It's officially the first day of Spring here in Australia. It's unfathomable to me how quickly the past months have rolled by. I have been making a lot, dabbling with ceramics more and more, and working on commissions which I'm ever so grateful for. I created a new shop and filled it with new stock. I spent hours and hours on detailed pen and ink drawings, stretching myself to learn patience and skill. And all the while the pandemic has continued around the world and has worsened here in Australia. It's been an odd year, full of strange realisations about the world, and revelations about my place in it. I spent the first 6 months of this year completely sober as a test of my inner strength, but now I am back to enjoying heady elixirs and feeling ambivalent about setting those kinds of tests for myself. Sometimes the narratives I've created for myself have been unduly negative and the ease with which I was able to change my behaviour for a period of time has me questioning how easily I fall into roles and also how simple it can be to create new ones. I sometimes wonder why I should bother creating anything at all, after all, we're all heading to the same place. Then I laugh and see how beautiful and rare it is to be a human that gets to dedicate their life to the thing that they love most.
This is my mind of late - spiralling thoughts that twist and turn into and outside of themselves. At one time I am confused and then in the next moment I am most certain. Ahhh, what an adventure this inner life can be! With all that in mind, my creative offerings have been rather varied and broad. The studio tinkering has been a bit nutty all year and I've flipped and flopped between projects, some of which are still begging to be resolved.
But now, with this change in season I feel a renewed vigour to dedicate myself only to those things which ignite my spark. Less 'meh' and more 'YEAH!' is what I'm after! What that looks like for me is hours upon hours of drawing, nights spent tinkering with lace and string, crafting creatures out of beautiful old textiles, taking walks and being overwhelmed by the softness of the dusk light on the hills. It is me creating my own world out of what I am given. You see, over the past 5 years I have been nurturing my own truth, softly reaching inside myself and coaxing out the wonder and enchantment that I used to have for the world. Now I feel so ready to just unleash it without fear. I've realised that it is all for me and it always has been! This world, this life, is mine to embrace and mine to co-create. It is now my goal to throw out as much magic as I can.