I know it probably seems like everything is going swell with all the studio stuff, and it mostly is, I guess, but I think what doesn’t come across is how frequently I am WRACKED with insecurity about why I’m doing this at all, how can I possibly call myself an artist, shouldn’t I go back to grad school first, aren’t I supposed to be writing anyway, etc. and so on.
I’m in a pretty down mood about it all today, for no particular reason. Maybe just because I’m tired, or because apparently our country is committed to doing stupid and dangerous political things on a daily basis, or because Kavi left us to go back to college yesterday.
Or maybe it’s just aging and menopause and it’s reasonable to be tired after hauling a store’s worth of stuff from two locations to another location and moving furniture and bins around twenty times to try to find the right spots for them. Plus, I’ve just started to swim again after four months when I couldn’t carve out any time for exercise.
This past fall was insane, folks, working sixteen hour days most days, doing my best to teach well and be there for my students (because I’m still working full time as a professor), and then coming home and trying desperately to make enough stuff to keep the store stocked so I could make enough money to pay my staff — I couldn’t even figure out how to fit in my regular doctor and dentist appointments; I’m finally scheduling them all now. AND a therapist, which has been on my to-do list for at least a year. Go me.
I have a week now, when I’m still ‘on vacation,’ in theory, and I’m going to try to use it to set some more sustainable habits. Yes, exercise daily. Yes, doctor and dentist appointments. Yes, keeping up with my e-mail (and I am so sorry for how very behind I got last fall — things were just falling out of my head on the regular. My memory got shockingly worse in the last year, and I should probably do a sleep study, another thing to discuss with the doctor, sigh). Yes, more rest.
And if all that means the studio moves at a slower pace, that’s okay. Especially since I’m not sure why I think I can do this anyway.
Did you know I’m bad with money? I’m really really bad with money, and mostly rely on Kevin to keep us financially stable as a household. But he doesn’t do anything for the business unless I ask him, and he really doesn’t want to take on the business finances too, and I can’t blame him for that. Still, no one should ever put me in charge of anything that is expected to make a profit. (Non-profits and public goods like schools and libraries, I do better.)
Anyway, gah. This is been a brain dump of my slightly miserable mood today. I’ll probably be better tomorrow. Here, have a picture of the little pendants I made for two of my nieces — one of them loves cats, and the other loves dragons. Cats and dragons, I can do.
