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?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading