Fantasy Meets Reality

I'm ignoring the signs....

Prior to my recent Grandbug trip to California I'd pared down my luggage to the barest of necessities: a few shirts plus the jeans on my legs and the shoes on my feet. It's not like my daughter didn't have a laundry room, right?; I could always wash, rinse, and repeat. Yet, surprisingly, my carry-on was as heavy as ever.

It couldn't have been just the baby clothes and gifts I was bringing with me. And what would normally have been a library's worth of books had been reduced to a Kindle, so it wasn't that. And I hadn't bothered with shampoos or curling irons or jackets or boots. So what was my problem??

Art supplies.

In my happy little fantasies I'd imagined Time standing still for the duration of my visit, and I saw myself spending endless hours sitting in a quiet room watching a napping baby and drawing everything about her. How hard could it be? I was away from home with nothing to do and forever in which to do it. (Just writing those words gives me pleasant goosebumps.)

On the plane to California I wrote out long lists of ideas that I planned to flesh out, knowing that in the pockets of my luggage were pens and pencils and pleasantly blank pads of bristol board. Had I remembered a straight-edge? Had I packed the kneaded erasers? Should I look for a pencil sharpener at the airport? It was all too exciting for words.

And then it wasn't.

I got to my destination and spent my time there doing everything else but think about art. It was as though just the thinking about it was enough. My energy had dissipated....

Yes, the snowcapped mountains and jack-in-the-beanstalk-sized trees were big old inspirations (not to mention the fairy face of my grandbug!), but I took photos galore of them all and never thought to capture them on paper. I wonder why?

Maybe it's because my hands wanted to be filled up with a sleeping baby instead of erasers and pencils. Or because my eyes were afraid to focus on a sketchbook in case they missed something. Or (more likely) because I hadn't realized just how fast that week would pass.

I'm sure it was all those things and more.

What I DO know for sure is this. Being home now has made me anxious. Great bucketloads of work have filled up in my absence and I've got art commissions to create. Gardens have gotten underway and are flourishing. Weeds have established themselves fabulously. Unfinished projects are tapping their feet. It all needs attention and there's only one Me.

And when things get this overwhelming, all I can think of to do is read.

No help at all. But it makes me feel better every time. Until I stop reading and realize that the brewing storm in my head is about to reach its boiling point.

...