Where I Am

I’m unhappy about the lack of posts so far this year. I ought to have written more, but other projects have been taking up my time and keeping me away. Marshall’s photo book is taking longer than expected. After creating a book about his first year and a half, I felt like I was done, but then I realized that I hadn’t covered the Dear Marshall posts for 2011. Oh, no! I have only a few goals that I want to accomplish this week while I’m on vacation. One of them is to finish the photo book. I hope I can! I work on it every day, but my progress is hampered by the fact that I already used most of the good pictures in other photo books. That means I have to find new ways to present them, or else why bother?

For the record, while the photo books may be taking up huge amounts of my time, they’re worth it. I printed Livia’s 2011 book and Marshall’s 1.5-year book. They are beautiful! I get misty-eyed looking at them, remembering happy moments, and thinking about how much fun we’re going to have as the kids continue to grow.

I’m also working on a more directed use of my spare time. I guess you could say that I’m taking project-oriented, self-taught classes. Right now I am studying the art of songwriting. I think that writing song lyrics is a lot like puzzle-making. First you choose a theme and a framework. Then you arrange theme-related words as artfully as possible within the chosen framework, and you get bonus points for cleverness. My other main goal for this week is to write a song. I am not even going to insist that it be a “real” song (i.e., not just a silly song to sing to the kids, but an actual song that a professional singer might wish to sing). My intent is simply to practice the form, so any subject will do.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around much. I’ll be back soon, though. I need to write some more Dear Marshall and Dear Livia posts to use in my next photo book project!