I’m not sure if you could really refer to this as a “sketchcrawl“.  Rather than meeting up with tons of people and capturing the sights of the city in our sketchbooks, I ran out at 9pm to the local Barnes & Noble and hung out ’til they ran me off.

I’ve been going over the Wet Canvas website.  They have tons of arts and crafts things going on, but of interest to me in particular was the drawing and sketching section.  There, they have a virtual class room Drawing 101 and Drawing 201.  They follow along with the book, How to Draw What You See.  This week, I’ve been practicing drawing cubes in perspective while cupping my pencil.  I don’t spend more than 10 minutes a night on it.  That’s all I intended to spend on the blog.  By the time I get the pix scanned in and edit it down the way I want it, it always turns into an hour+.

So Sunday night was small boxes stacked on the table in front of me for my cubes.  Monday was a lunchbox, zune, and a couple other things around the room.  Tuesday, the fridge, oven, microwave, window…  By Wednesday I grew weary of just drawing cubes so tonight I just did the whole room in cubes.

These last few nights, I have been searching the web and examining my lifestyle choices until the wee hours of the morning, only to have to go to work the next day not quite as refreshed as I should be.  I have been searching for blogs of interest.  I found several art and philosophy blogs that have made me just want to read one more post.  I even made it back over to dancarlin.com to see what I’ve been missing in current events and politics.  However, as this is the fourth night in a row of this debauchedness, it is definitely taking its toll.  I am not accustomed to getting by on three or four hours sleep for weeks at a time as I did in college.

If you are reading this, then you too have survived yet another year on planet earth.  This was one of the best and worst years of my life.  I suppose you could say that for every year, they all have their ups and downs.  This past summer, right around the time I quit posting, my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, we picked up a $7,000,000 project at work and I quit smoking.

I don’t want to dwell on my mother’s illness much except to say that it turned out to be operable and she has made a complete recovery.  The big project at work has been an all or nothing deal that threatened to break us as much as make us.  There were several problems with inspection, testing, and quality control that threatened to shut us down completely.   Just in time for Christmas.  Thankfully, we have resolved most of those issues and our continued employment seems secure at least for the immediate foreseeable future.

I am currently celebrating my 6 month mark on the smoking cessation.  For me, it always comes back to a great cigar or a pipe.  I love the smell, the taste, and the buzz.  But from there it’s a short trip to cigarettes for those times when there’s no time to enjoy a pipe/cigar.  I *LOVE* smoking cigars on the bike!  But no more.  I am six months nicotine free and I intend to stay that way.

One of the side effects of the events of the year has been the refocus that comes with mortal reality.  My mother had plans that she was afraid she would never get to do, a bucket list or “Things to do before I die”.  We have all taken a closer look at what’s important to us and, for now at least, we are attending those lists.  Mine is to write, draw, paint, film, sing, dance, play music and endeavor to be a more capable artist.  That means more time spent practicing and participating and blogging about it.