2024 Inktober Adventure
S. R. Godderick's Less Inky Interpretation
Good day, peeps! As promised, I will share with you the fruits of my Inktober labors, but to provide some additional substance, I hope you will also enjoy my ramblings on process, struggles, and overambition.
As a refresher, Inktober is a challenge for October to utilize a daily word prompt to create something using ink. Since I am not trained or skilled at drawing, I opted to implement my own creative twist, using each word to prompt a crafting project, writing task, or fun experience for the month! I also tried to create a word card drawn in ink to stay true to the Inktober roots, but I wanted to stretch my imagination and use each prompt as an excuse to do activities that bring me joy—I SUCCEEDED!
However, there is a bit of a caveat…in the form of some hiccups with my plan. Full completion of Inktober wasn’t in the cards this year. Even though I didn’t finish a project for every word, I completed 17 projects, started and planned 9 more, and only had 5 words with unplanned activities (although I may have inadvertently done something related to a few of these as well). While my inner perfectionist feels like I failed miserably, the amount I learned about my process was invaluable, and I’d like to share some of that with you!
Let’s start with the fun stuff!
Fully Completed Projects
Now that you’ve seen the completed projects, here’s a look at the projects still lingering in the works-in-progress and best-laid-plans categories…
Works In Progress
These are projects I started and either ran out of time or procrastinated in the end.
#4 - An EXOTIC monstera leaf throw blanket.
#10 - A short piece of writing about a NOMADIC girl, named Jessie. I technically completed this one, but the story spoke to me, leaving me wanting to work on it more! This might just have to be a side project I work on alongside my current in progress book!
#17 - I’m putting this number in two categories (Completed and Work in Progress) because I technically did some JOURNAL entries in October, but my plan (half-way through the month) was to have an entry for every day which I did not complete.
#22 - My first try at hand embroidery, depicting a small portion of a CAMP. I finished the embroidery on the towel, but I never drew up the ink card.
#23 - Using RUST-oleum paint to spruce up a plain toilet paper holder.
#27 - Another planned hand embroidered towel with a ROADrunner on it. Instead, I only created the ink-drawn card.
Best Laid Plans
This category includes projects where materials were purchased, but the work never got started.
#6 - A Star TREK themed piece of string art for a friend.
#20 - An UNCHARTED (no pattern to follow) apron, using various cat theme fabrics.
#31 - A third hand embroidered towel of a desert LANDMARK (kinda… it’s a cactus).
404 Inspiration Not Found
These are words for which inspiration did not strike. Although, I sorta completed tasks that related to a few of the words.
#7 - PASSPORT
#12 - I used the TV REMOTE a LOT this month for an October Spooktacular and for other movies/tv shows prompted by the Inktober words. Here is the list of Spooktacular movies I watched:
#14 - I really wanted to do a buffalo plaid craft of some sort because I immediately thought of the song, Home on the Range (Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo ROAM), but my niece pointed out it was a bit of a stretch. Nothing else really came to mind. However, I did get to ROAM around a mansion in one of my favorite games, Safecracker. Only because my spouse was able to figure out how to set it up on a modern device for me to play!
#18 - My spouse and I played Expeditions: A MudRunner Game a few times throughout the month. In this game, you DRIVE around and complete missions with your truck (sometimes exploring…other times, pulling other trucks out of the mud!).
#19 - RIDGE
Retrospective
I am overly ambitious.
That is the TLDR version. I planned too many extensive projects for the month, and I ran out of time to complete them. My friends, family, and co-workers would tell you I’m notorious for this, and while I often meet my goals, there have been times where I realize I bit off more than I could chew.
Life happened.
In addition to the extremely ambitious projects I had in mind, I forgot to make room for normal life happenings in my plans. Spending time with my spouse and our three cats, other family, and friends is important to me, and I didn’t leave enough space for that enrichment. And the three kitties needed extra special attention this month to help them recover from their dental procedures (2 of the 3 needed teeth extracted).
Procrastination struggle bus.
This post was astoundingly challenging for me. I thought it would be fun, but I kept getting hung up on format and the idea of doing a journal entry for every day of the month. Then, as I was writing it, I was boring myself which made me set it aside… for FAR TOO LONG. So here I am, the Sunday before I planned to publish this post, writing an entirely new format from what I originally mapped out. Sometimes the best laid plans are great in theory, not in practice. And I’m learning to listen to my procrastination tendencies, as they are usually trying to tell me something. In this case, I wasn’t enjoying the process of writing in the previous format, so I procrastinated and almost gave up on it. Then, I had a discussion with ARClark. We talked it out, and she helped me realize it’s supposed to be fun, not painful.
If it’s feeling painful, something is wrong.
That brings me to my next point. This Inktober journey has provided some clarity on my tendency to go overboard. Up to this point, I have been thoroughly enjoying writing for this publication and growing in my literary craft. However, I think I was overly ambitious in this endeavor as well. Posting every week is starting to feel cumbersome, and I’m enjoying certain types of posts more than others. So… this week, our little team is going to have a discussion about what type of creativity we have enjoyed the most so far, and we will likely be narrowing our content scope and updating the cadence a bit. As soon as we make our new plans, we will absolutely loop you all in! Thank you so much for supporting us thus far, and we look forward to continuing to connect with you in the future!