Standing firmly with me

What have you been working on?

I have been enjoying all the answers to this prompt. Lots of good work is going on out there. I wish you all the best of luck, keep going, keep expressing and contributing. Let your work evolve you.

Back in January, Tonya Leigh put out an online workshop. It was all about setting an extraordinary goal. One. Your one goal had to be something big, something you didn’t even believe you could accomplish. Something that scared you a little. Something that you would have to become a future evolved version of yourself to work on. She told us it didn’t matter if you met your goal as much as who you would become by working on it.

I chose to finish my book. At the time I had a good start, but sort of gave up and sold some of the illustrations. I didn’t have time or extra finances for a frivolous endeavor. We had come out of the pandemic years much worse for wear. My published book was sitting in boxes in storage, it’s momentum halted. I had lost interest in social media after hearing so many heart breaking stories about young teens getting their self worth trampled on the internet I had had some weird jabs myself.

There was a lot going on that made working on another book seem partly silly and party impossible. I feared that due to the way things went with Peaceful Hearts, that my family would try to dissuade me. I knew I wasn’t going to be supported, I even knew there would be some loud silence and even some discouraging reminders of my ‘failure’.

I was going to have to become someone who didn’t care about all of that. I would have to suspend what my husband would call, reality, as I painted colorful butterfly paintings, one after the other. I was going to have to live partly outside of several very real uncomfortable circumstances.

At first I worked in secret. I hid everything behind the couch. I said nothing to anyone until I needed to drag my computer out of storage and find a place for it. I somehow played it down, but managed to get all the illustrations photographed and uploaded.

Tonya was right. I evolved. I now, truly do not care what anyone thinks about whether I should be writing a children’s picture book or not. I somehow no longer care what opinions people want to have about me and how I live my life. I am unapologetic about being an artist, a writer and a designer. I can’t help that I know exactly how to clear a space and make it look good, anymore than others can’t see what to remove or add. Why be embarrassed by what I happen to be good at or genuinely love doing?

I had someone look at Beatrix and wonder if the words were too hard for kids to understand. This was an older person who had limited interaction with children. Chrysalis is the correct term, Children don’t want to be patronized with easier not accurate language anymore than anyone does. I did not spend one second wondering about this.

I am on the computer for huge amounts of time now. Huge. I’m in another odd situation. Wide open for judgement. Not caring! Really not caring.

I am politely trying to understand crowded surfaces brimming with Knick knacks, jumbled furniture and thread bare towels, while being quite judged for being me. I remind myself that this is just part of the journey. I can turn around and judge back, but why? We all have our reasons. The one thing that Tonya says a lot, is that if you like your reasons, do it! I know they like their reasons and I respect that. All I have to do is like mine. And I do.