L. Diaz Copyright 2009

I have a thing for starting art projects and never finishing. My artistic endeavors range from crochet to painting; from coloring books to scrapbooking.

While I have completed two entire scrapbooks and a half a dozen paintings, I don’t plan on opening up an art museum any time soon.

However, I do feel the beginnings of an etsy shop coming on!

Over the past few months I’ve become increasingly obsessed with these chic headbands found in stores like anthropologie. Naomi Davis’s sold out etsy shop, only caused my obsession to worsen. I had to have a headband– or two– but at $30 a piece I would never be able to afford the variety that my fashionista heart desired.

and then my inner [failed] artist decided to take charge!

After an initial mishap with some yarn and a crochet needle, I have successfully created my very own headbands! I have a few adjustments to make to my schematic and I will be offering them (assuming all goes well)– at reasonable prices– in my very own Etsy shop!

What do you think?

Little Lady London

In the spirit of Brecca’s love letters. I have my own letter to write. It’s not quite a love letter. I’m actually bidding farewell to a bitter-sweet internet obsession that I’ve recently developed.

Dear Mommy-Bloggers,

Though one of my closest friends is part of your posse and you are all wildly entertaining and your children are adorable and your love lives are…well…lovely. But I’m going to have to bid you farewell. (With the exception of Brecca, because how else will I watch London grow up?)

You see, you’re playing mind games with me. I’ve lost myself in your wedding pictures and pregnancy diaries. I’m starting to wonder if life is better as a mommy-blogger. But our lives cannot be compared! I am getting my aspirations in order and I am struggling to pursue my dreams. Torturing myself with your Cinderella-stories only serves to obstruct my focus. I’m working on a Master’s degree, not a nursery.

I never had plans for fairy tales weddings and baby-making. As I child, I never dreamed of prince charming and big white wedding dresses. I set out to pursue intellectualism, to travel the world and write books about it. I dreamed of chasing education! Being responsible for the life of a child is an inundating thought for me.  I mean no disrespect to you mommy-bloggers! I think your life is beautiful. I think your babies and your photography and your reading lists are charming. I’ve just known what I want for a long time now and sometimes you make me doubt myself.

Thanks for sharing your happiness, but I need to go find my own.

- L

I discussed the fairy-tale mommy bloggers with Eric recently. I was debating whether it was religion or drugs that made them so happy. Then he reminded me. A person makes a decision to be happy. Maybe their family or their beliefs influence that decision, but the decision belongs to them.

I’ve been struggling to find happiness. I work all night I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay…ain’t it sad? I can’t find a balance between business and pleasure. I want to read; I need to study. I want to write; I need to work.

Turns out all I need to do is turn on the happiness, by doing the things that make me happy.

1. Reading
I have a stack of books that I’ve been collecting all year. Classics like The Catcher in the Rye, The Hitcherhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and more modern works like The Year of Living Bibically and Love Warps the Mind a Little. They keep piling and I’m dying to read them. I will give myself at least three nights a week of reading for at least a half hour.

2. Writing
I love to write. I write web content for work, but I want to write a novel for pleasure. Come on…you know you’d buy my novel. I vow to work on my novel every weekend. Sometimes I’ll work on it even before I do my homework.

3. Art
I have paintings sitting on my music stand that I started over two months ago and haven’t finished. I will finish them by the end of this year! I will also get back to scrapbooking…once I start remembering to carry my camera with me!

4. Listening to music
I stopped expanding my music library when I started my career. The two things are seemingly unrelated, but somehow as the amount of time I spent at work increased, the amount of new music I discovered decreased. That is going to change!

5. Playing music
My piano has been complete abandoned. Well…not completely abandoned. It serves as a stand for my unfinished paintings. This week I’ll dust off the piano. Next week I might actually try to play something. I’m not going to get too ahead of myself. The goal of becoming a real musician might be one I have to save for when I have more time.

6. Indulging my inner-child
I want to play in the park or build a secret fort in my apartment. I think it would be freeing. Different than the kind of freedom adults want (e.g. financial freedom, independence, etc…), but freeing nonetheless.

7. Riding my bike
I had high hopes when I first purchased my lovely green beach-cruiser-road-bike hybrid, but life got in the way! I suppose I will never get to ride it quite as much as I would like to, but twice a week is a reasonable goal.

