I invariably feel better after writing a journal entry. It's a sense of having put something of me down for posterity. It usually feels like a fitting end to the day.
SWANGSONG FOR YOU
The Gentle Waves
If you're in the mood, this is a wonderful CD to listen to — gentle and lilting and sappy in the nicest way.
I'm stuck in a kind of design hell of straight lines and boxes and squares and black borders. Each site I come to design seems to lead my down an ever narrowing path to the same design recycled and tweaked. Can you spell “R U T”? I'm torn between wanting a complete break from coming up with designs for websites so I can refresh myself, and wanting to keep pushing on, hoping to achieve small and major breakthroughs as I refine my craft. Unfortunately a break's not really an option now.
I view what I do as craft. I see myself as a craftsman. I've always admired people who create things. Not create in the artistic sense (although I'm in awe of that), but in the sense of creating, molding, refining something with your hands. In the sense of being skilled at certain tasks, so that the physicality of it becomes second nature and the concentration is at another level. When I was painting I reached a level like that at certain times. I would be totally in tune with, say, putting the final coat on a door, using the brush to lap the paint together in the smoothest of coats. It was performing a craft at a high level.
I don't for a second think I'm there yet as a web designer. But that's a reason I keep pushing. That's a reason I want to follow these design trails where they lead. That's a reason I want to make mistakes, to get in ruts, to tweak designs previously done. So that I can get beyond the level of imitation and impart a style of my own to what I craft. I think you need quantity to get to this level. You need to work and work and work. And gradually you shed the concentrating of learning for the concentration of crafting.
This entry has been inspired by Dreama!
last | nextLink of the day
Men who look like Kenny Rogers
I swear I'm not making this site up!
Journals and blogs that I read regularly
Raising Hell
Feral Living
Hippycritical
Udder
My Life in 12 Point Font
Journal of a Writing Man
Some Jingle Jangle Morning
The Last Girl Scout
Potatoe.com
Journallife.com
Window to my Soul
Chickybabe
Sorabji.com
Yesterday's Makeup
Fifteen Milliliters
Fly Away
<
#
made by mom
?
>
Registered!
The Ageless Project
«
?
Blogging Mommies
#
»
Photo of tunnel copyright Bernd Klumpp, available from istockphoto.com