Category: dreams

Impatience

Hi Everyone,

I hope all is well with you and yours this week. Anyone else sick of winter yet? Here in North Carolina we had one of those Spring teaser days this week. I spent the entire day outside working on projects. It was a glorious 60 degrees with sunshine and too good to waste inside. No regrets for thowing all my indoor projects aside. We are back to grey and gloomy with impending rain now. Typical February weather for us and extremely depressing.

Today I started on the fox painting above. In case any of you wonder how and why I pick my subjects, they are almost completely random right now. I have many personal photos that sometimes become paintings, but in the case of the fox, I used a website called Paint My Photo. Photographers upload their photographs and give permission for artists to use them as reference material. I have several files of images that I like saved and when I need a subject I just go and look through them until one them says, “paint me, paint me!”

Eventually I plan on doing more series and maybe have some deeper thoughts added in, but for now, under my current situation, I just paint random things that make my heart sing a little. I am drawn to the non-human creatures. You get direct and honest feedback from animals as long as you learn their language. Laid back ears on a horse, a donkey or a llama is a warning that they are not happy. A certain twitch of a tail will tell you the same thing about a cat.

I will digress a moment and tell you a quick story. Our horse Cinder is an absolute sweetie and everyone who meets him loves him, BUT he quickly gets bored and finds mischief. Day before yesterday I watched him pester our horse, Asher. Asher is the Alpha here and was trying to nap, but Cinder wouldn’t let him. Everytime Asher dosed off, Cinder poked him with his nose or nipped at him. Asher finally got fed up and chased him off. I thought that was the end of it.

Yesterday morning I was walking the dog before dawn and noticed Cinder standing in the pasture alone while the other equine were in a group by the barn. I told DH that it looked like Cinder had been excommunicated. He said, “funny you should mention that, something happened between Asher and Cinder last night after feeding.” He went on to explain that when he let them out of their stalls after their supper there was no usual calm strolling out of the barn. Instead Asher immediately threw his head (dominate posturing) and chased Cinder out of the barn, nipping at his rear.

It seems that Cinder’s antics had gotten on everyone’s last nerve and he was temporarily kicked out of the heard for a day. I was in the barn last night for feeding and Cinder wouldn’t even come into the barn. He’s usually the first one in. It took some persuading on DH’s part to herd Cinder into his stall and those big, brown eyes were very sad and confused. Things seem to be better today. Like I said, animals keep it honest and direct. Cinder will probably behave better now…for a while anyway.

Now back to the fox. I’m painting this fox today and I kept getting a glare from the overhead light on my reference photo. Then I couldn’t get my canvas to stay still. Did I mention that I’m now painting on our guest bed? Only slightly better than trying to paint on my lap in the living room. I can only use acrylics right now because I have no where to let paintings dry if I use oils. I have a love/hate relationship with acrylics and after using oils this summer I am finding the fast drying time of acrylics very irritating. All those feathers and fur I’ve been painting lately would probably be easier with oils.

Attic studio in progress

I am SO ready to get to work in my attic. I daydream of having my easel set up ALL THE TIME. Lighting that I can control. Tables I can leave my mess on and not have to clean up to eat dinner or have a guest over. Supplies that I know where they are and not have to hunt through a dozen mystery boxes.

“When will your attic be done?” you ask. I have no idea. This is where we are right now. I started priming the drywall last week, but I haven’t quite finished and I can’t set up my easel until that overhead piece goes in, then the lighting. It’s a little bit of torture having to work one bit at a time. No, it’s a lot of torture. I have the vision, but we are no where near it yet. Sigh.

I am not going to stop doing what I’m doing. It’s taken me a lifetime to squeeze out the small amount of time I have right now to do this. I ain’t gettin’ any younger here! I will admit though that this is the most impatient I have been over something, maybe ever. You might want to say a prayer or two for DH. He has to live with me.

Have a great week!

