Day 2: Making Bad Art is Better Than Making No Art

My second day of the project and my brain feels, oddly, too full. I have barely used any of the minutes to consume that I have earned, and I haven't used any of them to watch a TV show or movie or read a book. I've checked social media a couple times for under 5 minutes each time. But my brain feels fuller than usual anyway.

One explanation could be that Lee and I went to the indoor farmer's market at the Monona Terrace, followed by a brief stop at the Fair Trade farmer's market going on in the next room, followed by the Willy St. Co-op on a Saturday afternoon. All three places were crowded and noisy.

It could also be that the art form I mostly engaged in today, collage, involves me leafing through piles of cut-outs from magazines, discarded books and other ephemera that I've collected in two big plastic bins. Collaging, the way I do it, is like consuming a lot of images and seeing what comes out when you vomit them back up.

In any case my brain feels very full, and the prospect of watching a TV show or movie or scrolling Facebook does not entice me at the moment. Reading a book sounds more like it, but I'm even holding off on that. When you only have 76 minutes to spend on consumption, what you consume becomes a much more serious decision.

So what did I produce today?: A couple of rough-around-the-edges papercraft Christmas ornaments (which will not be gifted, but will stay with us), and one of the worst collages I've ever made. It was sort of disappointing to encounter that type of failure straight out the gate, but it would be silly to think that simply because I've committed to upping my creative output that from now on everything I touch will be pure gold. I have to learn to accept that bad art is a part of making good art. I'm also waiting for some banana bread to bake at the moment, but I decided not to count baking as creating, because then do I include eating the baked goods as consumption? I don't feel like making things that complicated.

I have, however, added one important exception to the "consumption" category. I am allowed to read anything in one of the foreign languages I study, because it's something I do more for the sake of learning than to escape. This exception has already paid off, because I'm so eager to read that I'm two chapters into this French graded reader of "The Count of Monte Cristo" that I picked up months ago at a Little Free Library in Baltimore, Maryland. I'm not sure when I would have gotten around to it had it not been for this project.

So Day 2 has been a success, even if my actual creations weren't. No serious withdrawal from consumption, and I'm sure that all of the things I did today were better for me than watching "Glow" again (even though it is a fun show) or scrolling Facebook until I want to claw my eyes out. I didn't even have to see a picture of Trump all day! For that alone, it's probably been worth it!






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