the end, especially when other creative projects were fighting for my attention. I felt how much of a durational project this is and I started getting more tired, bored and impatient. I had to find more ways to treat myself for drawing time. While I knew it wasn't, this started feeling more like a waste of time ("What? Go draw? I have a book to finish and promote! I have a play to finish! I have another play going into auditions and starting rehearsals! My students need me!").

That sense of resistance alerted me all the more that I needed to continue. In the middle-to-end stage of any process worth doing, I can feel lost at sea. This reminds me that the last 10% of a creative project can take 90% of the time, or how I can get caught up in discursive thoughts in the midst of meditation, or perhaps how an ultra-marathoner might feel in the middle-end of a long race.

Having reached 100, I feel quite joyful at this stage of the work. We'll see how I feel as I begin the next stage. Stage two is adding text. Stage three will be adding a bit more to either the words or the drawing of each text/image piece. Yesterday I bought myself new pens for the next stages, some replacing well worn instruments, some in color.

If nothing else, here is a moment of praise (not to me, but to the universe) for being able to reach 100.

Again, for more context (basically a repeat if you've read any of my last three posts):

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Earlier this year he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He hoped to gather 1000 participants -- a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise, so 100,000 gestures. I don't know how many people ultimately agreed, but there are a lot of us making 100 things.

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail.  This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 100 drawings. See the photos (76-100) above as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. You can check out 51-75 in the post below this one, 26-50 in the post below that one and 1-25 in the post below that. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well, here and/or on Instagram.

After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art. That makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

I completed my first 75 drawings in Erik Ehn's 100K Project this week. That means I'm three-quarters through the first stage of the process I'm undertaking for this big group project. See more context about what the heck that all means below the slideshow of images.

While completing the last 25 drawings, I've thought more about seeing and attention. Not just what I'm seeing and paying attention to (in that moment and throughout the day/week/season/year), but the idea that whatever anyone is making, whether creatively (a play, a film, a painting, a novel), relationally (a conversation, a touch, a connection), things big and small we make in all parts of our lives (avocado toast, a plan for the day, a baby) and even what is destructive (a hate crime, a bomb, an insult) is an assemblage of what we pay attention to, what we see and what in turn pays attention to us.

Thinking about that, the simultaneous ultra-simplicity and overwhelming complexity of that, I start to pay more attention to what I'm paying attention to, how that impacts me, how that object or way of seeing makes me feel or what it makes me think about. Which makes me think about the space between those focused blips of attention: when I'm distracted, unfocused, floating away into daydreams or sleeping. Even in those moments I'm paying attention to something (which makes me want to pay attention to whatever that is).

I wonder if this mindset is getting me paying attention with better intention, to what that means in action and what that feels like. I hope that's what's happening.

Because I'm paying attention to that intention (of how to pay attention with greater intention), then perhaps that intention is also paying attention right back to me. Magnets pulling each other closer together.

Maybe these thoughts are starting to spiral in on themselves (or fractal out?) because for the first time I'm reading House of Leaves and that labyrinthine dive is pointing out some uninhabited hallways growing and reconfiguring inside my internal conch shell.

Don't worry about paying attention to all of that. You can just look at some little drawings.

Again, for more context (basically a repeat if you've read either of my last two posts):

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Earlier this year he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he's still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small, ephemeral, even 100 blinks in time...). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 75th drawing. See the photos (51-75) above as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. You can check out 26-50 in the post below this one and 1-25 in the post below that. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well, here and/or on Instagram.

Pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple. The way lines curve. That makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

If you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own by February (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

I completed my first 50 drawings in Erik Ehn's 100K Project this week. That means I'm halfway through the first stage of the process I'm undertaking for my own contribution in this big group project. See more context about what the heck that all means below the slideshow of images.

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (he is still looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley, do let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. I'm setting the bar low enough for myself that I can trip over it and fall onto my sketchbook, as I learned from Dano Madden, who learned that from Jeni Mahoney (who may have been quoting Rick Dresser) in reference to the writing/playwriting process.