Christel

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by Categories: art, creativity, dreams, farm life, Inspired, life, Notes From the Attic, wildlifeTags: , , , , , Leave a comment

In my wildest dreams…

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are well and life is calm.  For the next nine days I will be juggling the usual life stuff, last minute paperwork for our closing (it doesn’t end I guess until the ink is on the paper), packing again, arranging utility changes and all the last minute things I haven’t thought of yet, but am suffering anxiety over.  Don’t plan on seeing a post from me for about two weeks.  Next week will be chaos and the next will be spent trying to find things in the chaos.

Every year, to get a discount on our health insurance, we have a wellness evaluation. Now D. and I live pretty healthy lives and don’t worry about this too much, but I usually get tagged for wellness coaching due to what can only be explained as a genetic cholesterol glitch where my LDL is just high enough over my HDL to flag the system. Any way, besides being annoying, I get to talk to a nice nurse three times a year about life.  Last week was my first call. After going over all the questions and talking life, the nurse said something to the effect of, “sounds like your only real health problem is stress”. NOOOOOOOOO, really???

So in my last post I hinted at something that I was working on.  This thing is my latest attempt at some stress management. Twice before in my life I have been in some very serious, super high stress, life stuff that took a toll on my health. This time I have been trying to, if not put myself first, at least put myself close to the top of the list so that I can keep looking after the people I need to look after.  Last week we had to take Dad to the hospital again.  I don’t need to be in the room next to him.

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What am I doing you ask? Remember this picture from my last post.  See the big guy in front? That’s Asher. Asher is my horse.  Now, I never, ever, ever expected to have a horse of my own. When I was a girl and asked my Dad for a horse, I was pretty much told that if we couldn’t eat it then it wasn’t living on our farm.  It’s another whole story to explain that we ALWAYS had cats & dogs that DAD brought home and we didn’t eat them!

Fast forward through about four decades. I had taken every chance I could to ride horses, but over those four decades it averaged out to about one, maybe two, horse back rides PER DECADE.  AND on most of those rides I have been thrown off or run into tree branches in attempts to knock me off or taken very unexpected fast rides uphill / downhill to barns or generally had my wits tested by almost every horse I have ridden. AND I keep getting back on horses.  Seriously, I’m crazy if you haven’t read this blog long enough to figure it out.

 

To add to the crazy, I go and marry a guy who not only loves horses, owns a few, trains them and at one point did endurance competitions that were 50 – 100 miles on horseback. He has some experience with horses.  D. took Asher (then known very unimaginatively as Pinto – he’s a pinto colored horse) as payment for training Cinder (big horse in the back of the picture that we now also own).  D. then proceeds to tell me that Pinto (aka Asher) is my horse.  Nowhere in my adult life have I ever thought I would have my own horse. I cried. I still cry.  I changed Pinto’s name to Asher which means happy & blessed. I still cry.

Asher is a Tennessee Walker. He’s big.  He’s the Alpha male in the herd. He’s curious and never misses a leaf flutter, a deer in the woods or stick crack under his feet. D. says he’s gonna be a cool ride.  In other words, I am totally and completely inept at riding my own horse! So I’m taking lessons.  No, not from D.  I love my husband and want to stay married to him.  We all know that taking lessons from a spouse is not the best way to promote harmony in a marriage.

I have had two lessons so far from a very experienced rider/teacher/stable owner who is close to my age and has the ability to explain in detail what I need to do to stay on and control a horse.  It has taken me out of my comfort zone, taken my mind off the rest of my life and focused me like a Jedi knight trainee.  I wish I could take a lesson every freakin’ day!

Our four horses are at different levels of experience with riders. Two are veterans of the teaching ring, having put up with many students over the years.  They have to endure my clumsy signals for a while yet so I can practice before I start training with Asher.  He’s almost as green as I am.  Stay tuned for more adventures in riding!

My goal is to one day, when it has been “one of those days”, saddle up my Asher and ride off into the sunset…watch it and ride back home.

