Last month, I took an encaustic “workshop in a box” from A Smith Gallery. It’s a great concept, they ship everything you need to you and then you zoom - and it’s a good example of how we need to start thinking in new ways. The experience energized me and kind of snapped me out of a vague mist I wasn’t even aware I was in. It brought me back to my life. 

Since leaving my full-time teaching gig, it’s been really hard to even know how to think about my life at this point. A lot of that (most!) is because of the complete chaos we’re currently living in - but a portion of it is because I’m in a big transition from a life full of “have to” and I haven’t really figured out how I want to proceed. For the past two decades, I’ve been driven by that large exterior engine and now that’s gone. 

Which actually leaves me back where I was before I took the job in the first place - which was life as an indi artist. My “have to” is now internally driven - the energy and the deadlines are something that I have to make myself. That’s why the workshop was such a wonderful reminder of who I am and the life I want to live. It was great to connect with other creative spirits and just lose myself into the process. Yes, it’s much harder to do with the twin chaos-makers of our political landscape and the virus - but life is impermanent and that is the eternal lesson I’m taking from this.