EVERY day

On Rubbermoon's Facebook page, owner Debra Valoff has been, for the past couple days, showing samples of shipping tag art which feature stamps from the new lines. I wanted to play. It feels as though many of my moving parts are rusty, even with new stamps, new inks, newly-arranged pencils. Whatever we love, we are the better for working at it, even just a bit, every day. Without that, stasis may develop, reduced creative flow, stagnation, rust.

In the journaling community, there is, and has been, a movement advocating journaling every day. On-line groups offer support to one another, provide a venue to share photos of each day's accomplishments. I've visited other sites where bloggers post about taking challenges for things like "30 paintings in 30 days." Year before last I signed up for NaNoWriMo, committing to daily writing for the month of November with a minimum number of words produced by month end. I set myself a daily word count quota as well. No novel resulted from the exercise but a lot of showing up did and the awareness that showing up, sitting down and typing something every day, before doing anything else, produces its own satisfaction.

On the evening of February 7, it will be 18 years since I received the call that catapulted me from rubber stamp amateur to professional. There was no union to join but earning money doing what we love is vastly appealing. Regaining the edge I once had matters, for I intend to keep doing this until I really am too inflexible to manipulate the tools. Plus, as Woody Allen said in another context, it's the most fun I've had without laughing.