As May is winding down, I realize I have been a bit neglectful of my happy little blog. Well, that's not exactly the truth. The truth is, I've been getting my life back in order after our move across the ocean! It's exciting and fun and busy. Things are starting to come together a bit around here (soon I'll have pictures of my new library dining room! And colorful staircase!). Basically, I've been unpacking; both my literal baggage from living abroad and also my experiences of the last two years.
Well there's all that and I've been on extra Mom duty. We had a little calamity here...
Oscar's fine. It's nothing much. It will heal good and fast and strong. But this is all just to say, I've been busy being a mom too. It's not only the repatriation issues and broken bones that I've been wrestling with. There's also kindergarten (Oscar will start this fall). I've been trying to figure out our options for kindergarten and I've been visiting schools and calling other parents to ask questions, on and on.
Wait, what was that?
I hear a inner voice.
Is it a critic?
Perhaps...
Or maybe it's just myself acknowledging myself.
Hi self.
"Kjersten, this blog is for your art. For your passion, vocation, and calling. This blog is not a mommy blog. What the heck are you writing right now?"
Well, I've had to set myself aside a bit this past month.
*She waves her head at herself in disgust and stares herself in the mirror and wags a finger at her own face: "I thought you were committed to your dream too! You have to take care of yourself, too!"*
But... Doesn't it suck to be hard on yourself either way? To feel guilty to work...
(There isn't a current pressing deadline with my work after all — I've often been wishing there was — and meanwhile there IS a lot of pressing personal deadlines with getting things in order outside of my art right now)
...and at the same time to feel guilty about not working more?
(How are you ever going to be a
real artist if you don't make time to work, even when other things are pressing?)
And now I might feel guilty that I'm being hard on myself.
And now I might feel guilty that I feel guilty.
Ugh. Now I'm just annoying myself.
Does this struggle back and forth sound familiar to anyone else?
If this sort of struggle never happens to you, bless you. I admire your ability to shake off the guilt and always know how to prioritize.
It is a well known fact that mommas sometimes have to juggle. We do. It happens. It's a clear suspect in why sometimes our careers lag behind those of our male counterparts.
No, no, no, you may say. It doesn't have to be that way. But.
Isn't it often the truth?
We can even see it ourselves.
It makes us mad.
Normally at ourselves.
And yet,
would I have it another way?
I'm not sure.
I don't think so.
I love being a mom.
But I'm an artist too.
Just saying...
That's what's on my plate right now.
All that and...
I've set aside June to finish my studio and get back to work!
It's haunting me that I completed two black and white pieces of art right in the thick of the worst of the chaos (because I wanted to make a deadline) and
I liked them. That means I was capable of meeting a deadline even if I had all that other stuff on my plate. I'm wishing I had more of those sorts of deadlines! Someone throw a curve-ball deadline at me, will you? I'm anxious for another challenge of that sort. I can't believe I'm writing that!
I read a line in a newspaper the other day that seems related just now somehow. The woman in the article was telling a story and one line of it stuck out to me. She said: "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think I was up for the job."
I feel that way about my art. About my commitment.
My muse is chomping at the bit.
And so the juggling act goes on.
