The Allure of Old Stuff

The third Imaginary Life I am perusing in the upcoming year is History Teacher. Much like with board games, I've only started to enjoy studying history recently. I have this theory that history becomes interesting once you realize that you're living it everyday. It's the grand and true story of humanity. I've been mostly inspired by John Green's courses on the youtube channel, crashcourse. It's a wonderful thing and I'd love to be able to speak as wisely as John does about his subjects. I also love teaching. Plain and simple.

How am I going to work towards it? First I'd like to become an "expert" at a specific subject. Like, the period of American history during Prohibition is one example. This would involve reading a few books on the subject and general research. Then I would present the subject in an interesting and digestible manner (either live presentation, video, flip book, or whatever.) and post it here. That sounds pretty fun to me.

Also I'm going to learn all the countries. Because all citizens of the world should know where Laos, Bolivia and Burkina Faso are.

On the list so far:

1. Dancer
2. Board Game Designer
3. History Teacher

Haiku of the Day:

Petite and ashen

she nearly faints on the train

We're packed in too tight

Today's Drawing

Bloggin' Together

No Imaginary Life today...just a small idea I'm tossing around:

Guest blogs were pretty popular when I did them back during my wedding/honeymoon and it'd be good to get a day off, so I think I'm going to have friends take a stab at it again! Last year I got 16 people to do it and I'd like to try to get 24 folks (2 a month) to guest blog. I'm thinking I'll have them:

1. Write about imaginary lives they might want to lead 

2. Do a haiku 

3. Draw a picture

4. Free Write

That's the basis for it so far. This Contract is fleshing out nicely. 

Haiku of the Day:

Soft incessant rain

Thin silk strands of white static

you must squint to see

Today's Drawing

We The Meeple

The second Imaginary Life I'm pursuing in the upcoming year is Board Game Designer. I've never was much of a board game person, especially back when the best options were Clue and Monopoly. As with sports, I tended to get too competitive and take winning far too seriously. I never fully bit into D&D in high school either since video games were getting good enough to just do all the math for you, (and I certainly didn't have the time.) My recent passion for what is called "Modern Board Gaming" came from two different people getting me Settlers of Catan and Carcasonne in the same Christmas. And I was off to the races! I now proudly own over thirty different types of games and the collection continues to grow.

But why go on to make them? Well because I've already started working on three. Now none are traditional board games but it's certainly a start. Part of what I'd like to spend this year doing is: a.) creating a basic game (either card, board or dice based) b.) play-testing it and c.) seeing if I can get it produced on a minor scale...maybe even talk to the local game shop down the street. Who knows? I'd also like to try my hand at a more story based game similar to D&D to play with my friends.

So there you have it! On the list so far:

1. Dancer
2. Board Game Designer

Haiku of the Day:

Drumbeats and heartbeats

parade down the street at dusk

joy on lips and hips

Today's Drawing

Bananana

I'm spending the day playing a pretty fun and extensive game called Eldritch Horror, so I won't be posting a Imaginary Life update today. 

Haiku of the Day:
Frozen bananas
taste all the sweeter after
a five hour campaign

Today's Drawing (No inspiration. I'll use it when I need it.)

Like Nobody's Watching

The first of the Imaginary Lives on my list is Dancer. I chose this one first because the desire has been in me the longest. Ever since I was a baby I loved moving to music. I danced constantly in band class and dancing was my favorite part of doing musicals through middle and high school. My body craves it and when a good tune is on I can't help myself. Something just clicks on a very primal level and I feel immense freedom.

So how am I go about getting close to the life of a dancer? I'm hoping to learn a few new dance moves. With the exception of the Charleston, most of my dancing is complete free form and I was hoping to get a bit more discipline on that front. I'd also like to work on my upper body strength so that I can pull off the more intense break dancing moves. And I'd like to stress the importance of making dance a thing I do more often in my life...perhaps a weekly free movement session.

I would also like to add that this was difficult to write, as all those gender normative judgement voices in the back my head are screaming, "DUDE! DON'T TELL THEM YOU LIKE DANCING! DANCING IS FOR PEOPLE IN TOUCH WITH THEIR FEELINGS! WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO GET IN TOUCH WITH OUR FEELINGS! THAT'S-"

Shut it voices. We won't have that kind of talk here. This isn't freaking middle school. Grow up and be responsible adults who are allowed to have and feel their feelings. Men can cry. Women can get mad. We're all people. How bout you get in touch with your feelings for once, look deep inside and see where all that indignation stems from. Oh. Someone told you to stop having feelings when you were younger? Interesting. Well let's not keep that ball rolling then, shall we?

Haiku of the Day:

Two Mikes - all alone

Figurative tumbleweeds

roll down the hallway

Today's Drawing (Brought to you by the word Aureate - meaning of a golden color or brilliance or grandiloquence. Yech.)

Begone Sweet Elixir!

In the month leading up to "The Creative Year" (starting 6/25) I'll be writing a little bit each day about aspects of the project and begin posting more on my daily progress. The project I set out to do this current year fell through due to fatigue from the previous project, employment woes and a less accountable motivational structure. I'm hoping to get ahead of that this time around and really make a go of it. That being said, there were a few things I was able to salvage from this year:

-I'm still on route to finish my age's worth of books by the 25th - A habit I only hope to foster more fully. I imagine it will get difficult in ten years or so, but that's 40-year-old Michael's problem.

-Haiku every day. Obviously they weren't written ON each day but they were done ABOUT each day. A compendium of micro diaries, if you will.

