Navigating Internal Conflict

Major Tom to Ground Control

 Hey all! Spent the last few days putzing around and/or relaxing for a change and now I'm back in the studio! Mundane stuff on my mind includes new shelving for my desk. How about ANY shelving for my desk to organize bits and bobs. Right now I have some sad wire shelves groaning under the weight of papers and a herd of paint brushes. It's bugged me for awhile and now it's time to do something about it so I ordered some desktop shelving from my favorite friend, Amazon. Other mundane stuff drifted to some clear acrylic risers or something better to display the vinyls I paint (pictured above) but that can wait for more money in the pocketbook. I've been making due with the converted spice rack risers I got to display them on but for Awesomecon in March, I'd sure love something more professional looking. I'm constantly reminding myself, one step at a time when it comes to managing an art business that's feast or famine if it's anything at all. Studio organization is more of a priority. The spice risers will do.

The last few days I've also been trying to discern the energetic flow of the business aspect of my art. Should I keep doing the scifi cons or try other art venues? Should I look seriously into moving my studio from the Workhouse to somewhere else? Where do I want this to go? Am I happy? I'm always asking these questions trying to gauge where the flow is going. It's easier to move with it than do the same thing over and over because that's what you've always done. It's not easy to objectively examine something you're in the middle of and invested in and I can't say I'm good at it. But I do keep trying. I have learned a few ways to tell though whether I'm where I want to be or getting a bit out of the flow. I've noticed that if I'm not worrying about the future etc, I'm usually in the flow. If I start to obsess about other stuff like the dust bunnies at home, what my kids are doing or other minutia, I'm not focused or in the flow so then it's a matter of breathing and bringing myself back to the present/now instead of the anxiety of the unknown because the NOW is the only thing we can directly effect and hope to manage. Going back to my Creating Space post, that's why it's important to create and keep that space within and though I talk about it, sometimes I find I've not done as well as I wanted to on that front. Trying to walk my talk and then I get off track - which is all a part of learning right?

I guess with so much going on in the world right now, I'm conflicted when it comes to trying to run a business or even allowing myself to concentrate on what I want in life. It seems like such privileged thought that I immediately defend with my husband and I have had to work hard all our lives. We've had a bit of help along the way but we've worked hard under difficult circumstances, raised two wonderful men and are now at the point in our lives where we finally have space TO think about things like what we want moving forward. We've earned it. I'm not saying others haven't. Life happens to everyone. No one asks to be devastated by a hurricane or fire. Life happens. No one expects a life altering illness. Life happens. My sense of civic compassion is often in conflict with living the life I choose and I don't know if that's a good thing or not. There seems to be no resolution in my mind for this. I've even tried making both work together. Last year at Escape Velocity, I made a sign saying that I was offering a portion of sales from the event to Harvey relief. And... no sales. Hard to 'be the change' when no one else is playing. It's like I made a door and the universe said - that's ok - don't worry about it. In energetic terms, that's flowing in the wrong direction, for want of a better word than wrong. So far the only direction the universe has supported fully is staying right where I'm at and continuing to do what I do here. Sigh. Maybe it's time to just listen to that.

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this kind of internal conflict which is why I followed this line of thinking out here - jumbled though it seems to me. I feel I'm coming to understand that there's great and immediate need everywhere and always has been but, when the universe wants you somewhere in particular, that path unfolds. You don't have to fight with it - like a river flowing that you just jump into and it takes you where you can not only be your best, but be the best for whatever is needed at the time. Maybe on the surface that appears idealistic as a concept but, it's also been my experience. Maybe being in the flow isn't about 'you'. It involves you but isn't about you at all. Surely, while there are people desperately needed in these and future situations, there's also people needed right where they're at - nurses at hospitals here, waitresses at restaurants in your town and I guess artists in their studios wondering about where or if they fit at all in the big picture or if there's a big picture to suffering at all.

My friend Terry would often tell me that a lot of the things I wonder and ask are unknowable. As I rolled all this stuff around my mind this morning like a manic rubrics cube of confusion, I heard her voice say it was unknowable. Man, I miss her alive and here. When she would tell me that I'd say well, that doesn't stop me from trying anyway. Unknowable? I accept the challenge. She often gave a kind of quiet chuckle, like she was watching a cat play with a mouse and I'd go off chasing my tail again trying to figure out what it was attached to and why it wiggled. Eventually I would get tired of it all and have to concede her point. From this vantage point - maybe it was unknowable. Then I would holler at Creator to stop teasing me with unknowables. It wasn't funny - even if it was. For me, the challenge of being hollow is reconciling the unknowable with the compassion of the moment. The only peace I've found in this tug of war is to suspend the two apparent opposites and learn to live with the fact that any feeling of resolution is perhaps an illusion and that the conflict is simply a product of not being able to have all the puzzle pieces that enable you to understand.  Or, maybe I think too much? Maybe it's all just justification?

In the end, I can only answer for my life and how I live it, through choice and through circumstance. You can only answer for yours. And though I firmly believe we're all connected, we're also not. My evidence for the not is that I can't make a choice for you in any real way. I can't say, put that doughnut down and your hand automatically obeys me. I can't say, don't suffer and your suffering magically disappears. I can't take anything away or add anything which frustrates the hell out of me. But I can offer what I have and what I think I understand. I can take a hand and reassure someone that they aren't alone. Or I can write a blog that seems intent on meandering around heavy topics in hopes that it may help someone else understand their turmoil, light their path. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at that but even if I'm not, oh well. Though I've not publicly talked about this, another reason I started this blog is because of my dear friend Terry. She and I would spend close to 20 years, I think, chatting every weeknight about all this kind of thing, pondering mysteries that there's no hope of understanding and being there for each other when we got stuck on our path. Sure there were a lot of 'stuff' nights where we just connected and talked about the mundane or our families. But no matter what it was, I could blurt it out to her or she could blurt stuff out to me and we'd roll it around both brains to see what we could learn together. She isn't here for that anymore and in a sort of homage to our ponderings and out of missing our time doing that, I started to write. She loved it when I wrote. So, if anything I've said or will say touches you in some way, spare a thank you to her too if you would. Without her encouragement and friendship, I would not be who I am now. So I'll keep meandering like I did with her. And someday, when I can articulate the path through grief, I'll share that too.

Anyway, that's it for today! Time to paint!