Go do something that makes your heart pound, your breath catch and grin like the cheshire cat.

Back in a couple of weeks.

 

by Categories: creativity, dreams, farm life, focus, learning, life, movingTags: , 2 Comments

Plans and celebrations

Hi Everyone!

I’m doing my best to get back on schedule here. Today is going to be a major driving and errand day, but I have a couple of hours before I have to hit the road. This week I realized just how much I drive when I noticed a slow leak in the one tire I had not replaced in the past couple of months. I try very hard to keep up with my car maintenance because I do spend so much time on the road, but this poor tire was literally leaking air from the paper thin rubber! I don’t know how I missed replacing the tire earlier. Usually my mechanic is good about letting me know when something needs replacing so I suspect this tire looked ok the last time I was in. We have driven to Charleston and I’m pretty sure I put about a thousand miles more on the car since we got back so there went the last tire. 

We are in full selling, building, moving mode now. Lots of lists of when what needs to happen and I’m already starting the decluttering process (never ending) as I go through each room. We have made ourselves a promise to NOT MOVE all the stuff in storage so there will be boatloads going on eBay, Facebook Marketplace and Letgo in the very near future along with stocking the shelves of several non-profit thrift stores. 

I think I’m in pretty good shape for Thankgiving this coming week. I’m heading to the grocery store today with a detailed list. The Christmas list is made and a couple of gifts bought.  I’m hoping we can arrange a baby shower in January but the schedule is up in the air on that one. I have preliminary plans in case it comes together . I do have a baby knitting project in the works that goes with me everywhere so I can knit when I wait. Once I get through Christmas I plan to stock the freezer with meals for D. and Miss L. so I can go help out with Baby T when he makes his appearance. 

D. and I attended the wedding of one of my best friend’s son this past weekend. Over many years there are three of us that have gotten together on Veteran’s Day weekend to catch up on life and have some R&R sans kids and husbands. We have been close friends since college. We didn’t get the weekend together but we did get to spend a few celebratory minutes at the reception.  So many stages of life we have celebrated and struggled through together. So many tears and so much laughter since 1980! I love these two to the moon and back. 


Now that summer is gone and what seems to be never ending rain, has set in, I am squeezing in some art time here and there. This is an experimental drawing/painting I managed to finish and there is another one in the works. The goal is to create with as little mess and space used as possible! If the new house floor plan we want works out…THERE WILL BE A STUDIO FOR ME IN THE HOUSE!!!! It won’t be huge, but it will be a dedicated space just for me to do my stuff. If it were huge I would just make a bigger mess! Prayers people. I need prayers that we can pull this off!  I think of all sorts of cool things I could do including some possible tutorials on here, but right now just do not have the room. My head spins with ideas all the time. 


That about wraps things up for this week. I guess we all survived the elections, hopefully with friendships still intact. It’s sad how our right to elect our government has become so distorted and ugly. My prayer is for us to be kind and civil to each other as well as demand better behavior and service from our elected SERVANTS. They forget that they are there for service, not power and greed. 

Have a great week. Stay warm if it’s winter where you are and Happy Thankgiving for my United States readers. We do still have much to be thankful for!  

 

by Categories: art, creativity, dreams, holidays, life, moving, productivity, simplify, travelTags: , , , , , Leave a comment

An Ending and a Beginning 

Hi Everyone,

I hope you are having a great week. I am finally almost over all the itching and pain from the shingles now and the weather is finally in my favorite zone of 75-80 degrees with sunshine. Life is good again!

Yesterday I made my last delivery of my last orders for my design & print business and am winding down 32 years in the industry. I have made so many good friends over the years and will miss seeing them on a regular basis. The work itself I don’t think I will miss as much. I’m ready to do my own ideas on my own deadlines now. I have a couple of logos to do for my daughter and our beekeepers association but I think those will be my last two logos unless I revise my own logos.

