No silver lining here

There's a saying in the yoga community — or at least that's where I used to hear it — that goes something like "how you show up on the mat is how you show up off the mat." I think it comes from a more universal saying about how we do one thing being how we do everything. I was turning this over today as I finished a not-so-great print project of mine.

The project was meant to be something I kept — hung on a wall, maybe, or gifted to someone. I ordered certain inks and spent time carefully planning which image to focus on, the placement, the colors. But as the project went on, I noticed the pieces weren't coming together at all. And I could tell pretty early that my heart wasn't in it, either. That was disgruntling, since I'd planned for this to be meaningful. It sounds a little silly saying it back — the planning of something to be meaningful.

Still, when I noticed about halfway through (the project lasted about a month) that it wasn't going to go as planned, I really wanted to give myself permission to just call it a day. Pack the supplies up and go. But something in me said, complete the dang thing. So the next day I went to the local copy center to get my stencils, and I continued on. Determined. Stubborn? Wishful thinking?

I went to the studio and splattered some ink down. Mixed black and white into a pastey gray. And ran my first print. And then my second.

Well — it was what I'd thought from the beginning. A total disaster. The ink didn't spread right, and it didn't wash off my materials when it came time to clean up. It was gooey, a total mess. I tossed the image. It was really that bad.

There's no silver lining here. No happy accident, nothing pretty made out of the mess. I think the reason it reminded me of the yoga-mat saying is that there was something in my own awareness that my process had been choppy the whole time. I was trying to will this project into being, trying to force a process I just wasn't feeling. And I couldn't muster it.

So my takeaway is this, and it's a little contradictory, which I'll let stand. It's okay to be choppy and messy and throw the project away. And it's also quietly nice to me that I made the actual print anyway, however it came out. Both of those feel true. The painful part is the in-between: when you're in a committed act — and it doesn't much matter what the act is — and it simply isn't going as planned. Sometimes there's nothing to do but stay the course, take your lumps, go home, and wait for another day.

Putzing around

It's a somewhat cold Sunday afternoon, as I sit and watch tiny rain bubbles form on my window pane glass and look out into thick white and gray rain-filled clouds. To me, it is the kind of day that makes staying indoors more enjoyable. The pace of the day does feel slow, slower than even a typical Sunday, I would say. It's funny how days and seasons, and even times of day, have a certain felt sense to them, whether that is universal or cultural. I am sure it is both, and I am sure I also don't really know if others tune in to the times of day quite the same as I do.

I think because it is Memorial Day weekend, this particular Sunday has the added buffer and layer of a Monday off day/no work day. So we feel this extra room to be even more slow, the putzing-around kind of vibe.

To putz around is perhaps a lost art, since we now have so many immediate things to grab our attention, even when that thing that grabs our attention is something we don't want to grab (yes, news, yes, media — I am talking about you).

But, back to the art of putzing around for the sake of putzing around — what a delight that can feel like. It feels soft and meandering, a bit timeless, a bit, to me, like summers between grade school felt: forever and all at once, until they are gone.

Putzing around can be wildly associative for our imaginations. It may be asked to fill it with something. I know I fall into this — I should do something with this effortless space I am now in: pick up a non-work book, watch a cozy-epic movie, declutter or rearrange a drawer, make pancakes (I did do that one).

It's funny how our mind works when given free time, extra time, perceived more time. It asks something of us that is softer than a Monday go-time workday feel asks of us. It asks us to wander a bit away from our ordinary structure. It asks us to yawn and sigh and breathe, and then look, and then sit, and hopefully do nothing at all.