What happened?

My dear friend Uma, thank you for checking in on me while I was in a proverbial artistic and spiritual desert. I am so grateful for you! What happened? Where did I go? Everywhere and nowhere. At long last I feel ready to return to the land of the artful living. Finally. But first, where did I go?

I was accepted to a BFA program at Cal Poly Humboldt, and very excitedly I moved up to the Eureka area to attend art classes at the university. It did not go smoothly. It was very expensive and finding a schedule that could work around my job was a challenge; I took a part time job in hospice while I was there. I ended up working way more than I wanted to and more than was realistic for completing the BFA. But while I was working in hospice a coworker shared that the pay was better in the Bay Area. Hmmm….I thought, why not try to earn more pay and afford school, maybe transfer to SFSU? Things in Humboldt were not working out as I had planned and I felt grief from missing my people. I wanted to go home. So I gave it a shot.

I got hired within a few days of applying to the first position I qualified for. It was much more money. But it was full time. Honestly as poorly as my BFA adventure had gone I was up for the financial boost. The full time salaried position quickly turned into life consuming. I enjoyed my coworkers, who are truly beautiful people, but hospice work is far from artistic and creative. I began experiencing burnout and missed my art dreadfully. I was so tired emotionally. Perhaps even depressed. I tried finding less demanding work. I found another position and was ready to move out of the Bay Area but could not find housing in the small town where I was going. So I turned down that position and started a sabbatical. I needed time to figure out where I went astray and what to do next. How did I lose my artful life? How could I get it back?

In the midst of much needed reset and rest, an old employer reached out to me to see if I was interested in remote part time work. I immediately rejoined the company in a different state with a different team of educators. It’s remote and it’s part time so I have enough energy and day left to refocus on my art. I don’t have to relocate and am so happy to be home in my city by the Bay. I have been restoring my studio space, unpacking from my time in Humboldt (a year and five months), and little by little, finding myself again.

Today I am enough just creating. I am enough doing what I love.

This is one of the pieces I am working on (early in progress clearly):