Currently in January 2022

January is a few days old and therefore high time for the currently group gather Anne is organizing on a monthly basis. This months prompts have been a bit tough for me but after giving it some serious thought and simmering for a few days I could answer all questions and write a little something down. Since I am just back after 3 days of trade fair show it might be a bit all over the place so please bare with me. I am tired and exhausted.

Anticipating.
That 2022 will be a year of celebration. Not only is it a year with a lot of milestone birthdays, milestone anniversaries and other happenings. I also have a very positive feeling about this year. I am usually not one for parties and many people but I feel like I want to celebrate exactly this in 2022. So yes, I am looking forward what 2022 is bringing along.

And so I choose my word of the year wisely – sometime in October already – because I knew for certain it would be “celebrate“. Day you choose a going word? If so please share it is always so fun to hear and read about it. And of course I set out to craft a list of resolutions and intentions for the year. I love those promising bullet points on paper.

Organizing.
My computer. I haven’t been doing back-ups lately. I am usually rather good at it but sometime during the pandemic the time capsule decided to quit and now I am getting a daily reminder that for 175 days or so the data hasn’t been backed up. Usually my laptop is back-uped daily during the night but that hasn’t happened. I still need a new solution for this problem as the time capsule was discontinued at apple (please why?!)

However my photos have always been a manual back-up. The data is just too much. And I was running out of capacities on my hard drives so I invested in two new 5 TB hard drives and this should keep my going for a while. I have only the last two years of photos on my computer (so that would be 2020 & 2021). Everything else goes to the hard drives and is only stored there. And than I make a back-up of the back up. Unfortunately it is all stored in the same drawer so not that smart in case of robbery or fire but at least some safety in case one hard drive breaks.

But it is a work in process. I am wondering how you save your data? Do you have a workflow? Some learnings? Anything?

And while I am doing back-up it is a good time to also organize the lap top. I have a trillion files on my desktop and also my download folder tells me it is currently storing 171 GB of data. Oh and don’t ask me about email. So this could – and probably will be – a year long project and once I am done I can start right at the beginning.

I just remembered I have written a post about digital household chores. I need to re-read and see if I keep up with my own check list.

Reading.
Three books currently. Snow Child, The Talmud and a compilation of winter fairy tales. I like to have my options. HA! One usually is a kindle book that I can also read at night – hello insomnia. Then there is one I usually read in the morning that takes a bit more focus. Currently that is the Talmud but often times non-fiction, business books and such. This time around I have also picked up the compilation for some shorter stories when I haven’t much time. Usually I stick to two books though.

I am again planning on reading a lot in 2022 and have written another reading goals list for my year. It contains pleasure reads and fiction but also classics and non fiction. I also want to be a bit more focused on my longterm reading challenge of reading a book from every country. If you have any suggestions of books for specific countries I am all ears. Specially the not so common ones.

Resolving.
Some childhood memorabliia. Back in November I went to my families country home to look through a few boxes I had stored there some 25 years ago. The content varied from old stuff animals – all wet, and moldy and stink but well love to love letters and my tortoise collection. I dwelled a whole weekend in those memories and in the end I decided to let go of most of them. I read all those love letters (79 in total) from my sixteen year old self and burned them in a fire. I took photos of my stuffed animals and my tortoise collection. The I picked two pieces I was going to keep. One that I will pass on to my godchild and a candle that I will burn and enjoy.

While I love looking back and reliving the past I also am tired of all the stuff that accumulates. So much clutter. So much possessions. I need to let go of things. It is a lifelong journey it looks like. But I really want to get rid of excess stuff, minimize more and if we ever move not be totally overwhelmed. So this year I really want to get rid of the DVD collection (some 600 movies or so?) Some has already been sold. Just last week I checked with the local library if I could donate. Unfortunately due to corona they are not able to take any donations.

Scheduling.
The next 100 Day project. It is coming up faster than I thought. To be precise it is starting February 13, 2022 and will last until May 24th if I manage to complete my piece of art daily. But I put no pressure on myself. It is a wonderful art journey and I have participated the last xx years.
2016 – #100daysofcraftaliciouspatterns
2017 – #100daysofcraftaliciousstampin – my least successful one
2018 – #100daysofcraftaliciousmdrops
2019 – #100daysofcraftaliciousimages – my only photo project, unfortunately stopped around day 80
2020 – #100daysofcraftaliciousprojects
2021 – #100daysofcraftaliciouslineart

I already have some idea of what I want to do for this years challenge. However it will be a bit more time consuming then last year and I am not sure if I set myself up for “failure”. I mean even if I only do 15 pieces of art its still 15 more before I started. I guess I need to think a little more about it.

I would love to hear if you also plan on joining the 100 day project. It is always fun to have people cheer each other on and I have met so many great people and artists through this challenge. So if you want to nudge your creative solid this might be for you.

Happy Sunday

Tobia