What’s next? Well my plan is for you to get to see more of my artwork primarily. I started selling on EBay last year as a way of cleaning out our storage unit and there are some remaining family items no one wanted that need new homes. I will also do that until I either run out of stuff or decide I enjoy it enough to go find more stuff to sell, but my focus is the artwork. 

I have the two commissioned drawings to finish and I will show you those when they are finished, but I can’t yet while they are in progress. Hopefully next week I can get started on the ideas that fill about four sketchbooks that were started more than twenty years ago. I’m so excited! And more than a little freaked out that I am finally getting to do this!  Keep me accountable.  Procrastination sets in when the fear starts breathing down my neck. If you have ever taken a big risk on something very important to you…you know exactly what I mean!

Today’s photo is of my lovely, happily blooming irises. 

Go do something you have always wanted to do…now!

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Regeneration

Hi Everyone!

I hope you had a great week. We are about half way through January now. How are those resolutions going? Are you one of those folks who pick a word for your year? You know, one word that signifies what you want to accomplish or hope to bring more of into your year. Something like, Health or Focus?  I have been thinking about what word I would pick for 2018 and decided on Regeneration. 


So why Regeneration, you ask? Well, last week, right after I posted to this blog, I walked over to my computer and hit SEND on one of the most difficult emails I have ever sent.  It was an email to my clients informing them of my decision to retire from 30+ years in the graphic design/ printing industry. 

The thought behind this decision began about February of last year as I looked at my profit & loss statement while doing my taxes. I realized that my expenses were about to overtake my profits. There were several factors for this including higher costs for software and a great deal more travel time. D. and I discussed what would I do to replace the income if I closed my business but to be honest there were not many feisible options where we live. 

Fast forward about seven months and I find myself a parent again and beginning to fall into a different part time business while still running my main business. It was obviously a little too much on one plate. Without going into all the boring details, once again God was telling me that a change was in order. I’ve been through this enough times now to know not to fight it. If I fight it things will get much worse and I will still find myself exactly where He wants me to be eventually anyway. I learn hard, but I do learn!

Also in all the crazy that was going on, D. and I realized our health was suffering. We both were struggling with insomnia, were mentally and physically worn down, not eating right and not getting proper exercise. Once again we were responsible for someone else’s well being and we did not have the option of a major health crisis. We had hoped to get a lot more taken care of at his sister’s house before it went up for sale, but exhaustion was setting in and things at our home were falling apart. We had given it our best but it was time to stop the insanity. 

When D. retired last March, we had visions of travel and much more time for our many hobbies. Well we all know how those best laid plans go, but at our age we don’t have unlimited time to do the things we have been putting off. Roll all these factors together and you will see that we have to adjust, renew and grow into a new and unknown direction now. 

What we do know is that we have a lovely young girl who needs stability and guidance. We know we have to look after ourselves to give it to her. No more working two and three jobs like both of us did when we and our other kids were younger. But we both deserve and desperately need some time to chase some dreams and enjoy some things that we have put off for a very long time. 

I am probably right now more than a little jealous of some of you and my close friends who are traveling to awesome places that I have always wanted to go. It’s a very real struggle. We had some cool plans in the works. We aren’t writing them off, but they will be delayed and different now.  To deal with the disappointment and to be sane and pleasant people we have to give ourselves the gift of time instead. Time to rest, renew our energy, find our new normal and grow in ways we didn’t know existed. A REGENERATION of our lives. 

I have a new and interesting part time income stream that does not include hours of driving every week or rushing to make sure I’m back in time to pick up Miss L. Those two things alone relieve a huge stress load and I have more time. More time that I can finally give to my artwork that has slowly but steadily been bringing in more income as well. It’s pretty much now or never. I don’t have any guarantee that I have until the age of 80 to start an art career like Grandma Moses and the desire to make stuff has been the one and only constant of my five decades. I think I owe it a higher ranking for its consistency and perseverance if nothing else…like the fact I need it like oxygen. 

