I have been struggling with consistent sketching practice as I work with a new group doing environmental restoration and balance that with home repairs and still sorting through journals my Art Director father wrote (mostly about his daily tasks of health and home) and ancestry info my mother collected. Add the really volatile times we are living in and it’s hard to focus myself effectively. I always try to focus on the things I have control over and not “fret myself to death” over the things I have no control over. It’s a survival technique really.

Recently, I had started a random page of doodling, not feeling inspired by anything and then I listed to a podcast entitled, “Just Make Art”. And so I took notes on the sketch page while I listened and those notes are my header image for this update. They, like me, had not shared where they were on their creative journey recently. So it felt like we were all struggling with grief. Grief from losses, grief from the state of the world that does not care for the planet, women, children, the elderly or each other. This was exactly what I needed to get my head in the right mindset.

So I am grateful for their solo podcast. You really should listen to Just Make Art by Ty Nathan Clark and Nathan Terborg. The specific episode is entitled The Wonderful Mistake. Where Do You End and the World Begins? I found it on Apple Podcasts. Check your favorite streaming platform. They address the feeling every artist has had as they stand or sit in front of a blank canvas or a blank page and think, “Have I ever done this before? It does not feel like it.”

Also referenced, are a couple of books that I can’t find on Libby, so I will have to look in Bookshop.org for them.

So, my creative friends. Here we are at the transition from summer to fall with all of the expectations from society and all of our own personal goals for the end of the year and the coming year of 2027. What are you focusing on? How do you plan to get there? It’s a good time to look at the big picture of your life. Everything from finances, to supplies you want to get before the holidays or a possible trucker strike, family needs, friends catch ups or keep ups, your own health appointments and the knowledge that so many are hurting in a system that is not supportive – and trying to decide the best ways to help without sinking yourself. It’s no small thing to get your head around.

I’m taking a lot of what I have been referring to as “baby steps”.

1. Continuing to sort the piles of “stuff” inherited. This second wave of stuff has no financial value, but should be sorted through and disposed of properly to keep family privacy in tact while mining those gems of decades of wisdom and struggles.

2. Filling all of the partially filled sketch books I own. They don’t need to be chronological if I put the date on the page of each creation. And I have A LOT of partially used sketch books. I want them all full before I pass away.

3. Finding what “jazzes” me. I realized through this year plus of the grieving process, it’s not often I have been excited about something to the point that it makes my eyes light up. I see it in other people’s faces as they excitedly share things with me, but it’s not there in my eyes. I’ve just been plowing forward through the “must do’s” as I call them. They are important things, even vital tasks, however they don’t get me “jazzed”. So that’s a personal goal for the next year. I have no idea where that will actually take me.

Creatively, I’ll quote the podcast. I plan to “stand in front of the thing I can’t control (the world) and let it tell me where I end and it begins. That’s my work. Spend some time with my work.”

Seriously, go listen to the podcast. Okay, See you next time and hang in there!