This whole Daily Affirmations project is sure a hootenanny. (Wow, I just learned a lot about the word hootenanny. I was, of course, using it in the “focused discussion between key individuals” sense, and not the “folk-music party” sense.) First of all, there are 365 of them. That means (for those of you not good at math) that I need to average drawing one a day. One a day! I don’t think I do anything on that regular of a basis, other than maybe wake up (I don’t even average going to bed once a day!) (though, now that I consider that, the math doesn’t even add up on that one). This is a lot for my poor little brain to keep track of.

The Affirmations were originally printed out in an 11-page document, which contained 189 affirmations. I went through them and ranked them on a 1-5 scale. We brainstormed ideas for 5s. We put 3s and 4s in another list to improve. We shot the 1s and 2s out of a cannon over the ocean and hope we never see them again.

But then things started getting really messy.

I tried to set up a system to keep track of which ones we had solid ideas for (ready to sketch), which ones had already been sketched, which ones we were still thinking about, and which ones were complete (finals drawn). My system fell apart pretty immediately, because I couldn’t find a yellow highlighter one day, I forgot that circles around numbers can’t really be erased when they’re made in ink, etc etc. Not to mention the fact that Alden found an orange highlighter and several pens and pencils and added to my system. I found I was spending a lot of my time just staring at the pages going, “Wha??”

Matthew, and his powers of administration, suggested I make a card for each affirmation and keep them in separate piles. Genius!

Oh, but look how many there are!

I was fully prepared to chop them into submission.

What a nice, fat little stack they make.

Okay. The stack looks much fatter when you photograph it from below.

And when you hold it in your hands, with a heavy heart, looking into the distant distant future.

So of course after chopping them up, I dropped them on the floor, and had to completely re-sort them. This is likely going to be a recurring problem, so I’m thinking I’m going to have to clip these into some sort of one ring binder or something. I spent the next hour putting them into their respective piles.

The completed ones are marked across the top with a red sharpie. The ready-to-sketch ones are set aside in their own pile. And now, I’m officially ready to go.

Here’s hoping I won’t need to spend another half a day setting up a different system. Because I don’t want to have to leave any of these Affirmations half drawn. Though I suppose I could leave that one for Leap Year.