Here Comes Summer
Gouache on paper 2021
It’s been quite some time since I have posted here. It’s now been over a month. I’m trying to figure where that month went. Spring came fast and very quickly. It feels like summer. In fact the solstice is just around the corner. It is light past 9pm. The writing I started weeks ago does not seem relevant anymore. Life is running and I am trying to plant my feet in the sand only to have the undertow thwart any attempts at stability.
I wake up feeling this way. I go to sleep with my mind racing and worrying that I have forgotten something in my haste. And yet. I know I am accomplishing things during my day. I can see some results. I can’t seem to quite catch up to everyone else though. I know it is an internal perception that life is just buzzing along out there. I know people are still struggling to keep this virus under control and some are still very hesitant to go back to “normal” if there is even such a thing.
During this last year and a half I managed to find new meaning to the work I do in the studio. I’m not sure entirely how that happened because there were weeks and weeks where so very little work actually got done. So, I think it had to do with the sense that the world was finally going at my pace. I felt comfortable. I didn’t have to attend events, drive anywhere, meet any expectations. I felt my reclusive nature was a fitting way to go about my days. Once again, I know it is just a perception, but I have always thought everyone else knew ways to navigate a career in the arts. If I only could take the right class, read the right book, make the right connections. I have lived with this feeling of always being the overlooked one, too shy or anxious to reach out for what I knew I deserved. During the pandemic though. Everyone appeared to be struggling with this. Everyone was taking a step in reverse.
Now it is all changing again. Lock-down pandemic life is opening back up. We can go places, see things, meet people. Again. There is part of me that is petrified. Nervous that indeed nothing has changed for me. That I will backwards slide and once again be the one who feels left behind.
What I believe I have learned through all of this though, or more like, learned to accept within myself is that I am not an entrepreneur. The idea of valuing my time and energy and care in terms of dollars is just something foreign to me. For the first time in my career, I am beginning to respect the choices of how I use my time. I feel it has significance in the world. Even if it doesn’t have financial gain.
So now that my solo show is over. The dust has settled and I am back alone in the studio. I have no plans for shows in the future. This is bad and I need to do something about that! But for now. I will be stringing beads, working out some thoughts in drawings and continuing to write to sort all this out.
So, I am welcoming myself back to my blog.