Press Play

*WARNING: CHEESY METAPHOR AHEAD*

Right now I'm playing the waiting game. Hubs is applying for jobs, we're putting our house up on the market without knowing if/when we're moving out of Bloomington, and so many questions cannot be answered... Do I need to have Juniper on some waiting list for a preschool somewhere? What if we sell our house before we know where we're going? Will I be able to have a space to make art in? What if we move somewhere terrible? 

Then there are all the questions that we need to answer but are exhausting to think about... Do we want to move with this/donate that/sell those? Are we going to have to repaint our whole kitchen ceiling or just the part that has exploded beer stains? Should I close up my Chipmunk Cheeks shop to focus on other arts? (that question has been lurking for years).

On a typical day all these unanswered/unanswerable questions leave me a bit paralyzed so I just print/ship any orders I need to, watch some Parks and Rec or something brainless, and have some dark chocolate for lunch, and otherwise go about my day with Juniper. Today I started tweeting about life feeling like it's on hold. Then I switched it to a question- "what do you do when your life is on hold?"-then I switched "on hold" to "paused"- then I answered my own question- "press play." 

What does that mean for me? It means not focusing on the unanswerable questions, enjoying our incredible daughter, and embracing the part of the future that I'm looking forward to (hello purging/organizing/packing! (yes- i like those things)). It means turning off the voice in my brain that says "if you can't be doing x, y, and z with your art, then you're not moving in the right direction." Sure, I'd love to be painting massive wreaths and finding my place in the gallery art world- but that's just not going to happen right now. So instead I'm going to draw one small wreath today. Or maybe I'll draw a bigfoot and put him on a stick and take pictures of him hiding- that sounds like fun. Or maybe I'll work on the play kitchen I'm building for Juniper's 2nd b-day. Playing is not about beating yourself up for what you should be/could be/wish you were doing. 

When paused you can press stop, fast forward, rewind, or play. Today I'm pressing play.