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text. I'll write whatever strikes as I look at each image again. After that, I'll go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation. This comes from an exercise I learned from Cindy Shearer in another durational text/image project I participated in while I was an MFA student at California Institute of Integral Studies.

This week I completed my 50th drawing. See the photos (26-50) above as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. You can check out 1-25 in the post below this one. When I finalize them more (with text and so forth) I plan to share those as well.

In pursuing this project, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times. Less judgment. It's all just stuff. We're all just stuff. It's all okay.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), let me know. Seriously.

Erik Ehn likes to bring big groups of artists together to generate material in experimental, experiential ways. Recently he invited a large group of folx, myself included, to create 100 things by next Leap Day (February 29, 2024). The overall aim is a social reflection on praise. He is gathering 1000 participants (I think he is looking for more people -- if this sounds up your alley let me know). This means a thousand artists committing to generate a hundred artistic gestures each, on the theme of praise. This means 100,000 gestures (they can be small!). As Erik said in his email call, "The math is arbitrary and held out as a motive. 100K is a vest pocket version of Revelation’s 'ten thousand times ten thousand angels'; it lines up with The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa."

With about as much arbitrary yet focused planning, I decided to make 100 drawings of objects, items, living beings, environments, all in the same sketchbook -- so no do-overs -- and all using pigma archival ink pens -- so no erasing. In my teen-and-preteen years I greatly enjoyed drawing. I've played with it here and there since then, but this isn't an art discipline I've particularly cultivated in the last 20 years -- especially drawing images in front of me rather than from memory or imagination. So in that sense I'm letting myself try something new (or old but undeveloped) and not be good at it, like an arm-balancing posture in a yoga class. I'm lowering judgement to an appropriate level, as David Glass asks artists and creative humans to do in his workshops. 

After making 100 drawings, I'll go back and add text, as I did on the door (#17) below in the more hasty sketch in a recent writing workshop, trying to put all the steps together in under an hour (and letting myself live with the failures in that stretch). After that, I may go back and try to add to/improve either the drawings or the text -- again, without erasing. Maybe I'll add color. Maybe I'll tend more to shading, form, line, detail. In the pairing of text and image, I'll try to attend to the overarching theme in praise of everyday things, just by paying attention to their qualities, dimensions, articulation.

This week I completed my 25th drawing. See the photos below as process photos, not formal, well-cropped or composed in any way, marking my progress through the quantity rather than quality. Posting after completing every new 25 images seems like a good enough regular update. When I finalize them more with text and so forth I may share those as well, perhaps scanned, around the time I send them to Erik, but by then I will be deep in my fall-spring semesters at Boise State University and the Dramatists Guild Institute Certificate Program, so no promises.

In pursuing this project, part of me thinks, "What are you doing? Isn't this getting in the way of your writing time? You wanted to write a play this summer. Think about all the hours that are now going into this practice and not that script."

But at the same time, I feel myself unlocking something deeper in my creative landscape by paying more attention to these subjects. This isn't a new thought, but I find that I don't really see something until I start to draw it, even more so than when I write about it. After I spend time looking and sketching, everything in the world looks more like pieces of art in and of themselves. The way a light post stands tall apart from other objects in a parking lot. The shadows in between every leaf in the maple out back. The way lines curve. And that makes me approach the world and day with more gentleness, more openness, more willingness to see the magic surrounding us at all times.

So I'll continue and discover what I uncover, not moving toward any finished product, but by paying better attention to what I'm paying attention to, through this process I'll see what unfolds from within.

And if you'd like to participate in something like this and commit to 100 gestures of your own (it can be much simpler than what I'm attempting), seriously do let me know.

A couple months ago, my brother asked for some input regarding some pieces of writing that he was holding off publishing, in part because of the terrible responses he imagined hearing when certain people might see what he wrote. We had an email thread conversation about that and he then said one of my replies should be a blog article.

