Scraping the barrel

Do you ever get to a point where you feel like you're scraping the bottom of your creative barrel? I've been suffering from that feeling for a long time and if I want to hold onto my job I know I have to keep going. Sometimes when I push through good things happen, but sometimes when I push through stuff that is sub par slips through, but regardless the result, when I feel this way, it takes soooo much longer to get anything done.

Anyway, the last several work days I've been doing a great number of new looks for things - new ministries and such. I've been scrambling to get them done before tomorrow since they're going to have to go into a newsletter for March. One of these jobs has been to develop a mascot from the salt/light logo I developed a while back - the boss wanted something for the summer camps they have. I've been having some fun with that. I just wish the finished vector work felt as energetic and spontaneous as the sketches I've done. Aren't they funny? He said he wanted to nix the legs. I so agree!

Another project I'm getting to sketch for is a ladies mentoring ministry they're going to start up this year. They want two flowers growing up around a cross. Yeah, it's hard to come up with an original design for something that's been done so often, but I think I've hit upon something I can start digitizing soon. I do have several sketches that aren't going to make it into the final design - but I enjoyed sketching them all the same.

Now I'm off to a book club meeting. We're discussing that book by Abby Johnson - the former Planned Parenthood spokesperson and clinic director that "switched sides" and ended up working with Coalition for Life after eight years of working with Planned Parenthood. Reading that book really opened my eyes and helped me to have even more compassion for people who have been sucked in with Planned Parenthood's misleading rhetoric. I hope the basic trends of states having lower abortion numbers continues. It surprises me when I find out that abortion numbers are decreasing in this immoral society. I expected them to continue to climb. I am relieved, of course, but I don't think I'll be happy until it's illegal again. It is appalling how many babies have been aborted - how many lives have been snuffed out in the name of "choice," because of mis-information, and/or simply for convenience sake. I can see how someone could be desperate enough to get an abortion, and I believe with all my heart that it's by no means an unpardonable sin, but I still believe it is something that scars women deeply and my heart goes out to them especially if they were mislead. Whether they believe that what they have conceived is a baby or just a lump of tissue, when women choose to kill their babies, not only do the babies die, but the women suffer deep emotional damage. Even now after all these years of abortion clinics "perfecting" their procedures there are some very serious physical side-effects - the most severe of which is death. It just makes me want to cry. It still baffles me that the law system is so bi-polar. I mean, if a woman killed her toddler or infant in the same way a partial birth abortion is done they would be charged with a serious crime and be frowned upon by society at large, but it's "legal" and "ok" to kill the baby before it's born - even when it could live outside the womb if the woman just decided to have a c-section to have the baby removed and placed into an adoptive family setting. I just don't understand how women can think that they're getting the better end of the Planned Parenthood deal. I mean when you find out who started the group and what her aim was, you'd think even less people would want to be associated with the group. PP gets paid handsomely for what they do and regardless of the rhetoric, they don't care one blip about the women they treat. The consequences of women's"choice" in this arena are so huge and heart wrenching, I can scarce think about it long or I start to get weepy.