Hello (Again) World!

Blog, my friend! It's so good to see you again!

Euka the Wonderful

What? Hey--wait. Why so mad? I quit you? I just abandoned you?
No! No, no, no--it wasn't like that. You don't understand. Let me explain. See, life got very, very lifey. When I say very, I mean very. Since the last time I posted here, I've been through a lot.

I started and ended an LLC art business.

We adopted another love-bug of a giant, sweet rescue dog named Euka (who brought the words, "Green chicken!" into our daily vernacular.)

Lots of things changed with my job, in that I work at a different location in a different part of town and I'm now managing a different grant with a brand new staff.

Old car, new car. Same thing.

I was in a wreck that totaled my car. (You remember, the car that I bought a few years ago and loved enough to blog about it? Yes, that car. R.I.P. Mazie Bear.)

I lost my mom. 

Then, there's the biggest change of all:
I spawned a human.

Meet Landon, the coolest one-year-old on the planet. Cutest, sweetest, smartest, and happiest, too.  Trust me.

Small, smart, and handsome indeed.

Becoming a mom is the single most difficult and wonderful thing I have ever done. It's hard. Extremely. But it's so, so worth it. Landon is my very favorite of all the possible favorites, along with his dad, of course. 

There are probably a million other things that have gotten between this blog and me over the last few years, and they got between myself a lot of other things that I love as well. I went through the longest period of writer's block of my life. I stopped doing so many of the creative and artistic things I love because I spent so much of my energy just trying to navigate my way from dawn to dusk without ending the day less than I started.

The only way out of a hole is to climb, so here I am, scrambling my way back up the cliff and reclaiming my creativity. This weekend I attended a writer's retreat with my "long-distance" writing group from Nashville, Pretty in Ink.

I had no idea how much I needed a weekend away to shock my system out of its rut. The scenery was breathtaking, and being around those fierce, talented women inspired me to follow through with the three goals for the weekend:

1. Make progress on my pesky ten-year-old novel that I've restarted yet again. This time, I think I've really gotten to the root of where I was derailed, and I did make progress.

2. Write a blog post. I think it's safe to say that I accomplished this goal, even though I waited until I was back home to get it posted.

3. Submit a short story for publication. This was the big one. I don't know what my problem is with submitting my work. I can get amazing feedback, edit myself into a coma, finally get my stories polished to a shine, and then...nothing. I just kind of leave them sitting there on my computer in their folder, napping and twiddling their little thumbs. This weekend, I yanked one out and submitted it to two contests.

So, blog, my friend--I did not abandon you. I just wandered from the trail. I worked my way back, though, and maybe I'm a little worse for the wear, but here I am all the same. I don't know if I can commit to a regular posting schedule like I had before, but I can work on getting myself back into the groove with some kind of regularity. I have a lot of cool things simmering--some cool art commissions, and a very cool collaboration with Ellen Morris Prewitt that is as unique as it is fun.  I'm spending a lot of time trucking away on my part of that project, but I don't want to spoil it until it's time to unveil the results.

Life might have gotten a whole lot more complicated for me over the last few years, but what I've learned through all the hills and valleys, squinting through the fog, is that it creativity is what connects me to the life I'm living. It is through the arts that I experience the world, and how I participate in it. Otherwise, I'm just free-spinning through life, and I can't think of a more wasted opportunity than that.

Here's to the road ahead, and may every bump and curve become inspiration.