Although I'm not really one for making new year resolutions I do find it a good time to pause, reflect and make some plans. In the summer I bought myself an 18 month diary which has a page for notes alongside each week to view page. I like writing on paper and love the organisational aspect of a diary (even if I'm rubbish at actually referring to it much of the time!) so I decided that being able to write a 'to do' list for the week might help me focus and achieve things, as well as help to capture ideas. I often have times when my head is full of ideas, then other times when I can think of anything to do and can't remember any of the ideas!
The children have been off school last week and this, and of course life has been completely consumed by Christmas, I haven't even managed a sketch! I still need to write a reflection about the feedback I received from unit 2 but have barely touched my laptop. Tomorrow they are all heading off to Hamburg to see my in-laws but I have to stay to look after our dog. I'm going to have 5 whole days of the house completely to myself and am already piling the pressure on myself to work, work, work!
In preparation I started scribbling ideas for things I want to achieve while they're away as well as longer term. I thought setting some achievable goals would be a good idea as then I will feel a sense of achievement rather than wondering whether I've done enough or faffing about and wasting time because I didn't know what I wanted to achieve.
I got to thinking about the bigger picture and what I want to achieve from the last 2 terms of the MA. This is a the scribbling so far:
I thought the listing of my good and bad habits was really interesting. One of the challenges posed in my feedback was to create a monotype every day. I know I am very guilty of working in bouts with a few weeks of mega-productiveness then a few weeks of complete apathy and nothing. I would like to change this so that there is a small, simple core of productivity/creativity every day. Even if it's just a sketch, or a little collage or something.
What Jonathan said about the creatives who were marked on quantity also being those who won on quality makes perfect sense and I think I let the quantity slide far too regularly.
I've also been thinking about continuing the reflective process. I've always enjoyed reflection and used to keep diaries in the past. I don't think I have the time or diligence to keep up the regular blogging style, and I don't really like typing, I'd rather write on paper. I did wonder about using a miro board but again, I don't think I'd use it enough. I think a larger sketchbook that I can stick photo's in might be what works best for me. a sort of illustrated working diary. With my newly developed bookbinding skills I think I should make myself something, but probably not until after the course. I'm thinking it should be the first project I do between the finishing of the MA but before the children break up for the summer holiday so there's no gap. I'm realising more and more that I need deadlines and targets to stick to as the rest of life is so busy that it's things like that which are the most easily sidelined, but shouldn't be as they're really important.