Absence and reaquantance

This is my first morning back in the studio after too long an absence.
Everything is quiet and untouched.
It's a strange mixture of scary and comforting to return here after 8 weeks away.  I am both desperate to be here and daunted at the prospect.
Being an artist brings with it the necessity to fine tune your awareness of your emotions and to be at peace with them, whatever they are.  It's a struggle sometimes.

Today I'm returning after the summer, which is always a bit of a tricky time to create as I'm concentrating on giving my 5 boys a restful and fun break from school.  This year I have the addition of moving my mum into sheltered accommodation nearer us. She is living with Alzheimer's, and consequently so are we.  It's been a huge, upsetting, unsettling, emotionally and physically tiring effort and I feel what I can only describe as a little defeated by life at the moment!  It's coincided with a gear change in family life too, with three of the five now at secondary school, most evenings and weekends are now occupied by various clubs, activities, form filling, revision and homework. I'm also considering the need for me to find a salaried income to support our family in a more reliable way.

I have been left wondering where on Earth my creativity fits into all this. And I have to say, my conclusion at various points has been, and probably still will be at times, it doesn't.

There you go.

That's where I'm at.


So here I sit in my lovely, quiet attic studio, wondering where to start. If I should start.  That's the honest place I am.
I have read enough blogs and seen enough social media posts to know that it's somewhat against the flow not to be putting happy, colourful and sunny posts out there.  But that's not where I'm at and I'm hoping that this will find some resonance with a few of you.  Maybe tomorrow I will be brighter and that will give you hope that things can be brighter for you too.  If I don't share the lows like this, how will the better times ring true?

So, here I am again, urging myself to pick up a paintbrush and at least put some colour on a canvas in faith that inspiration will pick it up like a leaf in the wind.  I'm choosing to put Fear in the backseat (Thankyou Elizabeth Gilbert), and courage in my heart (Thankyou C.S.Lewis) and not expecting anything just yet, but some paint on the canvas.