my inner beagle

I've been looking for so long for some kind of container for my daily process... one that's loose enough to allow me the sense of freedom that I crave, but structured enough to make something happen. This month I've started an arbitrary idea of producing, or at least working on, three pieces a day - and it's working surprisingly well. 

It's strange to watch the way that even a completely made up thing like this seems to fool the mind into thinking that it has to do what it's told. When I can do anything, I often don't know where or how to start, and quite often, distracting myself like crazy, I end up doing nothing at all. But this seems to tap into that  completion thing; the observation that human minds seem to respond to the idea of finishing things (you try to get to the end of your list; think you'll just finish off that last X before you have a break...).

The inner beagle is a joke now in my house about this structure! In the same way that people who have dogs say that they have them to make them go out for a walk every day, I have to walk my inner beagle three times a day.

'A piece', incidentally, can be a line of water colour or a circle made with chalk - if I'm busy it can be the  quickest thing imaginable. It's amazing how often just 'having' to do this gets me started....


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