So there you have it.  REGENERATION in 2018 in whatever form it takes. I expect an interesting year. 

I don’t hear from many of you, but would love to.  Share your goals, resolutions and/or words.  Have an awesome week!

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I’m doing it! 

Hi Everyone!

Lots of To Do’s have been done around here this week. We finished a shelf for the bathroom, more work on the barn, garden and yard, ordered new tires for my car (yuck) and today we will be getting up hay (double yuck).  Life as usual. So how are things in your world going?

I won’t blather on this week, but I am patting myself on the back a little.  Now that I have some time back to call my own and knowing next week will be a slow work week thanks to Memorial Day weekend and one of my printing suppliers being closed, I jumped into the BIG scary stuff. 

Over the years I have drawn many portraits in pencil and charcoal, but if I painted portraits it was back when I used crayons. Even during college I don’t remember any of my art classes requiring painted portraits. Lots of drawings of people, but no paintings. 

After completing the grandpup paintings I have been feeling a little more confident as my skills with acrylic paints have started to return. In case you are wondering, I do not use oil paints. I don’t like dealing with the solvents and I have no patience with all the drying time involved. I appreciate them and love the blend-ability, but that is where my love for them ends. I may try them again one day and change my mind, but I’m not there yet. 

So, this week I drug out some photos of my kids in the early years and have jumped into portrait painting.  These are still works in progress and there have been several moments of total frustration. I realized today that my easel was turned the wrong way. Once I situated it where the natural light was on the painting life got much better.  Don’t you hate those slap yourself moments? 

Honestly, it is freaking terrifying! I think painting my own kids was a bad decision. I know their faces so well and the events and emotions tied up in these that it makes them harder to paint than someone I don’t know. My next attempts will be of strangers. Do not be surprised if I ditch these and redo them in the future. Overall though I’m getting the feel for this process and I’m not hating these paintings. Practice, practice, practice!


Have a great week and go do something terrifying!

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Tiny little steps are better than no steps

Hi Everyone,

I am going to make this short and sweet today because the Spring allergies have set in and I can barely see the computer screen.

By the time I write my next post next week, I will be on The 100 Day Project.  To be honest, it’s a little scary staring at the 100 days ahead.  I am not prepared yet.  Well, about half prepared.  I have 30 canvases and 5 x 7 sheets of paper prepped.  I have about that many items on my theme list.  Oh, I forgot to mention what I decided on for a theme.

I knew I wanted to work on my drawing and painting skills in the hope of coming closer to my personal voice in my work, but I felt like I needed a theme to have some boundaries and not go off on some crazy tangent as I am likely to do.  I wanted the theme to be something positive that I looked forward to as well.  Finally, I decided to focus on thankfulness/gratitude.  It’s positive and sometimes I get caught up in a life problem and slide into only seeing the problem, not all the good that surrounds me.  Hopefully this will sustain me on those days when I just don’t want to touch a paint brush.

I also challenged myself to not do conventional images, but to try and express my gratitude in unique ways.  Spending extended time with something I am thankful for should also imbed my appreciation for it more deeply I hope.

So, join me starting on April 4th, through July 12th on either my Bloomtown Studio Facebook page or on my Bloomtown Studio Instagram page to keep up with how I am doing. Links are on this site somewhere. Please feel free to cheer me on.  There are going to be days I will very much need it!

Oh, and did you notice I made some changes to my website here?  Check out my updated portfolio page.  Tiny little steps are better than no steps!

Have an awesome week and take a tiny step toward your goal.

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Back Story – Fulfilling a Promise. Part Two

Heavens! I am freezing right now.  Did anyone else have another visit of winter this week?  I hope this is the last of it.  Before I could start writing I had to run water out to the chickens.  Theirs keeps freezing overnight and we bring it in to thaw in the morning then take it back out to them.  There may be a water warmer involved next winter!

