Why Anyone?

Cool Looking Crepe Myrtles

The time after my first solo show has invoked what I imagine what most bands feel like after they release their first album. They have spent their lifetimes building up to that big break and once they have released the album and it's successful, all they hear is "when is your next album coming out?" and "what are you working on now?" While I didn't spend my lifetime preparing for my show, I was immersed in the series for three years. I went through the during the show publicity and chatting it up period, the post-show exhaustion period, the post-post show giddiness of "that was a really cool experience" period, and now I am in the experimenting, exploring and figuring out what am I going to do next period.

Life and its various curve balls have come at me while I have been working on ideas, sketches and studies. I have begun teaching at the Art League, which I love, and I've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is just bullshit and has me an alternately stoic superwoman who isn't going to let a stupid disease stop me from doing anything to a bawling mess trying to pull it together so I can leave my car to go into the grocery store to buy a dozen eggs.

The good news is that this bullshit disease has been caught early and I'm not dying and it's chronic but treatable and it could be very much worse and I can still paint and draw with minimal pain and I know that I should be very grateful because other people are going through much worse shit than this, but all the rationalizing in the world doesn't stop the fact that I have to process this before I can move on. Don't worry, this will not turn into a "why me" or disease chronicle. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't give up easily or ever, so I'm sure that this will eventually register as just another minor blip on the radar. Right now though, it's fresh and I've gotta get it out so I can get back to painting those pretty pictures!