“Were your ears burning?”

My friend posed this question today and went on to tell me that she had been talking about me with one of our other friends. Hmmmm… that always grabs my interest. It turns out that they were talking about the way I often make ATCs and Christmas cards in large quantities of one design. They just couldn’t understand this because they both suffer from twitchitis.. that awful affliction that makes you twitch when forced to abandon creativity for a stint of reproduction. Of course in their view they are both perfectly normal and I suffer from a bad case of Art Stagnation. They wondered how I could deal with this condition.

I told her the repetition was like having a job…. how can you answer the same phone time after time, stock the same shelves, file the same papers? For me the creative part is when I make the first card. I totally enjoy myself while making it. After that my play time is set aside and I go to work. I crank out the required number of copies with the same dedication I would show in the workplace. Once the task is done I’m free to play again and all is right with the world. This is not to say that there is no enjoyment in the work. I am still working in a field that I enjoy. I just see it as a different activity from the rest of my art endeavors.