Mini Day Project: Go Through My Mail

I absolutely can not proceed with anything... I repeat, ANYTHING, until I've gone through the plethora of unopened snail mail that has taken up residence atop my file cabinet. I guess that means I'm holding off a bit on Cool New Project #2 until I can rest assured that I have not forgotten anything dire.

This is more than just a maintenance measure from Cool New Project #1 because even when I tidied everything up, I still just "tidied" the unopened mail instead of opening it.

I think when there is a backlog of anything, it really makes it less appealing to "keep up" with things as they roll in. So, today I will be opening up EVERY piece of mail that I have left in a pile and see what happens

It's a bit scary. You just never know what kinds of scary stuff could be in an envelope. I think it's the reason that many people are scared of clowns. Who's under there?

I will keep a running tally of all the envelopes I open, what opening them entails, and what consequences I've incurred from opening them late. Maybe I will share this information as a cautionary tale to all. Maybe not. Either way, I'll post again when I'm done.

I'm scared.

CNP #2: Inspired Animation

Hot diggity damn, am I excited for this next project. And it will sure be a lot more fun than tidying up my room!

Let me first explain to you the first word of the title here. Inspired. On a daily basis, there are so many people that inspire the crap out of me that making a list of them becomes completely useless. Every so often, however, someone really strikes a chord in me. Quite literally, in fact. I was recently at a small concert in Allston in which my current favorite singer, Lisa Hannigan was co-headlining. The venue was so intimate, and the nature of her music so simple and enchanting at times, that I really and honestly thought to myself, "Well, gosh darnit, Kristy, why don't you try making some music?" I mean, I've always wished to be able to express myself musically, but there it was, that pang to do something. A quite powerful pang. I acknowledged it, and plan not to ignore it.

Now, this next project will not necessarily involve music or making music, but it may. Instead, I wanted to draw upon the pang I felt and the excitement that swelled deep within me at the thought of creating music... even bad music.

I felt that pang again yesterday, while watching YouTube. I stumbled upon a brother duo who call themselves "The Fu" who write original music as well as doing some cover songs. They do not, however, simply plop themselves in front of the camera, press record, and play. Instead, they make these elaborate and sophisticated music videos that are funny, clever, imaginative, and riveting, amongst other adjectives that I could use. Oh yes, other adjectives like inspiring.

The most inspiring of their videos (links below) happened to be the ones in which they used animation to tell the story of the music they were playing. The use a method of animation that I am familiar with from college called stop-motion.

Now, it's been about a decade (holy bejesus) since I took my undergraduate animation class, but I remember absolutely loving it. The whole class was solely focused on stop-motion animation. We had fancy cameras hooked to video tapes back then (yes, VHS tapes), but I am absolutely sure that my iPhone and applications within my MacBook Pro--and maybe even my old iMac that has Photoshop and (I hope) Flash--will be enough to carry me through this venture. Technology has made a lot of things way more accessible to the world and I hope to be able to harness some of that correctly to make the project a feasible feat. Fingers figuratively crossed.

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Cool New Project #2: Inspired Animation

Objectives: (1) Create stop-motion video animation using technology I currently have at my immediate disposal. (2) Somehow export/upload/post animation(s) to this blog for public viewing.

Timeline: TBD--I think I'll need to break this into baby pieces and create mini do-able deadlines for myself so that this seems less daunting. By the end of this week, I will post my plan to break this project into bite-sized chunks. Be on the lookout.

Possible Roadblocks: Lack of either technical prowess or video savvy, my life-long battle with stifling perfectionism, the sheer amount of behind-the-scenes work/time necessary to make even as little as ten seconds of animation.

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Here are my favorite stop-motion animation videos from The Fu:
1. We Say Hallo
2. Me and You

I left a comment on the "We Say Hallo" video and they answered me right away. Hooray!

