If you know me, or you have been following these somewhat random notes of mine, you will know that these come from the mind of an overwhelmed overthinker.
The last two weeks have presented various hurdles, of which I will not go into detail now. Let us just say that having a routine checkup on Tuesday could land you in hospital on Thursday in the midst of work and parent chaos. Also, bad things don’t always just happen in threes… It could be multiples of three. Anywhoo, so I have not had my head attached correctly for a while and thus just doing some chaotic form of crisis management. So my excuse is that I did not have time, while the truth is probably that I was in a funk and did not feel like it.
Silence and stepping away from something do however always bring some time for reflection, self-doubt and avoidance – an ongoing spiral of the overthinker.
This afternoon I finally sat down and did a debrief. The purpose was to just get everything out of my mind and onto paper. Categorise, sort and try again. A lot of the last 12 months have been dedicated to figuring out how to manage my time effectively and juggle various responsibilities. Mostly because I was overwhelmed and this caused anxiety. Many of these little discoveries have been noted on this blog. I started implementing the bullet journal method. Most days this helps me to stay on top of things. On other days, however, things happen that were not on the list.
I started my zentangle journey when I wanted to find some creative elements that I could include in my bullet journal or planner. In short, I wanted to make the pages pretty. I tried out a few things and as it goes with Pinterest, I stumbled upon the world of tanglers. People who are doing beautiful things! Little artworks that grow out of a single shape and is made through repetition. This is something that resonated with me and I started off with the Inktober challenge of 2020 and was hooked.
What did I need to start:
A plan
My Creative Crafting WhatsApp group suggested that we join in on Inktober 2020. I found the official prompt list a bit daunting and googled to see what else is available. The zentangle community did not disappoint with a tangle challenge of their own. Clear step outs for every day of October and a Facebook group where you could be inspired by others. It was a challenge where I found something that I loved… which are the best kind!
A sketchbook
Back in 2007 my beautiful friend, Nicky Wenhold, who worked with me at a printing company, gave me a ring-bound book. It was made up as a mockup to test some cover ideas and it has traveled and moved from various dwellings, from my student life, to my adult life. The first few pages were used for research planning of the literature review of my Masters (2013-2015). And for the rest of that time it just sat on my shelf. Beautiful blank pages just waiting for something. This book has now become my sketch book. It is not fancy, but it is perfect.
Ink
I started with an Inktober challenge so I of course needed pens. I started off with a pencil, eraser, marker, fineliner and an artist pen. Quite basic. I’ve only recently upgraded a little, but those are still the basic items that I use.
And those were the only things that I really needed to get me on my way.
I am motivated by movement and continuity and because I am still a newby, I am still only following prompts and challenges by the various groups on Facebook.
This challenge started while I was still on leave, so I had the time to sit down and lose myself every morning before the Lilliputians took over my world. I am however now back at work so drawing time is limited. I would however like to show off what I did.
This challenge was promoted on the 7F5R Facebook page and in order for me to understand what I was letting myself in for, I first had to do a little research.
Reticula refers to the shape that you fill with fragments. Sure, that is very simple but in essence, that is what it is. It is explained more eloquently here. The purpose of the zentangle method is to lose yourself in the process of repetition of shapes. I also found it very interesting that the only shapes you need to be able to make to tangle are
i c s o .
I am still not entirely convinced, but I do have to say that I have always believed that I cannot even draw a stick figure and now look how far I’ve come.
Some of them were done on their own, and some were combined. Here are a few of my favourites.
Day 12 to Day 31 Combined – 16 January 2021Z is for Zentangle, Day 1 – 2 January 2021
A few people have asked me why I do this. In my previous post I chatted about only taking with you that which inspires you and I have to say the zentangle groups that I follow are all giving me new perspective new ideas, and I am seeing things that I have never even seen before through Instagram and Pinterest… It has opened up a whole new world for me.
It is a very mobile, very inexpensive hobby. And I love the process of doing very basic things to create something beautiful.
Follow me on social media if you want to see me work my way up to beautiful mandalas!
I have never in my life felt important enough to review anything. But today I am thrilled, and I want to share it because I know that some of the followers of these rambles are also stationery addicts. I bought this gorgeous traveller’s notebook a few months back (ah, I guess that was actually the first review). What has, however, been a bit of a challenge was to find the perfect notebook inserts.
Please forgive this incoherent ramble but there has to be a home for this as well amidst the planning and the sorting and the dreaming.
I wrote about the emotional tracking here and I am struggling today to give the anger a name. I have looked up synonyms: irate, annoyed, displeased, irked… I have weighed them up and turned them around in my mind and on paper… but nothing felt appropriate, nothing was exactly right. And then it dawned on me, what I am feeling is not anger or rage… it is “disappointment”.
I started my bullet journal and the planning around it as an extension of a task given to me by my psychologist. In short, the task boiled down to “Find something that works for you to get your butt in gear”. She was kind about it, but the message rang true – stop complaining about feeling overwhelmed. You have identified the problem, now put in the work.
So a plan started taking shape. I wanted to identify what I needed to do every day, write it down and do it… even if I did not want to. I wanted to stop avoiding things that I felt was too hard or would be too much effort. I wanted to stop angonising over everything on the list and just know that I would get to it eventually. Rome was not built in a day. I wrote a little about my time blocking plan here.
I started the time blocking in August and I am still not quite winning. I am however determined and stubbornly persevering because on the days it works it really does work great.
With all this notetaking and analysing and list-making, I did however realise that I have gotten to the point of overplanning. The effectivity of it all got lost in the writing things down and not actually doing them. So… back to why of it all.
2020 has been a year where I had to put in a lot of work into figuring out why I do things the way that I do them. It has been a year of accepting that I am an overthinking, overplanning, colour coding ball of anxiety, and converting these elements of my personality into strengths instead of weaknesses. And in many cases, it was actually just a mind-shift and a happy realisation that some people are really just different and approach the same problem in different ways.
I have recently done a lot of reading on goalsetting. Mainly because I want the things that I do and the things that I am to have substance and a clear purpose. Various resources advise on how to formulate goals but nothing quite made sense to me. Of course, you have to write them down, but to write them down you first have to have something to write down!
Which all boiled down to the simple questions:
What am I doing?
Why am I doing it?
For example, while putting on my running shoes:
The what: I am going for a run.
The why: Because it helps with my sanity and it is good for me to get outside.
And while on said run a penny dropped. When goal setting I should perhaps not ask what do I want to achieve, but instead, who do I want to be. By doing this my goals align with my morals and values or at least and should, in theory, steer me towards an improved version of myself. In a roundabout way this makes me trustworthy and accountable and moving towards something instead of just hanging around.
A simple example: I make time every morning and every afternoon to answer and organise my work email. This helps with my to-do list and also that you do not get into a position where things just remain unanswered. It also helps to not be on my email the whole day and then just generate more email. Yes, I will share my inbox organisation tricks with you soon :)! And why did I decide to do this? Because at some stage when things were all happening at once, I realised that I was not getting to my email and things fell through the cracks. So the little block on my schedule dedicated to my inbox is me just trying to address that failure. Again this is something that I am now trying. I am trying goalsetting and will see what works, what helps and what does not actually contribute anything. And yes, I will happily report back in an overthinking fashion. So yes, I have identified the problem and I am putting in the work.
