Attempting to Practice What I Talked About in my Previous Blog Post…
- At January 04, 2014
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
0
Yes, as normally happens the day after New Year’s, it is difficult to stand by our lofty goals, even if they are not in resolution form. The day after I wrote that last post, I went into panic mode because of multiple deadlines, but being a little under the weather (head-cold? allergies? post-holiday lethargy?) everything just felt long and difficult, like I was banging my head against a wall. Watching a video on how to apply for a fellowship? Filling out said fellowship application? Trying to write a useful article? All of these goals seemed frustrating and frustrated.
So today, in the spirit of opening my life to more joy, inspiration, blah blah, I went out to my favorite little Seattle gallery, Roq La Rue, to see their exhibition that’s closing. There was some beautiful work by John Brophy, and my favorite one was titled something like “The Light of Genius,” where an enigmatic figure watches a lightningbug whose trail has a physics/mathematics equation on it:
Which reminded me of what we are all doing as artist – looking for a little light, a little inspiration. Isn’t that a great piece?
And then Glenn and I did a little post-holiday sale scavenging at the downtown Anthropologie and found some neat half-price stuff, including polar bear measuring cups and an adorable hedgehog tea towel. This, you understand, is not necessary, but it does make the kitchen area feel more cheerful! (We also think we saw Emilie de Ravin from Lost there. But we weren’t sure!)
Anyway, this made me feel positive-y enough to be able to complete my formally challenging fellowship application instead of torturing myself further, and now I can move on to finish my article (for which I have already obtained two wonderful quotes!) hopefully by the rapidly approaching deadline and then on to other assignments like my reviews etc.
It does remind me I am more efficient when, instead of kind of muscling my way through difficult tasks, when it’s not happening, take a break, squint into the sunlight, eat something chocolatey or fruity or something happy, and then go back in and finish. It just puts things into perspective.
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
