I Left My Heart in San Francisco

Well maybe not San Francisco, but I have been sooooo busy making hearts for all the wonderful shop owners I am fortunate enough to make them for. I have some brand new designs, some new color combinations, and some new outlets. It's been so much fun coming up with all this newness year round and of course visiting all the wonderful shop owners too.

But now I'm ready to hunker down and really get down to the business that makes my heart sing. My real heart not the little fabric ones. It has been a really artistic time and somewhere in the last year I finally made that shift to being a working artist, so now it is time to work. I love to work and I have set some goals for myself and for that work and so far so good.

I keep waiting for the moment that I wake up from this dream and so far it just is not happening. I am still embroidering more than I'm not. I am still listening to my mood changing Black Keys(really heartbreak is so much more attractive with a beat to it). I've tried to stop indoctrinating others with the Black Keys but I still love to embroider(and everything else) to them so I'm just going with the flow and the beat and the drums(I really do think I want to take drum lessons, and guitar lessons and voice lessons) or perhaps I will just continue to use them as my muse for embroidery since they make me happy.

I've finally made that connection that doing what you love, finding inspiration from whereever it may come, and once again just basically doing what you love is the answer. I've read that sentence in many, many books. Just follow your bliss and everything good will flow from it. But reading those words and living them are two different things. It requires a commitment to your vision and to your medium. It requires risk taking and a tough skin. It requires perseverance and most of all it requires marching to your own drummer. Walking out to the tip of your limb just before falling and living there for a while. So many self sabotaging habits happen trying to stay on that tip. Can I do the hard thing and wear my heart on my sleeve or on my hand embroidery or should I just stay here nice and warm and play on the computer or play solitaire or any other of the number of things that keep me in my safe place. I've had to walk out on that limb and I've started to make a little hand embroidered cocoon to keep me safe. For many years I played it safe. I hid my own light under the biggest bushel I could find and basically camped out there probably with a donut or a bag of chips. Unfortunately the bag of chips is still in there somewhere but it's a smaller bag.

So many artists try and fail. They give up just when the breakthrough comes. It happened to me a few years ago. Luckily I have tremendous friends who support me through this journey. They wouldn't let me give up. And finally that light under the bushel is not at the end of the tunnel. It is kept safe and secure on a piece of fabric somewhere waiting to be beckoned.

Once again a reminder, find something you love that you do that gives you joy. Find something enjoyable that can be the background for your joy. Find the time in your life to do it. Find the right people to support your dreams and work really hard and then fly off that limb into wonderfulness. God has a dream for all of us and I think the most important thing in the world is for each and every one of us to find it. Look under the bushel for your light.

A little preachy, but when I was struggling at the beginning of this post, this is the way it came out. Blessings.

PS I Left My Heart in San Francisco is a wonderful song by the sublime Tony Bennett(as if you didn't know but just in case you don't give it a listen, I love Tony Bennett)