Because he's my big brother who has a lot of wisdom and one of the first people I knew to have a blog, and because I bet a lot of people (myself included) delay sharing their work for the same reasons, the text of that email makes up the majority this post -- a little revised for clarity and context -- one that I hope will get me back on a more consistent posting schedule, too. If you've been avoiding writing/sharing/making/doing something for similar reasons, I hope there's something here you might find useful here as well.

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Yes, our imaginations can work up some pretty awful responses to the writing (art, anything...) we put out in the world. Often these imagined reactions are not based in reality. The fact that those projected statements and voices are not based in reality can be what makes those fears (or monkey mind thoughts, or the editor, the censor) most powerful. They come from that part of our brain that just wants to keep us safe, keep us in status quo, keep us from going out of our comfort zone because that's what it's evolved to do to keep us alive. All it wants is to get us to stop writing (and/or stop doing whatever scary thing it is that might be what we really want to do with our life).

There's an exercise Beth Pickens (a creativity consultant who lives in the Bay Area) gives her clients sometimes: work out all the possible worst-case scenarios to their very end. With that in mind, what might happen if these people do object to the writing and artwork you release? What's the worst thing they can say? What would happen if they said that? And what would happen after that, and after that, and after that? (Invariably, Pickens says this train of thought goes on until every client ultimately says, "and then I'll go broke and die," or something like that.)

So...what happens if you work out that fear until it reaches the very bottom of the barrel, and see just how dramatic your imagination can go -- and then decide what you'll do anyway?

And/or then go the other way -- what happens if you don't publish? If you don't make the thing you've always wanted to make, or go where you've always wanted to travel, or book the scary gig, or ______ (fill in the blank with what fits your circumstance)? How will you feel if you continue to keep the book (proverbial or literal) in the drawer? How will you feel if you do publish? Where do you feel that in your body? Often our bodies know what we need to do, but we train ourselves to tune that out. Instead, what if we listen to what our bodies have to say?

Or as Oliver Burkeman quotes James Hollis in Four Thousand Weeks, what happens if we ask ourselves, "Does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?" (I'm asking myself that about a lot of decisions right now.)

Often that fear (of writing, publishing, sharing, doing anything that moves us toward the life we want) is the resistance Stephen Pressfield talks about in The War of Art -- resistance being the sign that the thing you're afraid of IS the thing you need to be doing. Resistance is going to try to find any way possible to stop you from doing the thing that takes you out of the comfort zone -- so you can use it as a compass that will show you the direction you(r larger, higher, wiser self) want(s) to go.

Or as I recently heard someone paraphrase Iyanla Vanzant, "If there's not something in your life that pushes you to the point where the pee is running down your leg, then you ain't living big enough."

And so then, if you decide to go ahead and publish (or do whatever it is you want to do with your art/life/work), which I hope you do, what is the least you need to do next in order to feel good about that decision and move forward? (In the case of publishing something that someone might not like, such as a piece of writing that could affect someone else because it includes something they said or did, do you give them a heads up? do you let them read a bit of it? do you draw a boundary around how they can respond if you decide to share it with them early, or how much you'll let their reactions affect you? or do you let all of that go and hope for the best?)

In other words, what is the smallest next step on the way to your big goal? Not what are the five next things you can do -- but what is ONE tiny thing you can do right now?

Can you do that little thing? Right now?

Please do. Your art, audience and I thank you for doing that.

On Valentine's Day, my partner spouse best friend favorite musician Thomas Paul and I released a collaborative digital album called Drown To Resurface, featuring poems from my  chapbook of the same name layered over his impressionistic instrumental guitar sketches.

We both have future plans for these pieces.
I want to publish the chapbook physically.
He plans to develop and embellish the instrumentals into a separate album.

We hope to get the published book to hold a disc of those developed instrumentals in a pocket. To print a download code for this digital combined version on the back, too. I want the book serve as much as liner notes for the recordings as a collection of poems.

For now, it feels satisfying to share something that is finished on one level, knowing there will be other elements of further completion down the road.

