Why to-do lists are good. So long as you do the stuff on them.
This last weekend, BBC4 showed Akram Khan’s Giselle – a contemporary take on a much loved classical ballet. Saw the cinema version last year and thought it was a tremendous, powerful production and did a review...somewhere on the blog. If you enjoy ballet but like me, can’t really get into the classical music scores and swans everywhere, take a look at this. It’s most definitely worth it. If you love it, there’s a DVD version which was released last month. I ordered it in advance as soon as English National Ballet tweeted it was coming out.
Have I watched it? Nope. It’s still in the wrapper because I’ve been running myself ragged finishing sculptures for an art fair aaand they took much longer than usual to complete. Still, they’re done now and were submitted for the selection process over the weekend. Now, if I’d known I had to produce a CV (mine was short – I’m pretty new to this and have nothing to put on it!), a 1000 words max artist statement about my process and another 1000 words max on the pieces I submitted…I’d have started on that much earlier. Damn, it made me think hard though!
Just listened to a podcast about how to get rid of to-do lists by making a humungous one then putting everything on a tightly scheduled calendar. So I did the big list…then realised why I’ve been feeling quite overwhelmed and hence unable to make much more than small steps to doing…too many things that I want to do.
Mental clutter is as bad as physical clutter. As you can’t move or find things in a messy environment, so you also can’t take action or find ideas if your head’s filled with a constant nagging of what needs doing and what’s in the way of getting those things done. That means you need to do a big clear out then have a regular system to keep on top of things in future.
That’s the idea anyway and I’m not worrying over the fact that I keep adding more things to The Big List (reckon it deserves capitals). That’s fine. Once it’s on paper I know it’s been taking up head space. All I have to do is set aside a small amount of time to attend to each thing. And clear it. And as each one is cleared, there’s more free space to fill with doing art and taking my life into new areas - which is good; particularly as the last four years or so have just been a bit relentless with all the relocations (five), job changes (loads of temp jobs before my permanent, current job) and cramming creative work and business plan/research into the remaining time. Not much play time there.
In other news, am making some adjustments to the website. Essentially the bits that I just didn’t have time to do when the last style make over was done and maybe changing the writing a bit. A main behind the scenes bit and possibly a couple of shorter snippets looking at other artists I like, the dancers and gymnasts I love and what makes them so compelling. Lots of creativity related stuff either way but it’s sort of stretching the idea of what I’m doing. Just some thoughts taking shape here…
