It's Taking Too Long

Oddly enough that popped up on my email this morning while I was loading Autumn Tree, which is hand embroidery framed in a 3 ½ x 4 ½ in antique frame available through the blog for $65.00.  It reminded me that autumn trees are almost upon us and yes my dreams are taking too long.

My dreams are not really taking too long but it is easy to convince yourself that everyone deserves to be an overnight(or several nights) success.  But life has a way of happening to us if we don’t take charge of our own dreams and our own life, we can sometimes get caught in the mud of other people’s expectations for us and yes we disappoint them when we are not overnight successes or on top of things we should be on top of.

I am a free spirited artist who never really held to schedules very well.  I have a great capacity to work hard but time management skills are not my forte, therefore I need a lot of inspiration and motivation to do just about anything, including embroider and certainly market myself.  So it looks like everything is taking too long, but then you think about all the artists of the world who work so darn hard every single day and never sell a piece of their art it makes me realize I’m not alone.  On the other hand I don’t want to be one of those posthumous artists whose work sells unbelievably well after they have died.  I want to be able to pay my bills with my art.  That’s it, no posthumous wealth, no million dollar commissions, just pay my bills and yes when you are faced with this job market and no options other than slinging hash or serving it (I’m seriously considering the second option so if you are a restaurateur with a need for a waitress with no experience) art is the answer and yes it is taking too long.  Well not really I do have a small nest egg to live off of and a dream.

So you see there it is in a nut shell (a pecan).  I am not even good at time management skills when I want to embroider which I love, so how the heck am I ever going to keep up with the kids in McDonalds if it comes to that?  I’m not.  I wasn’t good at keeping up with the kids in Burger King when I was 16 and was called Dining Room Debbie for a reason.  So I’m an artist who writes a quirky blog with too many words and I have to figure out a way to make the things I love marketable enough to become a pay my bills success.  There probably aren’t enough hours in the day to figure those two things out but yet here I am at it again.

I guess I’m just a little melancholy today also, not for the Dining Room Debbie days but for the mom days and my beautiful one and only son is going to be a senior in UAlbany today and this is the first time in his life I didn’t make him French toast for the first day (ok sometimes it was the second day) of school.  Being his mother was the one thing I was always good at and feeding him was a joy (sometimes I think more for me than him).  So forgive me if I look you squarely in the eyes and say yes I know my life is taking too long for me to figure out and you are very disappointed in me, but I’m doing the best I can and would you please give that disappointing person in your own life a hug because they are trying too.

Sometimes we have to look in the mirror and say someday my prince will come, or sometime my prints will sell, or sometime soon I will figure out the meaning of life, but how boring would that be? 

Thanks for reading.  I am very melancholy and very proud of my one and only son who reminds me even more now that I am not with him every day that he was always the reason I woke up in the morning.  Have a great day and remember to be kind to the disappointing in your life.