This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content.
As some of y’all may know, I turned fifty yesterday. It won’t be a surprise, I think, that I have mixed feelings about this, especially after the past few weeks (my last Creative Endeavors post may have included a few thoughts on the subject). I was actually excited for my fifties, not least as I had a rough plan worked out that could now be in mild-to-significant peril depending on how the next few years shake out, but the one area of said plan that’s still in conceptual motion (and, weirdly enough, is actually the least threatened) is my artwork and how I want it to go, look, etc.
One thing I want to concentrate on is work that celebrates and endorses my values—not just that, but making it a priority. I suck at polemic (I did a couple of political-adjacent works during the late teens and they weren’t great, to put it mildly) and, while it might be a useful stretch to indulge in my more negative impulses, I can easily see it leading to a dark place I can ill afford, especially right now (I’ve got a few ideas in that department I intend to explore, but thankfully not many). A big test’ll be the next couple of days which I’ll be spending with my mom in Louisiana. If I can get through those…
We’ll see what happens. I’m snatching joy and hope when and where I can. One unexpected inspiration has been getting active on Bluesky the past week and change (anyone interested, I’m at https://bsky.app/profile/fluvialhoedad.bsky.social). It’s nice to see an art-friendly social media feed that hasn’t been riddled with algorithms (like Instagram) and, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the alt-text option has been an interesting exercise. Leaving aside how it apparently helps low-visibility users, it’s been an enlightening way to reconfigure how I approach developing ideas; I’m not used to describing my work in visual terms and it’s been a tonic. Maybe at some point I can actually develop ideas before I start work. Who knows?
How’s your work going?