Florida Scarf. Where has it been? Where is it going?

As many of you know, my husband has been separated from me and the girls, deployed in Germany. He recently surprised us and came home for Christmas. It was awesome, but that is not what this article is about.

The day he came home was the day my domain name renewal was due for GoDaddy. Every other year since 2007 I have renewed early. (I pay all of my bills early. I am never late.) But in the end of 2016 I was dragging my feet on paying my dues to my website hosts. Truthfully, I’ve been feeling crummy about the business.

Here’s the part where you say, “You still have a business? Wow. I thought you just did the baby-thing.”

And I say, “In theory. Yes. I have a business. But I am spending more time doing the baby-thing.”

Throughout Autumn, on my walks and before I fell asleep, I thought a lot about what I could do with my career; where I should go. When you take a serious interest in the work of turning babies into children it doesn’t leave many hours in the day to work on anything else. It fries your brain. I thought about reaching out to you, the public, my friends and readers, for your opinions (suggestions) and I couldn’t even find the time to do that.

That sounds unbelievable. Doesn’t it? I had time to clean. I had time to make dinner and bake cookies. I puréed the food from dinner for lunch the next day because the babies didn’t want to chew it. I washed and folded cloth diapers. I excercised. I showered. I caught up on the last season of Downton Abbey and the latest season of Mozart in the Jungle. I could have skipped any of that. But I didn’t.

My point is…I haven’t been prioritizing my creative outlets and I can’t figure out if I should be.

Balance has been avoiding me.

As luck would have it I was able to renew my domain name, even after allowing it to linger in Internet limbo for almost three weeks. And I paid the website host too. So I’m back in business for another year. It may be a long time before I’m back to blogging twice a week and sewing or painting everyday, but I just can’t give up.

I’ve thought a bit about where this year will go. (I didn’t think too hard, because things never work out how you plan.)

I’d like if I could get myself back to blogging weekly. That’s 49-50 articles for this year. (depending on when I actually get around to posting this article) It’s a moderate feat that anyone who likes to talk about themselves should be able to comlpete. I’d love to finish a painting each month. 12 for the year, no matter how large or small. And maybe some doodling, but that’s it.  Sewing is out of the question. (for now) Unfortunately, I have no machine. The reality of my situation is that I am still living in PA(and enjoying it thouroughly), with all of my belongings in TX, with no idea of when I will be returning to TX, and further less of an idea how many of my belongings will come out of storage when I get back to TX because I have no idea how long I will stay in TX. How productive could I really pressure myself to be?!

In the future, hopefully as soon as this time next year, I’d love to be back to copious amounts of sewing, painting, and sharing. But for the time being I feel as though I need to keep it simpler, and stay dabbling in my arts.

I am currently still working on a single project that keeps me painting. Maybe you remember. It’s a children’s book about healthy eating written by Kate Murray of The Plant Pledge. I am painting all of the images for the book. Here’s a recent illustration.

I have five more illustrations to complete the images for the book. After that, I am left with 7 paintings to complete for my year’s goal. If you have any ideas feel free to leave me a comment. (This also holds true for blog articles.)If you would like to talk about me personally painting for you please send me a message. I find I work better under outside motivation.

And if you don’t care, that’s fine too. I appreciate that you even took the time to read this far.

Good Bye.