If you just dropped in this week and need to catch up on my story, check out Part One.

So, here I find myself, 50 something, empty nest, new husband, new home, new community and down to only one job for the first time in at least a decade.  I have truly been a little bit lost for the past nine months with all the extra time on my hands.  You would think it would be an easy transition, but it has been a shock to my system.

Here is the real kicker.  After all these years of yearning for creative time, now that I have it, I feel guilty for indulging in it.  What the heck??  I no longer have kids here to put first for their survival, my husband is fine with my art time especially since he also now has time to enjoy his horses and other interests. I take care of all my design/print clients first every morning and we have adequate income.  Why do I feel guilty for taking the time to do what I have always wanted to do?  If you have answers, please fill me in.  I want this whole guilt thing GONE!

Are there other roadblocks to fulfilling a promise to myself?  Yes, indeedy.  Procrastination, that I’m pretty sure is another word for fear is one.  Right now I am fighting the urge to throw myself into two un-art related projects.  Those two projects did not show up until I committed to a big ‘ole, heavy duty art project (more on this below) this week.  Life in general also pretty regularly stops my artwork with family obligations and home/farm maintenance.  There is a reason that artists and writers and musicians run off to cabins in the woods with no phone or wifi.  Sometimes that is the only way the good work can get out. Constant starting and stopping interrupts necessary concentration and the work gets watered down from the original inspiration.

One more big hurdle to fulfilling my promise to myself is the simple fact that I don’t give myself the priority required.  It feels very selfish to put my own WANT (I would argue NEED) before so many of the other things listed above.  More than once I have said that girls of my generation were raised to be TOO NICE.  There I said it.  We were raised to put everyone and everything above ourselves.  It is ingrained throughout our cells and extremely difficult to erase or even temporarily lock away.  Hummm, I think this is related to that darn guilt thing.

Soooo, what have I been doing and/or going to do to fulfill my promise?  I started this process almost four years ago.  When my son (my youngest) pulled out of the driveway for his first year of college, I literally took over his room.  Yes, it seems cruel.  Yes, he reminds me of it occasionally, but I did it and he doesn’t seem too much the worst for it.  I set up three big tables and had my computer/work stuff on one, art supplies on another and sewing machine on the third.  For the past four years I have let myself play.  Not consistently, not with serious intent, but I have played.  I have tried out all sorts of creative endeavors in my attempt to find what I really like best and my “voice”.  I have made lots of messes, bad art, bad craft, some good art and good craft.

Now I feel like it is time to drill down.  Recently I read or heard (can’t give you the source because I don’t remember it) that it takes about ten years for an artist to find their “voice”, that thing that makes their work unique to them.  My sporadic art making over the last several decades should count as about one year total and add the past four years of playing around, I figure I’m five years in.  Now, I’m not getting any younger here and I have no guarantee that I could pull off a Grandma Moses by making it to 80 years old.  My butt needs to get to work.

I had been playing around with doing an extended daily project when I ran across The 100 Day Project. By now I know myself pretty well and I suspect that just left to my own devices, I would start out pretty strong on a personal project, but without some accountability, I would soon find excuses to skip days here and there and there and here until it fell apart.

Yep, you guessed it.  I have signed up for The 100 Day Project.  This is totally out of my comfort zone.  I have done a thirty day project, but the work was very small and thirty days is NOT 100 DAYS.  The project itself asks you to post on Instagram your daily project.  My plan is to do a daily 8 x 10 painting or drawing and also post on my Facebook page and offer the work for sale.

What do I expect out of this?  First, it takes what? Thirty days to ingrain a habit?  For me, one hundred days would be more likely.  I will have to follow through with this during THE busiest time of the year for us.  It starts April 4th, which is right after I finish Bee School (Did I mention Bee School?  I will come back to that in a later post.) on April 1st.  The garden starts going in mid-April and my bees arrive then as well.  My son graduates the first weekend in May.  Before he graduates and sends all his stuff home, I have to get the bedroom that I use as an office painted and rearranged to fit his furniture.  We will be out of town for his graduation so I have to figure out how to paint or draw while in the midst of family and celebration.  The 100 days does not end until mid-July.  Who knows what else will test my determination in that timeframe.

