Tag Archives: adventure

faster than the speed of life

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Taking a break for a quick update!  Life has been blowing by full speed lately.  Summer ended, kids’ school started, we decided to buy a house and are in the middle of that process right now (we are in the “bank limbo” stage… all this waiting is killing me!), my painting parties are off with astonishing success, and I’m excited to be working with a local business to offer painting classes on a weekly basis in their space as well.  *whew!* that was exhausting just to type.  Oh, and 5 hours of dance rehearsal for me and kiddo for our big recital this weekend.  Am I missing anything else? (probably).  Oh yes, add in the smattering of concerts, birthday parties, other family events, and a  round of the stomach flu.

Did I tell you we’re planning a weeklong vacation next month?  I can’t wait.  …..what’s that?  our closing date on the house might get pushed into the middle of our vacation?  *sigh* At this rate, I may not even survive long enough to go on vacation.

I have been working on a few other projects as I can.  Here is a sample as well as a photo from the last party I did where we took an Autumn landscape and abstracted it.  And I am loving my new venture so much, I might add.  Nothing like feeling like you’ve not only found a path, but to also be the one who is building the trail.  A big thanks to my husband, my parents and his, all the lovely ladies having parties, and to everyone else who has ever believed in me.

Chicks to be Counted…

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In the spirit of Eastre and the new Sun of Spring, things seem to be turning a new leaf.  There are hints of change floating on the earthy, floral scented winds of the season. There is a hope of things to come, the anticipation of their coming to fruition.  Life is in motion, and it would seem that opportunities are blossoming at every turn, and I can’t wait to let you all in on it.  But, for now I am erring on the side of caution, and not counting my chicks before they hatch.  I am so excited for the year to come, and can’t wait to share it with you –you– whose support, encouragement, kind words, and mere interest in the ramblings and messiness I call this adventure of a life, have given me the courage and motivation to continue and push through the hard, cold soil of Winter and into the radiant sunshine of Spring.

...waiting...

Letting Loose

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This year has been one giant kick-in-the-butt catalyst for practically everyone I know.  These changes have been a long time coming, and it seems like they are all going to happen at once.  I don’t want to count my chicks before they’re hatched, so details will have to wait, as things are in motion but won’t be really happening for the next month or two.  Doors will be opening, but that means that a few will have to be closed and this has been a source of some anxiety for me. I like to have a plan (even when I don’t stick to it) when I am facing big transitions, but all this waiting leaves my mind too free to mircro-analyze things with far too many variables to do any good at all. It’s like peeling a bandage off slowly, when I really just want it to happen and be done already– a deep breath, a quick tug, and then the relief of fresh air hitting healed wound. It’s all part of some lesson, I’m sure. Learning to cut ties with the illusion of power and control and just let loose, perhaps.

I have had so many ideas floating around in my head the past week that haven’t made it onto the paper I didn’t have time to bother with ornate details so I grabbed my 6B sketching pencil (yes, SIX-B, 2B isn’t the only kind of pencil haha) and clipped some newsprint onto my drawing board and let loose.  There is something really cathartic about being able to just get everything out of my head without worrying about being perfect, especially after a stressful week.  These poppies have been really speaking to me for the next big piece I am working on, this is the first time I’ve ever drawn poppies, but we seem to get along nicely, don’t you?  There will be a lot of sketching and scheming in preparation for this next one, and I’m excited to share my adventure with you.

Japanese Poppy, sketch

 

Happy Mess

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Hi friends! I’m back from a pre-Spring Break vacation!

Okay, well I didn’t really go anywhere, but I took a long weekend away from most of my day-to-day responsibilities to indulge myself and recharge my batteries (oh, and it was my birthday yesterday, so I decided the entire weekend preceding was mine for the taking). 

Spring Break starts next week, you see.  Most people look forward to the reprieve, but if any of the past school holidays have been any indicator, it just means a whole week home with both of my boys who will be turning 4 and 6 at the end of Spring.  They are great kids and I love hanging out with them, but our house seems to get proportionately smaller with each day we spend cooped up inside it all together.  It has been a long Winter and with last week’s teasing with 60° weather followed by several days of rain/sleet/snow we are all plunged hopelessly into the vice-grip of Spring Fever.

Like you may have read in earlier posts, I have a lot going on pretty much all of the time. I’m not so great at prioritizing all the time, but I’m still pretty dang good at rationalizing and making excuses.  I will admit, with a heavy dose of chagrin, that I have not been as dedicated to this project for what it started out to be.  Although, in all fairness, I haven’t dropped the ball entirely, and have still been focusing way more time and energy on all aspects of this part of my life- the sketches, the finished pieces, the business end, the blog, the networking, etc. It just isn’t following the original goal I have set, but still certainly falls within some boundary etched in shades of grey, right? …Or am I rationalizing again?

