hey everybody,
December is a busy month. I’ve done some crocheting, but there hasn't been a lot of progress on anything. This is a freeform crochet newsletter, though, so I’m posting this recent photo of the Organic Shawl.
This issue is about what we do when we procrastinate. Austin Kleon, an artist who writes/writer who draws, has written and drawn a series of books about creativity and managing an artistic life. The first of those books, “Steal Like an Artist,” has an interesting section that addresses procrastination.
Reading the section as written by Kleon (linked above) is highly recommended, but I’ll go ahead and paraphrase: we can make the most of our human tendency to procrastinate by straying from our main work with an activity that teaches something useful. I do dearly love to have non-work-related projects going and I love being a student, so this concept is very appealing. And it even has a name. Productive Procrastination sounds just a little like something that one should remedy, but I'm not upset about it because I can feel good about the Productive part. My music work is to play and practice violin and viola, and my fiber work is to create and teach freeform crochet through classes and freeform.ish guides. My productive procrastination projects are many.
A new fiber technique? I'm in, especially if I get to buy new tools!
A new system for keeping house or managing meal planning? You bet, let me spend hours reading about it and making lists!
Learn Italian because I want to go to Italy? Someday? Of course, and let me get hyper-focused on maintaining a streak on Duolingo while I'm at it (740 days and still going strong).
Sign up for Master Class and have an entire library of classes (about so many things!) to watch and learn from? There are still only 24 hours in a day, but absolutely, here's my credit card!
Of course, things like Netflix series, reality contest TV shows (The Voice and DWTS, I can't help it), and social media scrolling are not considered good candidates for productive procrastination, but they manage to make it into my schedule nonetheless. That gives rise to yet another new project: to work on doing less of this stuff.
The good news is that I'm rarely bored. The bad news is that I can be easily distracted and frequently derailed by the possibilities for all of these great things to do. But, sheesh, I'm usually getting something worthwhile accomplished, and I always get back to my main work before too long.
My plan for this post was to produce a menu of fibery projects and goals for 2024, but my head’s not quite there yet. Luckily, I have plenty of productive procrastination opportunities to keep me busy while I figure it out.
That’s it for today, thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!🎉
Lisa
PS: The next post is sure to have actual freeform crochet content. In the meantime, here’s a photo of one of the pieces I’ve been playing around with.