And just for fun... more stop-motion music videos: 
3. In Your Arms by Kina Grannis (Keep in mind that this particular video took two years and a crew of thirty people to accomplish.)
4. Turned of the TV by Lessang (This was a pretty racy video for Korea, so I heard that it got banned from music television. I might have gotten that fact wrong, though.)

"After" Pictures (CNP #1)

 So, a few of you who had maybe read about my first project may have assumed that I had forgotten about it or missed my deadline for tidiness. Such was not the case. I did a pretty decent job, if I do say so myself, as illustrated by the pictures included in this post. Although I was not timely in posting the results of the project on the proposed deadline, I did, in fact, finish this project on Tuesday, the 26th of June.

This is what my room looked like at 10:00 pm on Tuesday, June 26th. I sent the picture to one inquiring friend via iPhone, to which he emphatically commented, "Oh yeah! Looking good!... Your drawers are closed too!"

Yes, gosh darnit, they are closed! And I can see my wood floor! Five days later, and the room is still pretty clean.

The trick here is to really follow those rules I outlined for myself on my bedroom door (see previous post). The hardest rule to follow by far has got to be the first and most important rule... the mail rule.

I still haven't opened all of my mail. I'm not sure exactly why, but I think I might have phobia of closed envelopes. I mean, really, anything could be inside of a closed envelope. The bad part is, it's often something important. My friend had to text me this week to remind me to send back the RSVP to her wedding. True story. Embarrassing as hell.

Any way, I will consider my first project a success, although definitely a work in progress that I will likely have to return to over and over and over. I don't think that we have seen the end of this one.

After unclutteredness comes organization. And after organization comes decoration. Which is (hopefully) followed by satisfaction and enjoyment and relaxation.

And parties. Where I invite people over to my house so that they can see how well I've done and get the impression that I am a pulled-together, legit adult. Yeah. I'll make that happen.

As of right now, I have several new project ideas in the works, so you'll be hearing from me really soon about the next one. Maybe even today, if I make a decision.

Until then, take care, stay tidy and happy...

Kristy

"Before" Pictures (CNP #1)

 Let me begin this blog entry by saying that I really do strive towards organization. I daydream about it. I regular dream about it. I crave it with every sinew in my body. Here is proof. This is something I taped to the inside of my bedroom door several months ago to remind myself of the tenets of people who have their $#@% together.

All five rules make fantastic and wonderful sense. I learned Rule 1 the hard way, by ignoring lots of important mail notifications. Then, of course, I lost money paying to fix the kind of mistakes you make when you ignore lots of important mail notifications.

I still need to enforce Rule 2, which to me is more important than the following three rules because my job has no place taking up residence in my house. My job needs to stay at my job. An adult should never have a pile of, say, thirty-some-odd three-dimensional geometry projects sitting in a reusable bag on the floor of her bedroom. It's stress-inducing. And unsightly.

Every time I take a pair of socks off and haphazardly toss them to the ground in front of my bed, it's like a giant "SCREW YOU" to Rule 3. At this point, my drawers don't shut, my closet stays open, and homeless garments (both clean and dirty) mingle together on the hardwood floor. This is the sort of state of exisitence you would expect from a college kid. If you are an adult and you have to do the "sniff test" before determining whether clothes have been laundered or worn, you're doing something wrong.

I guess if there's one thing I do really well most of the time it's Rule 4. The yoga mat usually only has a few things on it that I can simply sweep to the side. It's a bit like plowing a driveway, though. You can clear it well, but the snow has to go somewhere. Like the snow, stuff on the yoga mat often gets shoved unpoetically to the side and left there. Except my stuff doesn't melt and go away.

Rule 5 is a great way to assure that my bags don't become embarrassing for me to carry in public. You know how some gals will ask their friends, "Hey, could you just go into my bag and find... "? I will never, ever ask anyone to do that. If you peeked into one of my bag pockets, you'd understand. I'll leave it at that.

