I’m not sure when the shift began. Smack in the middle of big projects and family and piles of books still to be read and breads to be made, came a quiet nudge of restlessness. A scratch under my skin. An unrelenting scratch that the more I ignored, the itchier it became.
Part of going forwards for me has always involved going backwards too. I used to resist backwards in my art process because it felt redundant or boring. Now I’m realizing that it’s the digging, the layers, the textures of a creative life that pull me back and propel me forwards… sometimes fast and sometimes slow. This journey, this creative life, has always been mine. I just wasn’t always present for it. I was letting it happen. That’s ok.
Now it feels intentional and purposeful, now it feels like I own it. Finding my own voice today and everyday is a part of this. My voice is in the stillness of time and a day idling by because I decide to scrap my plans to write winter poems for a new book and instead doodle lists of Things that feel special in my art practice-NOW!
Seeing, hearing and making *all of the things* is so accessible and noisy and chaotic today. It’s also wonderfully inspiring. But if I’m not careful, I teeter too close to the edge of a giant canyon I call “Lost voices”. I lose my authentic voice. I judge myself before I begin based on an Instagram image. Gosh, I love some of those Instagram images…Don’t you?!
