It’s that strange time between things, between years, between gatherings and intentions. The endless liminal space of the holidays. The last two weeks have simultaneously felt so slow and so chaotic. I have been making veggie soups, eating a lot of kimchi, taking drives into the woods and down the coast. I moved and reorganized my studio- it is now inside our house in a room where I can paint larger and work on several projects at the same time- a limitation of my tiny garden shed studio. It’s been rainy and I have been reading in the evenings and sometimes in the mornings and a few times all day. I am someone who works best with routine, so when most of that routine is out the window I first have to battle feelings of guilt (thank you capitalism) for not working, then feelings of scarcity about what things I can and want to do and what I actually have capacity for. I tell myself and my students not to pile on a million things to “get done” with all the extra time- this is hard for me. I want to sleep in, read all day but also go for hikes, swims, clean the garage, do my bookkeeping and taxes… and I try to remember that maybe I need to reconsider why all those things have to be left for my free time.
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