8. Dating
Dating my one-and-only love― of course! I’m thinking I can combine some of the other things that make me happy (like indulging my inner child and listening to new music) with dating and it could make everything twice as much fun!

9. Cooking
Deb at Smitten Kitchen (she just had a baby; this does not make her a mom blogger. This blog stays!) makes me want to cook something different every night for a year. Unfortunately, I don’t have quite enough cash for all of those ingredients nor do I have enough time to cook every night. But once a week I vow to make something we’ve never had before. I started this week with Smitten Kitchen’s own 44-clove-garlic-soup.

10.  Keeping a cleaner home
This one is bittersweet. I don’t really want to spend every other night wiping counters and putting everything in its place, but I do feel at peace when my humble abode is clean. I will devise a method of keeping my apartment clean without having to spend hours cleaning. I will publish this method once it has been tested.

I fueled the fire with with, if we were all scientists the world would lack variety and it would be so boring…I mean what about art and journalism? He rebuttals, who says scientists can’t write or paint, if they are moderately intelligent and talented, the scientists can be the journalists and painters too!

Well what if I don’t like science?– the debate gets personal! While he considers my [currently in progress] graduate degree (Communicative Sciences and Disorders) a “scientific” degree, there is not much respect [from him] for the B.S. in Marketing. Hello mister engineer man it’s called Bachelor’s in SCIENCE. I suppose it’s more commonly known as a B.S.– how unfortunate!

He said he wouldn’t get rid of all the non-science degrees, but that in a perfect world we would all get science or math degrees, before heading off to art school or starting an English degree.  Do any of you artists out there hate him yet? hehe…

In the end, I agreed that high school and college graduates ought to have a better grasp on math and sciences than they currently do.  BUT that doesn’t require a degree in math, engineering, physics or biology. It simply requires higher standards. Despite my pessimal geometry skills, I am an advocate of raising educational standards. After all, if they (meaning the mysterious people on top who decide what goes into standardized tests and who gets into college) set the bar higher for math and science, they will eventually do it for language and literature as well. It makes me giddy to imagine a world where students are no longer permitted to graduate from high school if they are still making then/than, too/to, and their/there/they’re mistakes!

But enough of this “raising the bar” talk, it’s for a different post! This post was supposed to be about education and the arts and I have digressed.

My heated, yet loving, debate with Eric got me thinking about art. Photography in particular. When he said the world would be a better place if everyone had a math or science degree, I immediately imagined the world without my favorite photography blogs!  While photography may come naturally to some, including my father, that gene seems to have skipped me! I dream of purchasing a digital SLR, as if that will somehow turn me into the photographers I adore like Deb at Smitten Kitchen! But before I get ahead of myself, I suppose I should follow the lead of Naomi and her husband at The Rockstar Diaries and actually document events with the camera I already own. If I can’t remember to take my camera with me,  what would be the point of making an investment as grand as an SLR?

And so I decided to do a little research to educate myself on how be an amateur photographer!

I have clicked through websites like HP and Kodak, and all of blog entrepreneur’s ten great photo blogs and I compiled a photography to-do list. Now all I have to do is remember to bring my camera along and follow these tips!

1. Get down– When you’re shooting a tiny subject like a baby or a puppy, get down to their level. It fills the frame and makes the photo more interesting!

2. Take many pictures– The beauty of digital cameras is that you can take as many pictures as your memory card can handle. You’re more likely to capture the memory just the way you want to, if you take multiple pictures.  Some cameras even have a “burst” mode that will automatically take several pictures with just one click.

3. Use available light– This is a big one for me. I always end up shooting pictures in a dark corner of a bar with a flash that would light up all of New York City. I end up with overexposed faces and underexposed backgrounds. Standing near a lamp or a window will allow you to capture the image as you see it.

4. Experiment with different angles– Your subject doesn’t have to be in the center of the photo. You can use lines to inspire the angle you’re shooting from. Shoot from above or from below and observe how the focus of the image changes!

5. Avoid distracting backgrounds– HP has a fun online exercise on their website that will help you get an idea of what a perfect background looks like. If you’re observant enough, you can capture the background, without capturing everything that goes along with it.

Stay tuned for my photographic adventures!