This week for Wreck This Journal, I overcame a fear. I made a video.
Lots of fellow wreckers paved the way for me by making videos that looked fun and not terribly scary. I generally don’t like video cameras and find it hard to be myself around them, so this was a huge step.
This was completely spontaneous. One minute I was weeding my garden, the next I was scurrying through my house to gather up my computer and journal in the last few minutes of daylight.
I had a lot of fun making this video and I didn’t even chicken out in posting it. Here it is. Enjoy!
Happy wrecking!
If you’re confused as to what this Wreck This Journal stuff is all about or curious to see what other wrecking has transpired, here are some links to bring you up to speed.
The weather has been crazy over the past month on the east coast. Lots and lots of rain. Nearly everyday in fact.
Earlier this week a huge thunderstorm came through. Our power went out every few minutes, usually being restored within a minute or two each time. We lit candles. The animals hid. My husband, stepson, and I stayed close to one another.
The storm ended, but the ominous gray remained. When the sun broke through in time to set, the sky looked like it was on fire. Brilliant orange amidst billowing dark clouds.
I, of course, decided it was a swell time to practice my manual photography skills. Here is the view through our window.
Happy Friday! May your skies not look like this for the holiday weekend.
Another journal wrecking week is coming to a close. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, see the links at the end of this post.)
As I’m sure my fellow wreckers can attest, some weeks are more inspired than others. Last week, not so much. This week, inspired!
My stepson has been playing with a box of balloons this week. Those long, skinny balloons that are meant for being shaped into animals or hats.
My husband, being a giant kid himself, had the idea to make a water balloon with one. It was meant to be some kind of fancy water cannon with which he could inflict torture on my stepson (or possibly me).
Fortunately for us his idea evolved. While standing at the sink alternately filling a balloon and twisting, he asked if he could smash his water balloon in my journal.
My reply? “Heck yeah! I’ll get the camera.”
We flipped the book open to “scrub this page” and let loose.
I ended up with 67 photographs from what was probably two minutes of wreckage. Here are some of the highlights:
Let the wrecking begin!
The journal proves to be a formidable opponent
Time to get serious
Why swing one balloon when you can wield nunchucks...
I adore Brandi. She embodies true joy, finding it in places others might overlook.
One of the simple joys Brandi reminded me about is sidewalk chalk. So a few nights ago, when I spotted the bucket of sidewalk chalk sitting dusty in the garage, I knew my family was about to partake in a mini-adventure of sorts.
To start things off, I wrote a birthday greeting for my stepson who turned 12 on Monday.
A birthday wish in sidewalk chalk
Then I called him out to the driveway and things went crazy.
Happiness is... sidewalk chalk
We drew pictures and played hopscotch. We wrote messages by the sidewalk for people who pass by. It was a blast.
Where can you find simple joys? Let that inner child out to play.
A strange thing happened to me on Saturday. I found myself on vacation.
I wasn’t on a tropical island. I hadn’t flown anywhere. No long drives. No crowds.
It all started when my husband and stepson left for baseball practice Saturday morning. With the house all to myself and the first sunshiny day in about three weeks, I planned out my morning. First weed the garden. Then work on my Week 2 exercises for Deb’s Creative Pathways course.
So I set to work in my garden, pulling weeds, tilling dirt, and watering the plants. It started to get hot outside, but I wasn’t ready to go in yet. I considered carrying one of the stiff chairs from my deck down to beneath the deck for a shady spot to rest. Then it dawned on me. We have a hammock.
I went to the basement, found the rolled-up hammock, carried it out, and hooked it up to two trees in my backyard. I brought out a tote of books, a notebook, and writing utensils and swayed in the breeze while answering the Week 2 questions. When I was done with that, I pulled out the novel I’m currently reading and sunk deliciously into its plot.
My neighbors were floating in their new pool while music played on their deck. I was far enough away from them to feel alone, yet near enough to enjoy the music and feel a sense of community. I listened to the sounds of splashing, felt the breeze mix with the heat, watched a few birds come and go.
That’s when I realized I felt like I was at a resort, far removed from the worries of daily chores. My hammock in the shade was like a poolside cabana. If only someone had come around to take my drink and snack order.
I spent several glorious hours on that non-vacation. In fact, the rest of my weekend was happier and more relaxed than it might otherwise have been.
Mental note: take more non-vacations. I wonder what other opportunities might present themselves.
As you may be aware by now, I have been taking a photography class to finally learn exactly what to do with all those settings on my DSLR camera. Between the exposure lecture and the next week’s lab I wanted to practice.
As you may also be aware, it has rained a lot in the past month. That means I have a plethora of gray photographs. One day the sun peaked out for about 10 minutes so I dropped what I was doing and went to practice what I learned in my yard.
This week’s Photo Friday shot is one of those practice shots. I photographed this Pink Fountain Gaura in the fully manual mode. The richness of the color and depth of field were exactly as I had hoped. (See it on Flickr for better quality.)
I was so proud of the idea and ecstatic that I got a great photo of it on my phone. It was a perfect act of joyous spontaneity. After all my piddly little wrecking exercises, I’d raised my personal bar quite high. I was no longer following the rules of destruction. I was actually wrecking.
Since I can’t force spontaneity, this week I simply returned to the suggestions within the book. I’m sure another impromptu joyful wrecking will occur. At least I proved to myself that I could do it.
The next best thing seemed to be rising to Jamie’s challenge of doing the thing we fear most. For me that’s the food page. To ease myself in, I bit a grape in half and smeared it on the page. It’s not exactly messy like, say, spaghetti sauce might be. But it’s a start.
Here are the tragedies my journal endured this week:
Rubbed in infield dirt and gravel at the baseball field
Ripped out and crumpled up a page. Cat batted it around the living room.
Hubby wrote in it with a dirty stick. Since the stick is no longer pressed in the book, that probably means it’s loose in my purse. I should probably go look for that.
Writing with a dirty stick
Grape smearing
Cut through multiple pages. For some reason, this was extremely gratifying.
Holes poked with a pencil (not inside the dotted lines)
Drawing thick and thin lines with a pencil
Made a paper airplane (still in tact in book)
Folded a paper airplane
Completely colored a page wherein I allowed myself to be okay with my art skills be elementary
Completely colored a page
Dripped nail polish and smooshed the book to make a pattern
