on reinvention…

We have arrived at the reinvention time of year. That time of year when optimistic folks think they need to change the very behavior that makes them human. And being such they lapse back to their comfort zone generally within the first month.

I have not set New Year’s resolutions about as far back as I can remember. It is part of my herd-free mentality. I never want to be doing what everyone else is doing at the same time.

This is the primary reason I have not allowed my hairdresser to color my hair lavender or aqua or green. I will wait ten years until no one is doing it and then if so motivated will go for it. After all, I was the first white woman in suburbia with an afro back in the ’70s. As soon as the grannies got into the ‘fro act I was done. For me it is the same with self-improvement resolutions. I continue to be a work in progress year-round.

For the past several years I have been setting art goals for the year ahead, however. Often they have been quite optimistic yet when revisited have often come to fruition. And yet in December I was unable to find the motivation to set goals for the 2015 year.

And then it hits me. I have not written my art goals for 2015 because I am still thick in the middle of my art goals for 2014. So the primary goal is to continue on, to continue the work that is hammering me physically and psychologically. The work I have chosen to do, the work that further examines how my upbringing shaped my world view. And how I have lost balance, have no leg to stand on, have been rendered paralyzed numerous times in the past six months which has in turn kept me from my work, from my studio, from the progress I need to make to achieve this goal.

I am reminded of a therapist nearly 30 years ago when after months of talking about all the obvious said, are you now ready to deal with your childhood? I said no, I am not. I felt then it would be a gigantic can of worms that I was just not ready to look at. How wise I was then to recognize the can of worms. For now I am in the can, wiggling about, and it is still not very comfortable, let alone without the wisdom of another to guide me. And yet I feel I have only scratched the surface.

My current art goal is to continue to wade through the grief, to unravel the pain, to remember, to forgive, to have compassion, to make the work. And to create yet another body of work that impacts others to look at their own stories. I guess that is what they call ‘pay it forward’…it informs my life, both as teacher…and student.