Second, the whole “voice” thing.  My unique style and interests cannot evolve without consistency.  I have not had consistency.  I have had stops and starts.  I am hoping to hone my skills, discover that uniqueness and what I want my art to say.  Big order!

Third, income.  Here is the honest truth to this art thing.  I HAVE to make stuff.  It is in my genes.  Unfortunately, I cannot pay for endless supplies or store all the stuff I make.  To support my habit/addiction I have to make some money to buy more supplies AND I would really like people to enjoy what I create.  I have given away many, many pieces of my work over the years and I like to do that, but it is not a self-sustaining process.  Art supplies are expensive and we are not wealthy people.  Animals have to eat around here as well as ourselves.  So, what I make on this project will be for sale and I am going to ramp it up a little with some advertising investment to see what happens.  My goal this year is to replace my income from my last PART-TIME position.  You got that, right?  Not outrageous expectations, but bigger than anything I have ever asked of myself before.

I think I have given you enough to read this week.  You have the link above if you would like to join The 100 Day Project.  I am not going to bombard this blog with my work every week during the project, but will let you know how it’s going.  I will post links to my Instagram and Facebook pages for you to check out.

If you want to go ahead and start following those here are the links.  I will be updating information on them in the next couple of weeks as I prepare for all this.

Instagram  and Facebook

I am off to prime canvas.  Have an awesome week!

 

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Back Story – Fulfilling a promise. Part One.

I don’t make promises lightly.  I take them very seriously, put a great deal of thought into them before I commit and at this point in my life I only know of one promise I have been unable to fulfill due to events beyond my control.  A promise may take longer to fulfill than anticipated, but it is always in the back of my mind and will nag at me until I can follow through.

Starting this week I thought I would give you some back stories about why I write this blog, why I do some of the things I do and what is behind some of my artwork.  What goes on here often feels random to me so I imagine it does to you too if you take the time to read this craziness, but there is a constant thread running throughout.

From my earliest memories I only remember wanting to do one thing consistently and that was to make art is some form or fashion.  The smell of crayons still invoke memories of mark making by my tiniest self.  There were complaints from my family members when I would ask them not to move while I drew them watching TV in the evening.  I spent hours hiding under a tree making tiny stick villages and stories about the people in the village.

It was always in my head that this is what I would do all my life.  Keep in mind that I grew up in a rural community and art was not accessible except in books, so where this ability or notion came from had to have been genetically installed somehow.  I did not have artistic family members to learn from.  As my Mom has said of me, “she was born with a pencil in her hand”.

I am not one of those people who will say that they had supportive people surrounding them.  Quite frankly, I had very little support.  I had a couple of teachers that encouraged my work, but otherwise I was expected to shoot for a practical career, so for a compromise I got my art degree, but with a concentration in graphic design instead of the studio art I would have preferred.

After college, life kicked in full force.  I got a job as a designer/illustrator with a newspaper and eventually was an art director at a small ad agency.  There came marriage, kids, a printing company we owned and eventually a divorce and a life reboot.  All this time I squeezed in drawing, painting, making of some sort wherever I could.  A couple of large sketchbooks full of future paintings were often my only art. It was not unusual for me to sell a piece of work here and there or get a commission on a fairly regular basis if once a year is regular.  Trying to keep two kids in food, clothing and shelter often required me to work two jobs and I was too darn tired to pick up a paint brush.

Try as I may, I could not find any regular time to do what I loved to do the most.  I can’t tell you how many times I almost threw away all my art supplies because I found it so depressing to see them and not use them.  At some point when my kids were young and busy, busy, busy I realized that I had to quit beating myself up for not being able to create lovely artwork while sitting in a minivan at an hour of soccer practice five days a week.  Trust me, I TRIED!

