The Journal

thinking, writing, learning

A Swap….

Hello people interested in letterpress printing,

I’m recovering from a bout of vertigo– not fun when you want to stand at the press all day.

I am participating in Ladies of Letterpress swap, which means I am creating 100 5×7 posters on my little press. Not only that, I’ve decided to do two colors. This means three passes for each poster- one for the tree, one for the leaves, and one for the poem. Oh, and probably a fourth since I want to put a colophon on the bottom. Seven gazillion hours later, and I’ll have 100 prints to share!

Like my drying rack?

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A Month

FullSizeRender (24)The past month was difficult, but it’s over. I spent yesterday working in the shop, and I think I’m finally getting the hang of this. Each new print job meant more packing, less packing, more tape, less tape– because each form is different, depending upon whether I am using metal type, wood type, or polymer. I managed to get out a few holiday cards and a few quote cards. Yay me.

In two weeks I get to visit Jen at Starshaped Press in Chicago. I’m looking forward to learning from her. Nothing like being around a master! And so what if I’m still working on it at 63. I need to realize that’s pretty cool in itself.

Bliss

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I first heard of Joseph Campbell in college, which was more than half a lifetime ago. His words resonated so deeply. But I’m not sure I understood them fully until recently. Bliss. To me, bliss is more like “flow,” as in Csikszentmihalyi’s research.

“The best moments in our lives are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times… The best moments usually occur if a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.” ~ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

It’s what happens to me when I am working on the press. Last week a friend brought by some ink he didn’t need any longer. Not standard letterpress ink, but what the heck. I’ve heard of using other types of ink so I wanted to give it a try.

The first few attempts were bad. I ran down my list of possible problems: not locking up the type correctly, not enough or too much packing, too much ink. Nothing corrected the bleeding I was seeing. I assumed the ink wasn’t going to work. And then I had a flash- what if the brayer isn’t getting the ink on the type well enough? I was using my proof press not my platen press to test this. Bingo! After I cleaned up the press and tried a different brayer, the sample print was much better. I fooled around a little more with paper thickness, and then called it a day. Hours of trying this and that had flown by. And in the end, I felt as satisfied and full as I have after a delicious meal and wine.

Pure bliss.

 

Pushing On

I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.

Marissa Mayer

I am not sure I always did this. But at some point in my life, I wanted to figure things out. Printer broken? Take it apart. Need a room networked? Run the cables.
So I am trying to do this with my printing as well. But, wow, does it take time. There are so many variables that can go wrong- ink, lock up, type, pressure, humidity in the air. Each time I get ready to print, I check the packing, the placement of the base or the type, and even the different paper styles I use.

People wonder why I even bother to do this. “You can print whatever you want digitally now,” they say. “This looks like too much work.”

Yes, but it’s fun work. It’s the figuring it out that I love. And when I get a print that is nearly perfect (because nothing in letterpress is perfect), I smile with satisfaction.

Searching for Happiness

Well, I’m not searching, I’m happy.

But this post  makes me think.

Doland recommends taking one day every week or every month to simply observe yourself:

It’s about tuning in to what you are doing, who you are doing it with and how it makes you feel. How much worry, stress, anger, joy or contentment do you experience on a given day?

Your happiness audit should assess not only major elements of your life, like your job and relationship, but also seemingly inconsequential aspects like how you occupy yourself on your commute and what you eat for lunch. Check in with how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. You’ll find that certain, perhaps surprising, things give you more pleasure than others, just as some detract.

The solution, according to Dolan, is to deliberately make it very easy to do the things that make us happy. Dolan believes we can structure our time and design our surroundings in such a way that we can quickly make a habit out of doing things that make us happy. These changes are small and incremental, but this is precisely why he thinks they work so well.

Ya, makes me think.type