I'm sure you're dying to see the before pictures. I'm embarrassed to post them. But if I'm going to do this, you'll need to see a point of reference to understand the progress I'll have made by the end of the week. See below.

To the right, you'll see my room in all its glory. This is my natural habitat. You can see my green yoga mat in the lower middle of the photo. Looks as if the mayhem is creeping and seeping into the yoga mat's personal space

Below that, you'll see my blatant disregard for Rule 1 (the one about taking care of my mail when I receive it).

If these pictures made your jaw drop, well... that's just the way it is right now. I wish I could say this were a joke and I just pilfered these pictures from the interwebs to be funny. But saying so would make me a horrible liar.

Tell me, could you concentrate in this physical space? Well, could you? I certainly can't. If I want to do anything worthwhile this summer, I'd like to first take care of my environment. It will be so much easier for my brain to relax once that's under control and has a system in place.

Right now, I'm going to eat some soy ice cream and blueberries to cool off. Then I'll do some yoga next to my window fan. Then, I'll make a list of stuff to clean and just dive in.

Good luck to me. And to you, if this has inspired you to also tidy up somewhere.

CNP #1: Decluttering My Mind

Anyone who's ever stepped foot inside my room or inside my classroom... or, well, even inside my car will immediately know that I'm not the clean type. Oh, what gave it away? I guess it depends where you are. Was it the mountain of clothing and bags? (room) The piles and piles of papers hiding my desk? (classroom) Perhaps, balled up gum and food wrappers in the middle console? (car) Or the eighth-inch-thick skin of dust covering all surfaces? (also car) Perhaps you were even in one of those locations with me while I was trying to locate something I'd misplaced. Hey, it happens.

By the way, has anyone seen my driver's license? No really, I lost it this week.



Lately, I've really enjoyed thinking of myself as a neat and orderly woman stuck in a lazy person's body. I think that might be closer to the truth than any other explanation. I say this because there are two major types of cluttered people: (1) There are the cluttered people who are not bothered by clutter and (2) there are people whose brains feel cluttered when the physical space around them is cluttered.

I am the second type.

Clutter for me, then, represents two realms: environmental and mental.

Clearing environmental clutter is easy. You pick $#@& up.

Clearing mental clutter is a whole different ballgame. In fact, although it may seem in my case that clearing my mental clutter is wholly dependent on first clearing environmental clutter, that is not true. While this helps, for sure, it isn't the only factor. I have this candle that says the following: Peace. It does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart. Sounds awesome, right? Definitely. Here's how I do it. One word. Yoga.

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Cool New Project #1: Decluttering My Mind

Mental Objectives: (1) Practice forty-five minutes to an hour of yoga daily.

Environmental Objectives: (1) Take "before" pictures of a couple physical spaces that are cluttered, and analyze them here. (2) Pick $#@& up. (3) Take "after" pictures and describe my experience/process of decluttering. (4) Develop plans to keep those areas clutter free moving forward.

Timeline: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 - Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Possible Roadblocks: Laziness, cool summer activities, procrastination.

If you would like to join me, pick a mental/environmental area of your life that you would like to declutter this week and post comments about your progress below.

Or you can simply post words of encouragement.

Kristy

And so it all begins...

This is the first post of what I hope to be and imagine could be a really cool new project. The idea behind this blog is two-fold.

(1) Give myself the necessary kick-in-the-pants and accountability I need to get projects (big and small) started and finished.

(2) Get others "on board" with me who will support my various projects and/or simultaneously have their own projects supported as well.

My vision is this: A cool new project theme, set of objectives, and timeline for completion will be posted to this blog. Readers and followers will have the option to "join" me in my project, simply support it, or wait for the next one. At the completion of the project, I will post my results or thoughts, and anyone joining in is welcome to also post comments about their results in their own related projects. Once one project is over, another cool new project will be proposed, posted, and open for camaraderie and commentary. Simple as that!

Happy Trails,

Kristy