January Thaw

It has been too long since I sat down to write. It was a good Fall/Holiday season, getting work out and getting around with it. It is time for all those January chores but there are some good bonus activities...new art shows and wedding planning. Then not so great new activities...Donna's job search and wrangling with the former employer. Sustained cold here has meant indoor nesting, but we get out with the pup and our snowshoes, a gift last Christmas, are finally getting some use this year. In fact, it was possible to snowshoe all but two days since the December 26 blizzard. Snow falls and stays, unusual in the last couple of years.

My thaw isn't the temperature, it is a melting of the casing that seems to envelope my brain when the holidays are past and winter is totally set in. There is new work and a new office in which Donna and I can work together. We yanked out our old desks, which nearly filled the room. Instead we put together a couple of Ikea pieces and refashioned an 8 foot countertop along one wall for us both to pull up to the computers. For the first time we have an event calendar we both share. THAT has never happened in the 7 years we have been together! An Ikea sofa table is serving as an office credenza and we have more bins and baskets for storing stuff than ever before. The whole thing is painted a Sea Sage green and the room is far more calming than before, especially with Rosie curled up in my grandmother's old pink chair behind us.



8 X 10" scratchboard in progress



sketched first

I have to be honest and own up that I have let Donna's working from home interfere with my art-making productivity. It is too easy to keep tapping away on the computer next to her and less easy to tear away and make work, which has put me a bit behind for a late January show. I have a new Gulf Oil Spill work in progress although these are just for art sake, I am not quite sure if anyone will want to own one!

It always seems that when it comes to distractions the art-making is the biggest loser, the easiest to derail. When I was working here by myself I simply put on my headphones and went for 5 or 6 hours at a time. I ignored the phone and the door and anything else that got in the way. Anyone who is self-employed understands there is far more to earning a living than simply producing whatever it is you sell. Sometimes I look up from my morning e-mail it is nearly noon. Time to start setting a timer to be sure I move away from the computer.

But the computer led me to a very cool person just this Saturday. Just in one phone conversation, after some rapidly exchanged e-mails, helped us pull in to focus a whole different project~ a delicious distraction if there ever was one! So I am off to manage multiple priorities. All right, truth told, ATTEMPT to manage...