Finding Inspiration-Fighting Ennui

July 26, 2025 - I was feeling a common apathy of a hot summer morning and in my e-mail news feed, I came across an npr essay on what columnists did to give a perk to the morning. As it happened, I was thinking that I felt uninspired and I began to think of what I do when I am looking for insspiration and I thought of my big tub of resource files in the back room of my little bungalow.

Over the many many years, when I am working on a new project for an art show, I will print out pictures from photographs or other resources to use for reference. There are so many, I could go right up the alphabet but the most common are family, friends, historic places, landscapes, pets, memories. After the pojects are over, the files become scattered, but this Spring in a major organizing effort of a couple of weeks, I got all my art supplies and my downstairs folders into labeled tubs. (The attic will have o wait, maybe forever)

My morning latte' gave me enough energy to go back into the Den and pull the heavy tub off the shelf and rifle through the folders pulling out promising prints: pets, my favorite willow oak tree on Station Ave, in Mt. Ephraim, the Railroad trees (60 of them in a column beside the tracks) throughout the seasons, mushrooms and a Mary Oliver poem. I also found an old wooden ruler that I liked and I have been searching for.

I have been wanting to do a project on the railroad trees through the seasons for years. I have photos of them in winter in snow, in Spring in bloom, and summer in green and fall in russet colored leaves. Today may be just the day to do that page in my Art Journal.

I also found an old dinosaur birthday card that I filled out to mail to a friend whose birthday I am celebrating in August with tickets to the Edelman Fossil Park and Museum, part of Rpwan University. The card must be from my daughter's childhood, hence, more than 40 years old! In a few minutes I will take the dog for a short ride to the post office to mail that and another card I am sending to an Art Journal buddy. We will ride around one or more of the local parks while we are out which is another thing I do to get inspired and to cut through the haze of apathy that often fogs me in in the mornings.

This is a special day because it is the second day when, thanks to my sister's energetic and expert help on Thursday, all the chores are done and I am free to do whatever I please! So, the ride to the PO and the parks, then I will pick one of the pages and start an art journal page. I think it will be the railroad trees!

I hope this inspires some ideas in you for what to do with your one and only unique and irreplaceable day! By the way, I also received an essay from an old classmate that he wrote about the death of his family companion, Buddy the Labrador Retriever. My files inspire writing as well as providing imagery for my Art Journal, as can be attested by this blog entry. Maybe you'll be inspired to write. How about a summer memory?

By the way, if you are interested in starting an Art Journal, you don't need any specific or special artistic skills, you can begin by doodling, any pattern, any idea, any sketch. I think I wrote a blog entry earlier about a man who wrote a column in this month's AARP magazine about his 50 years of keeping journals! Good for the brain, good for the memory, maybe even good for posterity!

Happy Trails - wrightj45@yahoo.com