Anyway, I digress. I had an amazing weekend, all 5 ½ days of it. I am ready to dive back into this craziness I call my life, pouring a little bit more of my soul onto some canvas, chasing the tornadoes that are my boys, catching the rest of the pieces of my life as they fling by, and just doing my best in the midst of my happy mess.

Derailed.

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Oh the irony is delicious….  I was just blogging away about how I had proudly made it through January, and was staring down February with great hubris, when life hit me like a mudslide in monsoon season, obliterating most of the delicate balancing act I had made since the beginning of the year.  Then, wordpress decided that when I click “Save Draft” that meant to erase it.  As if I weren’t having a hard enough time trying to get back on top of things, technology has to spit in my face.

Anyway, here I am, trudging my way out of the February doldrums… asking that you forgive me for neglecting my blog so.  I haven’t bailed on this project, or my goals, just got a little stuck in the mud.  I ended January on such a high note, finishing this and this in the same week, then starting another big project right at the beginning of February.  I was on a roll creatively, but quickly losing balance. All of a sudden, I had project deadlines staring me down, with a calendar filling by the day with family engagements, appointments, volunteer days,  birthday parties, baby showers, and romantic holidays.   My neatly stacked piles of clutter began to threaten to avalanche and bury me; the dishes decided to take up permanent residence in and around the sink; I could hear the dust bunnies conspiring from unswept corners… I began to feel overwhelmed, and I have this terrible habit of shutting down when I’m stressed, which, you would think I have learned by now, is counter-productive.  For a few days I hit a bit of a funk, and experienced what I can only describe as the artist’s version of writer’s block.  Nothing was coming out right, things weren’t coming together right, and I was not feeling confident, moving forward slowly and hesitantly, second guessing myself at every turn.  And, in all honesty, there was more than one day wherein I was greatly remiss to putting any thought or effort toward my art.  I have managed to turn out one more large finished piece (which I can’t reveal until next Monday, but I’ll give you a sneak peek) and one small side project, so the month hasn’t been entirely fruitless.

another collage/painting- sneak peek!

a friend was kind enough to loan me her earrings to experiment on

I still made myself work in my sketch book a bit, but I was abysmally uninspired, so I was just messing around with flourishes and whimsical little designs. Better than nothing (barely), but they are proving to come in handy with things I have lined up for this week and next.

The last few weeks made me pensive and melancholy, as we tortured artists are wont to be. I began to think a lot about the expectations I set for myself, and the frustration I feel when I fall short of my own mark.  It is unreasonable for me to expect to be able to deftly navigate all the curveballs that are thrown when one loves her husband, children, friends, job, hobbies, and freedom as passionately as I do.  There are never enough hours in the day, especially on the days when even 10 hours of sleep doesn’t feel like enough. (Sleep is another one of those things I do with much gusto, fortunately, so is coffee drinking).  It’s funny how old habits come creeping in, specters of past defeat. As strange as this may sound to you (as a non-native of my addled brain) but it was an actual, conscious realization for me to become cognizant of the fact that just because I stumbled and let myself become bogged down, that this is not a failure.  I can continue on, pushing myself to success.  Like I said before, this project has much larger implications than I originally thought, and larger still are the hopes and dreams that I have of what will come out of this all.  This is not a page in my life to tear out and toss aside like so many failed sketches. As of right now, this is a small smudge on a large canvas, one that will soon be smoothly covered, or better yet,  worked beautifully into the finished piece.

Keep checking back, keep the comments coming, feel free to share this small piece of me with your friends. Just don’t give up on me, because I’m not.

Girl in Raincoat, study 3

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20 January, 2012

girl in raincoat, study 2

Part 2 of my studies for my blossoming Girl in Raincoat series! I don’t know why I have become so enamored with her and the concept I have going behind it, but I feel like it is coming from a place inside of me that I haven’t visited in a while.

We bid bon voyage to my husband’s brother, to whom I am very much a “big sister.”  He is off to Prague, in the Czech Republic, until the end of Spring.  It is definitely bittersweet seeing off someone who is a part of our everyday life, but it is a great opportunity for him, and an adventure a long time coming.
This particular sketch is serves also an allusion to the emotions and events of the day–  joy tinged with longing, change and impermanence, and the pull of wanderlust that speaks to the child-like adventurer in all of us.

