We are now planning to move – again. Something I dread, yet anticipate. I just wish everyone was on board. I think it’s time to figure that all out, and we’ve started working on it, but is very difficult.

It’s hard to believe that at this point in my life I am heading towards university – something I’ve wanted to do for decades. But at the same time I keep questioning everything. While I know I am moving forward, and that is so important, I worry about what I am missing along the way.

So, enough of the vague-ranting-post. I have a month off to contemplate things, before I start summer classes. I’m taking it VERY easy – only 2, online, and one I’m looking very much forward to taking: Creative Writing. After a less than stellar experience in English 101 in the Fall I had an amazing experience this Spring in English 102, and the teacher from 102 will be teaching my summer Creative Writing course. The other course is just getting another university studies requirement out of way – Civilizations, but I hope it’s at the very least interesting.

One of my biggest accomplishments this past semester has to be surviving, dare I even say succeeding at, Drawing. I’ve never drawn. I’ve doodled, I’ve goofed around, but I have never seriously put pencil or pen to paper in an effort to REALLY draw something. I had never used charcoal to draw with – ever. The class started out as a heavy weight on my shoulders, but ended up being something very rewarding. I am amazed, but I have learned to draw. In fact, the last assignment, the most difficult EVER, to me, actually went better than I expected. It was ever so hard to setup, begin, and practice, but once I got going, it all just came into place.
Now I’m not dropping my camera for charcoal and a sketch pad – no way – and I don’t consider myself great or accomplished at drawing – but I succeeded for me, at drawing these enormous-to-me (22×30inch) assignments that came out mostly resembling the subject I intended to produce. The one I struggled with the most, in my head, was of my head – it was a self-portrait. I could never imagine a more difficult subject, but I have to say, it did come out portraying me.
I drew not just my face, but a phase or part of my life – my struggle with sleep. And it came extremely close to portraying what I sought to share of me, on paper, with dusty, ol’ charcoal.

Conquering this mountain has made me grow in so many ways.

I have discovered, through this and some other experiences, that I am not, in fact, a Fine Arts Major. I was so uncomfortable in that role. But I am creative, and I plan to continue pursuing that path.

“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
~ George Harrison

I hand wrote it in my new moleskine that my daughter-in-college’s friend gave me for Christmas.

It feels good.

Maybe I will post some or all of it – somewhere online – someday …

Right now? I just feel like taking a walk, working my way up to running.

Isn’t that odd?

Well, I plan to make that my goal for the upcoming new year. I have so many things I want to do – NEED to do.  I have some goals and dreams. Things I want to teach my children, places I want to take my children, and experiences I want to get my children.

I am not sure which order of effect these things have, but here’s a list of things that I think I need to focus on in order to get where I want to go. 

Sleep

Exercise

Diet

Organization

Focus

Priority

I am going to ponder this list and then talk about each of the items more in the coming days. I do have a few more days before the end of 2011.

It just hurts. So. Bad.

I need someone to talk to that will be straight with me. Someone that will give me advice for me and not them. Someone who will lift me up when I need it and yet still that will kick me in the arse when I need it.

I used to have someone like that – but I can’t find them. 

For now I will just keep hiding under the covers with a numb bum.

I have so much to be thankful for, really I do.

And here we are heading into a beautiful holiday – and I am so unprepared, so not even headed in the vague direction of being ready.

I’m just so overwhelmed.

Now to read, write, knit, watch, relax, and start the Christmas season for real!

Today feels like the last day of the month before the beginning of another month. I feel like I am caught in between. Stuck in some crevice of life. In between a rock and a hard place. Trying to find my way to the next horizon.

I submitted some of my photos for the school faculty/student holiday art show today. It will raise money for the art club, so that is all good. But I had a really hard time with it. Choosing how big to blow up my prints, or not. Deciding on a monetary price for the creativity that comes out of my heart. I really struggled. I almost didn’t follow through. Seeing my photos blown up into prints makes me feel really good. Putting my art out there with everyone else’s is somewhat tortuous. I actually found myself mentioning to several people close to me today that maybe I am not conceited or confident enough to be a real artist. If so, what the hell am I doing as a Fine Arts major?!?! I am a creative, or so I think, and people tell me. But I also know I am very practical, down-to-earth and an entrepreneur. I’ve worked primarily for myself almost all of my life. I’ve decided to do what I love and figure out how to ‘monetize that $#!+. But today, I find myself questioning all of it. I’m trying to hard to break away from deciding what I do based on other people that I don’t know (yet) – the infamous ‘they’. I’m trying really hard not to sell out my dreams and just be practical. There is an element of goodness to practicality – a necessary thing – but it doesn’t drive us. Life is too short. Stress is poison – it kills. I’m also trying to not live my life based on comparing myself to anyone – except in a healthy, observational way – a way that I can learn from and grown from as I move forward. But today is very difficult for me for some reason. Seeing all of that art, and mine amongst it, made me feel a bit ill. Should it make me feel more excited? Or are these huge butterflies a good sign? A sign that I’m stretching myself, pushing my limits, growing to new heights? I guess time will tell. I have hopes and dreams and some of them feel like they’ve just been yanked out of my insides and thrown out on a chopping block for everyone to see and dissect.

In school news, I have just 2 exams, 2 papers and some loose ends in photography I class to tie up and I’m done with this semester. Bring on December, bring on a month of more free time, bring it all on.

We enjoyed a very, nice and quiet Thanksgiving at our new 2nd home yesterday, with just the immediate family. It was a bit strange, not being surrounded by chaos and many relatives/friends, but it was a nice and needed, easygoing day. Christmas will return to the normally scheduled chaosity (new word?) and we will look forward to it, but we are in a place where we needed the calm, the ‘just us’ time and it was very nice.

I’m not doing so well on the NaBloPoMo, insofar as posting every day of the month. But I have posted far more this month than I have in the past year or two – so it’s a step, towards more regular posting.

And now it’s time for cramming – the end of my first semester back at college has come, and I have 4 major papers and 2 major exams left to do, along with printing photographs for the department Holiday Art Sale, and a final critique/review – and then I am done! I am SO looking forward to a month off, to catch my breath, before the next semester starts and I add a class or two more to my load. Crazy, I know. But it is exciting, really. And I have to keep busy, so I don’t sit here and worry myself crazy about waiting to hear about my acceptance to the University.

Well, enough procrastination for now. Bring on the essay writing, bring on the leftovers and bring on the official beginning of the Christmas 2011 Season!!!

11/16/2011 yarn pet of the day

Pretty to look at, and sitting on top of the novel we read for English.
The novel I’m struggling to write a paper on at this very moment.
It is a very good book, though: Eli the Good