2010 Can Begin

There's nothing like the police showing up at your front door to let you know you've got mail. I thought Skyler had already gotten if for today, but after one of Atlanta's finest came looking for different house, my honey brought in a chunk of cards and the eagerly anticipated small package that comes each year at this time, containing my Edward Gorey desk calendar. Ah, yes, it's the little things, one of which is that I can now fill in what feels like every damned day from January to March with something that has already been scheduled for months.

Somehow it wasn't so overwhelming when I circled the numbers and wrote in tiny letters on the squashed 2010 year at a glance in the back of the old calendar. Now, however, there is a lot to copy over, but, armed with my new little book, 2010 can officially begin in a mere two weeks. I am prepared to face it. [Gulp]

I wouldn't wish to mislead you, dear readers, into thinking that I'm in any way wildly organized or overly time aware. If that were the case, I wouldn't have kidded myself that I could release three DVDs, three accompanying e-books, one print book, and one iPhone app for metalsmiths in less than three years. The fact that I pulled off such a feat is proof that I have no sense of time at all... or at least not an admission that sleep is necessary.

Despite my ability to cram a week's worth of tasks into a single day, or perhaps because of it, I've attempted to space things out via some sort of organizational device for the past 25 years. Hard to believe of an artist, but I carried a Franklin Day Planner for 13 years. (Not the same one, of course. I'm not that bad with time.) When hauling it around started to wreak havoc with my shoulder, I joined the late 20th century and got a Palm Pilot, but found that I had a hard time getting it to recognize my handwriting when I was jostling a baby to keep it happy (the baby not the Palm Pilot) and scribbling in what the Palm must have thought a combination of runes and classical Chinese from about the 13th century, which hardly helped my time issues.

Home and studio bound more than ever, I switched to keeping my life on a real desk top the year a friend gave me "Neglected Murderesses, and Other Strange Tales: the 2003 Edward Gorey Engagement Calendar." - You've got to love the irony in that title. - Ever since, it's been a yearly Gorey calendar next to a blank page journal, sitting side by side in front of my computer monitor. Like the right and left hemispheres of my brain, all pages are covered in text and sketches with very little white space.

As I've been filling it in, I've been attempting sanity for 2010 in the form of taking the odd day off here an there. (Crazy talk to be sure.) If I made New Year's resolutions regularly taking days off might be one. Better not, lest it end up with work out more, loose five pounds, and get more sleep. Of course, I'm scheduling my life next to oddly shaped imaginary beasts, small Victorian children from The Gashlycrumb Tinies, who've met their untimely and unusual demise, and assorted other strange and darkly humerous creatures that only Edward Gorey could have created. In the face of too much to do, a sense of humor is essential. After all, we self-employed beings are not allowed to complain about too much work in such an economy!

Perhaps this year I'll even schedule putting the house numbers back up from when I took them down three years ago to paint the porch columns, but then, we wouldn't get the exciting surprise visits, and goodness knows, our bills haven't had any difficulty finding which house is ours.