Resolute

Oh hello 2015. You just sort of slipped in the back door when I wasn't noticing. Maybe because I got sick between Christmas and New Year's and got snowed in as well, and just languished in bed like a Bronte sister on a bad day.

Unfortunately every one of them, Charlotte, Anne, Emily, and even brother, Bramwell, died of Tuberculosis. I don't think my puny bronchitis qualified as a serious illness.

Sad Victorians aside, I think everyone should take a week off to languish. Have soup brought to you, prop up on pillows and read books, doodle in a sketchbook, check e-mail, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest in random order, play Words With Friends, text your daughter on the phone, in the same house, and have her brew a nice cup of Earl Grey in the kitchen. Ah yes, and after a week, you can emerge three pounds lighter, pale as a waning moon, fully rested, muscles a bit limp, and step outside to squint at the lemony sun.

I enjoyed my reading time, especially as my sweet husband gave me a Kindle Fire for Christmas:

But then it's back to work. Yoga and the art studio. I need a new goal this year. I have artwork in a current show but then nothing on the horizon.

In the spirit of DIY I usually decide to have a show with some sort of theme then just go out and see what gallery (or coffee shop, or even my own house) wants to show my art. It's nice that there are enough local venues to allow that to happen. But for now I am fallow. Maybe that was the point of lying in bed for a week, to recharge, to renew, to restore. A new year with new ideas. At one point I never would have dared or hoped or envisioned that I could just create my own life, that I could make things happen by just deciding to. That is a frame of mind that was a long time coming. If even the Brontes, dying from tuberculosis in a bleak, drafty house on the moors could create great literature, then surely I can continue making art and finding ways to show it. Hope is nothing without action.