Chrysanthemum, still life

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13 January, 2012

Still life sketch of Chrysanthemums

After my first attempt at drawing Chrysanthemums, my sweet husband came home with these gorgeous bright purple Chrysanthemums for me.  An endearing gesture in any situation, but today it was more.  It was an unspoken approval of my new undertaking. It was a symbol of his support for me and my passion. It was his pride in my courage and ambition, manifest. And, as they sit, smiling at me from my dining table, backlit by the glow of several large windows, they are a reminder of just how fortunate I am to have him by my side, as my best friend, on this journey and every other.

Reflection and Small Victories

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I am patting myself on the back for making it through Week One.

One of my biggest personal struggles is motivation, taking that first step and keeping momentum.  I am exceptionally good, I have realized, at rationalizing.  I can pretty easily convince myself that, not only whatever excuse I have come up with for not doing something, but the bargain I have made with myself to make up for it tomorrow, are totally legitimate and acceptable.  Any attempt to convince me otherwise will be struck down with more rationalizations, excuses, or entirely dismissed as offensive.  It is surprisingly self-destructive.

I have faced that challenge more than once this week.  The big leap of actually starting wasn’t too difficult, I was (and still am) pretty excited about this project.  This week in my everyday life has been tumultuous and exhausting. I am back at work and the boys are back in school. Any semblance of structure, organization, or routine had been blithely shoved aside by the holidays.  This week has been a blur, and I have been changing proverbial hats more than a supermodel changes clothes– Mom, wife, employee, therapist, friend, volunteer, sister, chef, maid, chauffeur… eat, sleep, rinse, repeat.  At the end of the day it is hard for me to feel motivated, or particularly inspired.  (Who am I kidding? Even first thing in the morning it is hard to feel motivated or inspired!)  It would be so easy to talk myself into giving one weensy, little, drawing a pass for a day.  Most of the time my first opportunity to sit down for any real amount of time isn’t until after 10 pm.  I had a long day, I tell myself. I have a long day again tomorrow, I tell myself.  I really should just sleep, I say.  But I have persisted, and made myself work on a sketch. And those few seconds of mental sparring are a fight to the death, winner takes all, and the stakes are my dreams.

Who would I be letting down? Where’s the harm in letting just one day out of a few hundred go?

It is all too easy to let myself down in the beginning, to write something off as doomed from the start.  But this is an opportunity I have created for myself. Not just a whim, not just an passing phase, but a small step toward something greater for myself and for my family.  This is bigger than a New Year’s Resolution, this is truly about opening myself up to parts of my life that have mostly just lived in the part of my brain labeled as “wouldn’t that be nice” or been disregarded entirely to the cobwebbed center of the part labeled “will probably never happen.”  Perhaps one of the pitfalls of being so incredibly right brained is that I imagine all of these lovely fantasies and dreams and the creative ways I could make them happen, but my poor, atrophied, left brain isn’t given the chance to actually logically plan out and act upon them.  Besides, it’s much simpler to dismiss them and trade up for the newest dreamland scenario.

I can’t afford to give myself a pass, not even for a day.  I know myself well enough to know that. One day will lead to another day somewhere in the future, and then that day might lead to a couple days in a row, until a month later I look back and realize that I have stopped drawing again, and another dream has slipped away.  That’s when I get disappointed in myself.  I hold high standards of myself, and a little voice in the back of my mind slowly shakes its head and frowns while saying I know you could’ve done that, you can do better than this. And it is worse, even, than when I got that parental lecture in my teenage years. This isn’t someone else’s projection of their expectations or their perception of my capabilities.  This is the truth.  This is my Self, saying Wow, you really let me down.  Each time I have had to fight against old habits of my nature, and have chosen to do what I told myself I would, I feel a small wave of victory wash over me, energizing me, and building my confidence.

My confidence in this project still waivers, it is so new that I find myself unsure of the direction I want it to take.  My confidence in sharing this journey with my close friends, family, and the world at large is still shaky in these fledgling days.  But that I can handle.  Far more bruised, is my confidence in my Self that I can start a project both by myself and for myself and see it through.  It feels as though the more I reflect on what this project is and what it entails, the scope of the true meaning and the real impact this potentially has (on so many levels) becomes so much greater and more of a challenge than I would have imagined.

At this point, I guess I will just have to keep taking those small victories of Self over habit. I have to trust that I am inspired for a reason, that this is simply an opportune way to face down the challenges and growth that need to happen. And all I can hope for is that being able to focus on my creative outlet will help ease some of the growing pains.