-I gave up potato chips this year and - with the exception of one accidental instance with a couple homemade chips - I've stuck to it! And those "Give ups" accrue overtime so that makes:

25. Cigarettes

26. Energy Drinks

27. Ground Beef (kinda a moot point since I've been vegetarian since July of last year)

28. Potato Chips

And now I'm ready to say that I'll be giving up.....Soda/Pop!

This applies to any sugary-type carbonated fluid. Exceptions: Tonic, Seltzer, and naturally carbonated alcoholic drinks like beer and champagne.

---

Tomorrow I'll talk about the first of the ten "Imaginary Lives" I plan to work toward in the coming year.

Haiku of the Day:

Out by the fountain

I meditate in the crowd

forging peace en masse

Today's Drawing (From Merriam-Webster's word of the day: Milquetoast)

Next Steps

Hello readers. That's you - family, friends and electric wanderers.

I'm breaking my non-haiku silence, (after my 700th one!) to tell you that I will be starting up again. For those that don't know what I'm referring to, please see my year-long body of work spanning from June 25th, 2014 to June 25th 2015.

I have been training outside of this space, writing 3 pages a day, pouring over new spreadsheets and getting a grander sense of what should be happening next. The plan is to launch a brand-new project, something my wife and I have been referring to as "The Creative Year". The concept is simple enough: Spend an entire year figuring out how to make a living out of making things.

I'm looking into different crowd-sourcing platforms for funding, like Patreon, as I'm inspired by artists who have not been shy about asking for money to do the things that they love. I plan on being transparent about costs, providing full disclosure of my spending along the way so everyone has a sense of how much it requires to keep this process going.

Important things to note:

-Drawings are coming back: They were too fun and I miss doing them dearly.

-Haikus will stay: It's the only way I'm going to make it to 1,000 and beyond

-Each month will have a theme: More on this to come, but I'm planning on focusing on different things for each month, creatively and personally. Example: Month of Cleansing (September) - no cursing, no junk, no booze. I will go strictly vegan this month. One personal object will be donated or disposed of everyday.

-Career Tasks: I'm taking a few things from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: One being the 3 morning pages I've been doing on and off since the beginning of the year and the second being an exercise where you try to envision yourself in various "Imaginary Lives," and making sure to do a task that relates to those lives. It's less about the ideal/dream job and more about "what you could see yourself doing/enjoying for a living." Seeing as I've been feeling lost in identifying with any one profession (I've held many positions in a wide array of industries in the past 5 years) I came up with 10 that I feel I would be happy being. I'm going to elaborate on them more in the next few weeks here as I discover what the tasks for each will be and how often I plan on employing them.

-The Contract: I'm writing up a full contract of all these improvements, goals and tasks. This will be public and subject to amendments. I want it to be a "living document" as much as possible.

That's all for now. I plan to launch the project a month from now (June 25th) and in the time from now until then I will be test running the various aspects listed above.

Haiku of the Day:
With temperature
rising, so comes the danger
Bring it on, Nature

Today's Drawing (It's back!! The Merriam-Webster word of the day is Jeopardize)

Seven Hundred

Haiku of the Day:

Scraped from the brain pan
seven hundred brief snapshots
trail behind this one

Upright Destiny

Haiku of the Day:

Gaze through the fishbowl
from atop your standing desk
and bellow glory!

PURGE

Haiku of the Day:

With a move nearing,

We start tackling the eaves

The great cleanse begins

Rearranged

Haiku of the Day:

Organizing space

between bouts of baby play

Snipets of springtime

Blue Collar Vice

Haiku of the Day:

Construction workers

share cigarettes and scratch-offs

on a garbage bin

Feelin' it man

Haiku of the Day:

Thumb to the masses

hoist the collective heartbeat

forever skyward

Resilient

Haiku of the Day:

Tiny green fragments

quiver in the Mid-May breeze

Life makes a comeback

Tunnel Trouble

Haiku of the Day:

Weed smell underground

The culprit lounges nearby

in a dank walkway

Too Much of Too Much

Haiku of the Day:

No coffee/headphones

A stimulation cutback

for realignment

Slow Recovery

Haiku of the Day:

Sore broken bodies

we lay out about the house

like dead bumblebees

Harsh Priorities

Haiku of the Day:

We are refugees

sleeping on high school gym floors

Where do we poop next?

Marsh Race

Haiku of the Day:

Sprinting through a swamp

at four in the damn morning

in the black of night

CAMP

Haiku of the Day:

At a place called "Camp"
I've seen Paul Newman's face
like a hundred times

Spring Talk

Haiku of the Day:

Professional chat

Out on the sunny park bench

It's breezy and light

Caterin'

Haiku of the Day:

A feeding frenzy

The event-goers mingle

Paper plates in hand

Fugitive

Haiku of the Day:

Hooded man in cuffs

escorted by the police

in the station depths

Jarring

Haiku of the Day:

Shattered coffee pot

shakes my lady to the core

Happy Mothers Day?

B-Day Cake

Haiku of the Day:

This chocolate cake

needs more delicious toppings

How 'bout rum cherries?

Static in the Air

Haiku of the Day:

Lonely office space

The quiet unsettles me

as the printer hums

Really May??

Haiku of the Day:

More cold and more rain

Screw talking 'bout the weather

But...I mean...COME ON!

Lab Party

Haiku of the Day:

A boozy evening
in a lab conference room
quite unexpected

Part of It

Haiku of the Day:

Frigid pink fingers

sway like train machinery

as I run the town

Sustenance

Haiku of the Day:

Black dregs of coffee
warm, metallic to the taste
like blood in the mouth

Haircut

Haiku of the Day:

Vibrating steel teeth

cleave my lengthy brown tresses

The reaping soothes me