— unpredictable thoughts

Rather love this reflec­tion, my friend. Been think­ing about that a lot lately on two fronts:

1. Pho­tos, espe­cially try­ing to scan the boxes/albums of what was col­lected for 35+ years until I flipped the switch recently entirely by going full-scale dig­i­tal 2 years ago, as well as the shots of my son. For instance: I have a blog that gets the best pho­tos of my son to share w/ g’parents, etc. I keep some of them on a Flickr acct, too, and a few more are sent to my Costco acct to print out and put into a real album (the ‘great­est hits’ I sup­pose). Redun­dant? Overkill? Or absolutely necessary?

2. The blog I keep for my son actu­ally started dur­ing the preg­nancy as a hand-written jour­nal in one of those lovely “Scrib­bles” books. Lasted for about 2 weeks before I began to shift entirely to a dig­i­tal blog instead. While it’s been eas­ier to share and a lovely 2+ year project, I miss the hand-written act of mes­sages to my son in a paper jour­nal. Years ago in my 1st 10 years as a teacher, I used to hold ran­dom art/journal ses­sions in my class­room after school where kids and col­leagues alike would come and ‘cre­ate’ in their blank jour­nals. Paint, col­lage, pho­tog­ra­phy, poetry, ran­dom­ran­dom­ran­dom. I still love the few books I cre­ated, even though they are a long ways away from real ‘art’ or any­thing tan­gi­ble. And I ache to get back into such a thing in this com­ing school year, even if I don’t for­mally announce it to the school com­mu­nity. Just keep art sup­plies and blank jour­nals in my room — music on — and see who swings by to ask the naive ques­tion after a few months.

Like you, I have many an idea catcher and more blank Mole­skin ‘starter’ jour­nals than I can count. And like you, I won­der what direction(s) I should head in the years ahead.

Hope all is well. Maybe I’ll man­age to get to Philly one day again. Would enjoy the face-to-face. Cheers, Christian