A lady in waiting...

It feels really, really, nice to have a paintbrush in my hand again...it has been, no exaggeration, years. It's nothing really, a little sketch, with my new gouache and some new brushes, figuring out how paint moves again, the way colors like to play together. And on top of that, gouache is something I've never worked with before. It's like watercolors and acrylics made a baby just for me. So much fun, it's quick and immediate and rich like acrylics, and flows and dances and melts like watercolors.

It was strange though, picking up the brush, finding the scrap piece of watercolor paper, grabbing an old book about the pacific northwest...and sitting down and painting....this is not what I expected to happen. Part of it was automatic, came back to me like I never left it. But it was also awkward, like running into an ex boyfriend, so much intimacy once shared that seems so irrelevant and slightly embarrassing now. I had to get over my own rules, my own criticisms and just leap. And in the end, it was exactly what I needed to get out of this slump...to get out of my head.

Being unemployed is both scary and amazing. It leads you to do things out of the ordinary. I went dancing with a couple of sisters I kind of know last night. An invitation I would normally turn down because it might be awkward, dancing always is. But I had nothing else to do so I went, and I had a lot of fun. And today, I painted. I am going to escape the shells I have crawled into the last couple of years. I am going to paint, everyday, and I am going to dance, and I am going to cook in the way I used to, with passion and love. I am going to be in this home that we have built and appreciate the walls and the structure and the power of it all. I am going to look at my husband and really see him and be aware of all that we have. I am going to be adventurous with fashion and with decorating and in literature. I am going to find the person I used to be before I allowed my fears of inadequacy in the workforce, my fears of failing, my fears of not being good enough take me under and bury me. "Up there, up there it's their time, but down here, down here it's our time"

Well, that's how I'm feeling right now anyways. Check in with me in another week when I am freaking out that I haven't found a new job yet. In the meantime, let's just enjoy this little painting and this little epiphany I am having...