Summary: "I really want to teach her delayed gratification" Writer and MTN director Michael Fallon shares how he came to Minnesota because of the strong book arts community. Was an artist in residence at the MN center for book arts. He talks about how he started doing arts journalism for City Pages. And that he was an exhibiting artist with his own book arts projects but decided to put his art on the back burner and focus on arts journalism. So he started writing a column for MN Artists Dot Com exploring cultural subjects and ideas. Michael talks about investing 20 years in his creative life and then getting to a place he didn’t expect to be and stifling that creative voice. He talks about the guilt associated with not maintaining that work but also about how he applies his creative mind to the administrative and management work that’s currently taking up most of his time. “Right now, I don’t think of myself as an artist except I am being creative in my day job” Michael talks about how as a parent everything becomes a matter of compromise. He talks about having to wisely distribute his time and energy as well as his emotional energy every day so that he doesn’t short change fatherhood or work. “The adjustment you have to make from being a creative, productive person to a seldom creative, productive person when you have a child for the first time is a big deal” Michael talks about ending up working pursuing a Masters Degree in book arts because of his interest in words as well as design. He talks about wanting physical books but also moving to reading books electronically because it gives access to harder to find books.
