I enjoyed my first attempt at this, (No One Else Can Ever Know) so here's the results of the second iteration.

I spotted the gilt frame from a distance. I didn’t bother stopping to look at all the other shelves between where I stood and my new-found target. It’s like the thing emanated a magnetic field that pulled me in. Everything else fell to the margins. If I had passed a bar of gold, I wouldn’t have noticed it. If William Shakespeare sat in one of the old chairs they placed at the front of the store, I wouldn’t have cared. I had never felt such a feeling of tunnel vision. In my single-mindedness, I bumped into someone without saying, excuse me. That should tell you how obsessed I’d become in a matter of seconds.

The Before

I've had this purse for at least fifteen years. I bought it at the Green Room, in Stratford, long before I moved here. Through the years, it has put up with quite a bit of rough and tumble handling. The leather exterior has been marked up so badly, I actually bought a new purse. After about two weeks, that new purse had parts of the exterior vinyl rubbing off. Time to donate it—so I did.

I'd held onto my marked-up original, just in case. Its design, size and colour are exactly what I've always wanted. I've tried using shoe polish to even-out the marks, but it never lasted for long and did not make much of a difference. I didn't know what else to try until I noticed a small red dot of acrylic paint near the top opening. I don't know how that ended up on there, but being an artist, it could have happened whenever I had a project going on.

I tried to scratch it off with my fingernail. It wouldn't budge.

That little accident gave me an idea…

Inspired by writer Austin Kleon, and his blackout newspaper process, I wanted to give the exercise a go myself. Unfortunately, I usually have printed flyers on hand, not newspapers. So, I went scrounging around in my "writing" folder on my computer for some raw material.

On a Friday evening, near the end of November, a couple of local police officers knocked on my door. I barely heard them. Such a polite knocking—so unlike the I'm gonna knock down your door if you don't answer it in two seconds kind of scenario you see in movies. Looking through the peep hole, I had the sinking feeling that once again, my life was about to undergo a profound change and I'd be forced to take a detour from what I had planned.

You can start out with the best intentions and have a schedule of what you want to achieve and all the components required to make that happen, until life comes along and tells you differently—even laughs in your face while doing it. To be blunt, the past twelve months have been brutal.

Once in a while, I still hear our mother's voice in my ear—challenges come your way because you need to build more character.