But This IS Work...

Since making the joint decision this May that I would try to get back into becoming the full-time artist that I know I can be, I have been on an emotional roller coaster, and if anyone knows me at all, they know that a roller coaster is not my favorite place to be, and that emotional ones are definitely not my cup of tea.

This is not helped by my husband, who for months supported that decision prior to my leaving my physically and mentally draining retail job, and note the operative word here is "prior," and is now creating drama on a daily basis as to when I'm going to start earning my keep.

I'm two months in to working out the kinks, doing the research, exploring different festivals to become engaged in, creating mounds of artwork and still waking up at 4 a.m. I work a minimum of six hours a day, seven days a week, at creating my niche in the world that I hope will carry me through to the end of days.

I also have two novels that are screaming to be completed, and I know that they will be funny and creative and interesting and engaging, but I'll be damned if I can justify (to myself or to my partner) sitting down to finish them.

I work hard at this, putting my soul out there in bits of paper and paint, and I can't seem to get it across that because I am not doing physically demanding WORK, it is still WORK. My husband, a blue-collar worker who loves his job, makes good money and has not been otherwise adversely impacted by the decision except that he has to pay a little more attention to groceries than what new thing he can get for his sailboat, which for the past two years has been a very expensive place to go and drink beer  and costs the price of an apartment to dock. And, I am well aware that standing on my feet for eight hours a day under fluorescent lights listening to the same horrible pop songs over and over again and having women yell at me for being stupid (my IQ is 143 at last measure) because the store didn't carry a particular color of thread is not my idea of a good work environment.

Florida artists do not typically exhibit at art festivals in June, July and August. It's just too hot. And, there aren't really any shows available because, well, it's too hot. And it rains every afternoon, usually in accompaniment with wind gusts in excess of 20 mph. So, you can see the dilemma of turning in a work resignation in May, with no real hope of a profitable festival until September, and that's chancy.

I reasoned that this would be a good time for me to up the art inventory levels, get the house painted (inside and out), the mosaic kitchen backsplashes and countertops completed, change out the electrical outlets and light fixtures, finish tiling the bedroom floors and landscape the yard, all in anticipation of diving into two festivals a month come January. My hubby reasoned that I would make enough money to open an offshore account with the first festival, and we would drink cases and cases of Corona Light off the deck of his now-working sailboat in Cane Garden Bay.

We DID talk about it. We DID go over the debt ratios, the viability factors, the positive support levels I would need to continue, because I have worked outside my home my entire life (except for the ill-fated six years I moved to Kentucky and opened an art gallery in the middle of a town of 3,100 people whose primary source of income was farming). Work doesn't bother me. Working outside the house doesn't bother me. Working in a negative work environment does.

Artists need positive support, and believe it or not, we know our own limits, financially and emotionally. We know how much we can take, and how much we can't. Is it any wonder why there is a high alcoholism and suicide rate among the creatives? We are our own worst critics and become our own worst enemies. Just have faith. Believe that we can fly and we will.