I've been working on the chapbook version of Drown to Resurface: water poems for a while. Most of the poems are about 10 years old. I didn't set out to write a book with them, but once they filtered into one, I went about my usual process of jamming in too many verses, whittling down and down and down, finally through massive cuts seeing what the thing was and then writing a few more poems to round out that thing.

The album is a project Thomas and I have talked about doing for several years, too. I've been a fan of poetry-music albums since I was introduced to Dottie Grossman's work. I since messed around with previous text/music collaborations that halted early or found quick endings when theater projects closed. Like Grossman's albums with Michael Vlatkovich, in 2016 I began talks with Thomas about bringing words to his instrumentals and smashing them together like John Cage and Merce Cunningham did with music and dance. We played with early, live renditions of this venture a few times along the way. We knew this text/tune combo wasn't/isn't something new. We weren't looking to reinvent wheels. But it sounded fun. The most fun part, I thought, was slapping the sounds and sentences together without pre-thinking or trying to arrange them formally into songs or compositions, but letting both parts sway and spar in whatever ways they connected/collided.

Last fall, once I decided the book of poems was as done as I wanted it to be,Thomas and I scheduled time with our friend Cory Strop in his home studio. I recorded all the poems one December day in two takes each, just in case. Then through the rest of December, January and a little of February, Thomas went in for his recordings, likewise with a take or two each. After combining the two layers, he and Cory gave them a touch of finesse -- because though I love Cage and Cunningham's pure collision, I also love Laurie Anderson and figured that if she made an album with her partner/spouse (etc.) Lou Reed, they probably would have given it a little polish. Even so, each element of each piece was conceived and recorded separately.

After choosing which take, we pretty much let the recordings stand as they were. I requested that one word in one poem be replaced with the same word from the other take because it sounded like too much vocal fry up front. Thomas did one new recording of one section, but that was all. For people who tend to re-re-re-revise in painstaking ways (painstaking for us and people who make art with us), it felt liberating and a little scary -- at least for me -- to let go of control and let them land as they fell. Not including the years of occasional talking and musing about the collaboration, the years of writing/rewriting the poems or the years between when his first song ideas came to life and when they got stuck in a drawer before unearthing them again, the album took a few months, tops.

For a cover image, I remembered working with a photographer who impressed me with her water shots during a site-specific, interdisciplinary, collaborative project in graduate school. I asked Shannon O'Neill-Creighton if we could use one, with hopes of asking her again if we can commission another photo for the book/disc rendition. She said yes to the first. We'll see what happens with the next request once we get our act together for parts two and three.

For now, you get the digital version. I'll send word when ambitions, time and money align for the grander scheme. And hey, if you pay to download the album now, it'll help us on our way to the larger plan.

It's nice to let something go out into the world without futzing with it and trying to perfect it for (more) years (than we already have). It's a relief to not spend a decade trying to get the gatekeepers to say it's good enough for a lauded release backed by a publishing house/theater company/literary journal. We made something. Then we shared it. Like when we were kids.

Independent musicians have known for a long time that their industry is impossible. The line to the welcoming door is too too long. They found another door. They made their own door. Same with filmmakers.

I played around with small bits of self-production as a younger playwright. Then I was convinced that if I wanted the plays to get produced more than once, I had to go the standard way. A colleague assured me early on that self-publishing literary work is a no go, as well. I listened. I still squirm a bit when I think of going those independent routes, but now I'm more curious. When it makes the difference between having the plays/books/albums/films get made at all or having them live in a cabinet forever, dying in new play development hell (though I do love new play development, I do!) or in submission purgatory suffocating with 999 other plays/poems/stories/essays per opportunity, letting those babies go off and make their little mark, even with the tiniest of audiences, seems more worthwhile than it once did.

I can learn a lot from indie musicians.

Enjoy the album. Consider paying to download it. Proceeds will go toward future dreams.

For all of you who have already downloaded and paid more than the listed price -- or whatever you could -- THANK YOU.

And thank you, Thomas, for making something with me. I'm lucky to share a life with you.