Living a Creative Life

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?!

In a world where we hear so many voices, today I’m going to search for my own voice. I’m checking closets, sink drains, under rocks, rummaging in old suitcases, leafing through books, poking around in the egg carton and gracefully, reluctantly, embracing the wobbly knees feeling moving in with the winter winds and the changing evolution of living a creative life.