I couldn’t tell you the date, but somewhere in that era of time I made myself a promise.  I promised my exhausted, stressed, often depressed, over worked self that I would do everything in my power to raise these two lovely humans I gave birth to, into good, kind, productive members of the human race and THEN, God willing, I would let myself have the time to draw, paint, make, whatever my heart desired.

And that, my friends, is where I find myself now.  I would love to tell you that it is easy and perfect fulfilling this promise to myself, but I am finding that a promise to myself may be the hardest promise I have ever had to fulfill.

I will leave off here to continue next week for Part Two of the story.

Have a wonderful week!

Photo credit

 

by Categories: art, creativity, dreams, focus, productivity, risk taking, storytellingTags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

Disappointed

Hello Everyone! Hope life is good for you as we ramp up speed for 2017. Today I have something on my mind that we all have to deal with and it just isn’t fun.  Disappointment.  There is a good chance that if it hasn’t happened to you yet this early in 2017, then it is lurking just around the corner.

Today I am disappointed and, dang, it’s just a little thing, but it is really eating at me and I can’t figure out why.   Back in December I signed up for a “sew along” event online to a) add some new, much needed items to my pitiful wardrobe and b) to keep my mind and hands busy during the winter.  With the sew along event you get a discount on the patterns that are going to be featured.  Well, come to find out this morning, I did not receive the one main pattern discount code that I wanted.  Evidently, it went out the end of December and the deadline to order was January 1.  Somehow, even though I was registered, the email did not get sent to me.

When I emailed the coordinator of the event she apologized, but said there was nothing she could do until the next coupon codes go out in February or March. MARCH!!  This is for a sweater!  By the time I get it made I won’t be able to wear it because it will be SPRING here!!

Honestly, this is just a minor disappointment…supposedly. Or it should be.  But it has pissed me off all morning, like eating at me.  Why?  Maybe because I have made a commitment this year to look after myself better.  Part of that commitment includes getting rid of the ratty clothes in my closet and adding some nice, very specific pieces back in.  I was looking so forward to making this sweater this month to have to wear for the rest of the winter.  I actually planned for two in two different colors.

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I think the other reason is that I gave myself a specific budget on the clothes and now this throws off my budget if I buy the pattern at full price or pick another pattern to make as a substitute while I wait for the new code.  Maybe I’m just disappointed that I’m not going to have that new sweater to wear when I want it.

Yuck, that is probably the root of disappointment. Not getting something you want WHEN you want it and EXPECTING a certain outcome that doesn’t happen.   This past weekend I had a conversation that I EXPECTED to be a fun conversation.  Somewhere along the line it took a turn and I was disappointed in how it all ended.  After half a century of walking and living on this earth, I would think by now I would know how to avoid setting myself up for disappointment.

Should we have EXPECTATIONS? It seems like we should. But why?  Looking back over the past few years there was a time when I let go of expectations and was rarely disappointed.  The downside of that time is it was a very dark chapter in my life and I had experienced one life blow after another to the point that I was frankly afraid to expect anything positive.  Now, life is good and I have let myself fall into looking for certain outcomes evidently.  How do you keep a positive attitude, but without expectations???  Someone more enlightened than me needs to jump into this conversation.  I have had several disappointments recently.  None of them huge or life changing disappointments, but they have caused reactions in me that I did not like so it seems to be a ME problem or one of those times when the universe thinks I need to learn a lesson.  Don’t you just hate those?!

Feel free to add your insights. I’m pretty sure this is a universal problem not just mine, even though it is feeling like it right now.

Have a fabulous week…but don’t EXPECT a fabulous week. 😉

 

Photo credit Théotime Guéneau

by Categories: connecting, creativity, dreams, focus, learning, life, productivity, sewingTags: , , , , 6 Comments