2024 has been a challenging year for many.
Be proud of all you’ve accomplished.
All your hard work will support your efforts in 2025.
Choose you;
choose the people who truly see you
and love you as you are.
Happy New Year.
Looking to 2025
Inspiration
The Importance of Showing Up
There are many reasons why we, as artists, don’t do our work, whatever our individual expression is. In the end, it all comes down to fear. I don’t think I need to go into any detail. You know what your own apprehensions are about bringing your beautiful creations to light, or even revealing them to yourself.
But waiting for “the right time” can end up being never. I remember many years ago, analyzing all the reasons why I procrastinated about certain things (most likely my art), and then the comment was, “Sometimes you have to just apply your butt to the chair and just do it.” Point well taken.
So get your tired, unkempt, pajama-clad (if applicable), unfocused, resistant self to wherever you have to be to create and show up for yourself. For your creative self. As unready as you are, get there, and allow something to happen. You’ll be OK. I’ll be pushing myself to do the same.
Meet you at the desk.
And so it begins …
The end of the Thanksgiving weekend, and it all goes into full swing. For all the things I both want and need to do, this is my goal:
But rarely how it ends up. I’m an organized person, but somehow all that I have to do for the holidays still sneaks up on me, and I am immediately overwhelmed. It’s not just the personal cards and gifts and plans that I have in front of me, but what should be one of the busiest times of the year business-wise is looking me square in the eye as well.
I should have already done more to get my Etsy shop noticed, but this year, I’ve been working on self-publishing my beautiful picture book, Where Do Butterflies Go at Night?. Sadly, the small company that published it went out of business and recycled all copies. I decided to invest the money and purchase the gorgeous original art and the rights; I just couldn’t see my first published book disappearing off the face of the earth. I’m working hard to reformat the entire book (particularly all the artwork), into a size used by self-publishing platforms, as they don’t offer the original published size. Tick, tock, can I get it up on Amazon in time for holiday sales?
Or for my other commitment, as a vendor at the Christmas Market in my own town? Everything seems like it should take an hour or two, and that’s never the case. And then there’s this guy …
You couldn’t ask for sweeter, but Charlie experienced a traumatic event earlier in the year. Too long a story, but he has PTSD, and it expresses itself in his obsessively moving things, pulling things, breaking things. Imagine a cat in a new home expressing his natural curiosity in everything, and then crank it up to mach-speed. With patience, strategic re-arrangement of furniture, and the help of some flower remedies in his water, he’s calming down. I’m surviving, always loving him, but there have been days …
And so the holidays begin. Still aiming for that goal above.
Hoping your holidays are calm and (relatively) stress-free!
Being Kind
You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway
it’s the same old story —
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind.
– Mary Oliver
On Being Vulnerable
There are still many outdated ideas running around that to be vulnerable is to be weak, and in this country, at least, especially if you’re a male. The truth of the matter is that to let our guard down and let someone in, or to truly open up to our own creativity and inner light … to be vulnerable … takes courage. That’s not weak — it’s brave.
And it takes trust, trust that we won’t be hurt, that we won’t fail, that we won’t find ourselves incapable of meeting the task at hand, whatever it might be.
As a visual artist, I find being vulnerable extremely challenging. As a writer, I am somewhow able to put my heart and soul into words, whether writing for myself, or as I did for over three decades, writing fundraising appeals for literally thousands of abused and neglected animals. I had only to look at their pain, and the words flowed. And our donors could feel what these animals suffered through my words, and helped support their healing and care.
Art? That takes digging deeper. I find myself in a daily dance of desire and resistance. What do you — what do we — find so frightening about pulling forth our art, in whatever form, from the depths of our being? Of laying it out in front of no one’s eyes but our own?
Being vulnerable, even to ourselves, can be a challenge. Finding the beautiful light within and letting it shine brilliantly is so important. The world needs us.
Still A Dreamer 