A Bit About Everything

It never fails. I'm halfway through my shower or bath, when I get this flood of ideas and words and I need to run out of the shower wrapped in a towel and plop my fingers down on a keyboard to get some of this out. I know the science behind it and yet it always amuses me. It's not a habit that lends itself to a 9-5 work schedule. But maybe it's the habit that is beginning to help me understand where I actually get my joy from. I've been struggling to draw again. I'm having this strange realization, as I sit there countless times, both disgusted and horrified by my quality of drawings, that I'm not enjoying myself. I'm not enjoying creating visual art, and that's... also horrifying. Drawing is how I've defined a joyful activity for myself since I was between three and four years old. What is wrong with my brain that I find it utterly... boring now? Is this just a stage of the multipotentialite brain, that I find myself completely turned off by an ac...

This morning I was thinking a lot about my successes, and how I tend not to give credit to myself when credit is due. In graduate school, a talented adjunct professor in watercolor called out my entire class on our melancholy disposition, and asked us why we couldn't rejoice in our achievements? Sadly, our society has implemented a "journey is not as important as result" clause on achievements, especially artistic ones. And artistic endeavors are so closely tied to emotion that it is not hard to see the detriment in holding this position. I've been thinking a lot about where I've come from, and most particularly trying to figure out how I came from Charlotte, NC from a highschool with almost no support for the arts, to working as a professional artist first in DC, then NYC and now across the country in Portland. Aside from my family and closest friends, there haven't been a lot of people to congratulate me or tell me that they're particularly proud of wh...