Originally I wanted to chronicle my 2012 time traveler themed sketchbook I got from the Art House Co-op. I was thinking about doing it in my personal tumblr but it didn’t seem right to have it all mix you know? Instead, I decided to make another tumblr, this one, and title it Vital Endeavor.
I was gonna go with Creative Endeavor, but all the variations of the name were taken and this one just sounds more creative. Besides, it contains part of my tumblr name (inter)vital so it just fits.
Writing, collaging, and creating in general is a HUGE part of who I am. To be without any of it would make me dimmer, less enthusiastic, and probably more prone to depression. Art and all its wonders just liven my life up. It revitalizes me and makes me feel whole and pushes me forward and gets me to learn so much about myself, my relationships, and the world at large.
I really don’t know what I’d do with myself if I couldn’t create. I guess consume books and films and blogs and such but I think I’d lose out on so much if I couldn’t contribute, even if I’m the only viewer. And I don’t just want to be an audience member, I wanna get out there and spread my own work. Just to see if others can relate to me which I know they do. We aren’t all that different from one another, judging by all the likes I see on the dashboard posts I love myself.
With this tumblr I hope to achieve the following:
- Finished projects by the deadline. That’s pretty rare for a procrastinator like me, so maybe keeping this up will force me to keep going.
- A personal archive for all my projects. I have this fear that I’ll lose my work one way or another and if I have this, then at least I’ll have an electronic place where I can view it all.
- Keep track of my progress. I wish I did this with my collage notebook day by day. It would’ve been so cool to see how it all evolved from summer reading notes to pages of collages and I can only remember glimpses of that since it was many years ago. Damn.
- Get to know my artistic ways better. Maybe improve the way I create things and be more consistent. I’d like to see how I evolve from today and then next year, and two years from that, and so on.
- Connect with people through my works. I don’t normally share my work with anyone, besides in class. Just my blog posts and tweets are all out there. I did alert people that I have a poem published in the trillium literary and art magazine at my school, but that’s the most recent and really the only time I’ve done that. Besides doing a photo journal a few times a year or two ago, but it was mostly snapshots of my daily life, not too much creativity involved. Anyway, I just want to share more of myself with others and hopefully I’ll see their artsy sides as well. It’d be nice to get into a conversation about writing or something, I haven’t done that in so long. Dammit.
- Experiment more and get more personal in my works. I’d like to try my hand at drawing or painting on photographs or doing accordion fold sketchbooks. Sewing on pages looks like fun too. Mail art and artist trading cards look real neat as well. And I’d like to delve into personal topics, not just paste down what’s going on that day. I’m actually doing that with my sketchbook right now. It should be interesting.
- Feel like a real writer. A real photographer. A real, dare I say it, artist. I don’t want to feel like some sort of sham. I know I’m only a novice in all of these areas but it’d be nice to look through these pages and think “oh wow I can create something good.” I know I have created some great things writing wise but it’s been over a year and half since I wrote something that wasn’t a blog post or a tweet. Writing shouldn’t end with the diploma. That’s not how I want it to be. I want to get published one day, maybe for a seemingly continuous period of time if I’m lucky enough. I just need to stick to this craft and keep on writing and editing and refining and something good is bound to come out, right?
- And much more.
If I keep up with this, if I just get diligent with my projects and work on them a little bit each day, if I just believe in myself, I think I can produce a finished, wonderful product.
I can’t fucking wait!
So far, these are the projects I plan on working on and publishing here:
- 2012 Time Traveler Theme Sketchbook for my Soulmate – must be mailed by January 31st, 2012
- The Artist’s Way – Currently on Week I out of XII Weeks. I’m gonna do 750 words as well as the physical morning pages. It’ll be pretty cool to see a track of all of that typage and it’ll probably be very liberating. Can’t wait!
- 365 photo a day journal – I may start that tomorrow, we’ll see. I think I’ll do shuttercal which is a very cool social networking site where you post up your photos in calendar form. Then you have the option of getting really high quality prints with dates and captions on them along with a box made for them. SO COOL. Once I get a job I think I’ll buy a membership but I won’t sign up until I have two straight weeks of photos minimum. Maybe I’ll do the monthly membership thingy just to have a stake in it y’know? I’ll have to do it once I have a job secured though. Dang.
- High School Collage Notebook – aiming to finish it before my 24th birthday on June 23rd, 2012
- Vision Board Book – I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile actually. I really want to do this in the notebook that Joia gave me this past Christmas. I’ve been collecting a few items in a large envelope just to stick them in. I’ll just wait until I gather more things and maybe read a book or a site on it. If you want to make your own, here’s a thorough blog post about it. Hopefully I’ll start before September’s end. There’s also a site where I can do this at if I don’t want to print out the photos of things I like online: pinterest. It looks pretty neat and people use it to keep track of what decor they want, recipes, DIYs, fashion, and a bunch more! I have yet to join but I think I will one day real soon.
I’ll be adding more projects periodically. There’s a real cool secret exchange mail art thing that I want to try. You send your secrets to a museum in South Korea and then visitors who looked at your secrets have to send you their own. It’d be cool if they actually did it haha.
Now I doubt I’ll be blasting my shit online like that but I’ll probably give y’all a glimpse of what I plan on creating for it. It’ll be fun. Same goes for the postsecret I want to do as well. They aren’t supposed to be secrets that other people know anyway, at least I think so anyway. I think I’ll post up the messages I left in public places. I left one a few years ago in a book I liked at the JFK library. I wonder if it’s still there? I should check it out. I think it was the “Girl who Played Go,” what a damn good read that was.
I decided against linking this, auto blog wise, to my twitter and facebook. I’ll reblog some worthy posts on my personal tumblr and it’ll probably end up on facebook but maybe I’ll end up deleting them. Who knows.
I might get paranoid about the sketchbook, but then again I knew when I signed up for it that it’d be in the public eye and I paid for it to be digitalized so I should know that. I really don’t want that to affect how I write for him and for myself.
Fuck it, I’ll just go for it. Whatever, they’re just what ifs and wishes and all of that. It’s not like I know him just yet. {or do I?!? hehe} At most I’ll get embarrassed, that’s all. Still debating though about attaching one of those about.me qr coded business cards onto the sketchbook once I get them. It’d be pretty cool if people wanted to follow me through that but then there are creepers. Hmm. Dilemma.
I guess I’ll work it out as I go along with this project, I’m only on the third page. I’ll decide when I’m done.
Tomorrow, or today actually, I’ll post up the first few pages and transcribe my chicken scratch haha. It’ll be fun or at least that’s what I’d like to believe.
Yeah, it will be.
eileen