going inward

until it's time for a bigger shell

Do you ever put off things that you enjoy? I think we all do this. We put our bliss at the bottom of the list. We think we have to complete the drudgery before we earn a bit of happiness. For me, I think it’s because my best time of day to do anything is the morning- it’s when I have the juiciest creative energy, when I have the motivation for exercise, when I feel compelled to reorganize closets and scrub toilets. After lunch there’s very little that I can accomplish. And lately I’ve been using my mornings (of my days off, that is) to go to the gym, then I come home and shower and eat lunch and that’s it, I’ve used up my potential for the day. I mean, I can still get stuff done, but it’s a struggle.

This morning after dropping Mina off at school I decided to skip the gym, as my body needs a rest day. I considered a brisk walk up Mt. Tabor, but realized what I really needed was some good solid time in the art room. I refilled my coffee mug, got out my watercolors, and put on some Olive Klug. I actually just found out about this musician yesterday, I saw a video of theirs on Instagram and I was instantly hooked. Seriously, check them out. I started painting some tide pools and hermit crabs. Since our San Diego trip I’ve been wanting to paint some tide pools. They are such cool little self contained temporary worlds, like living collages. I’ve always had a love for hermit crabs in particular, ever since reading Pagoo in 6th grade, which is a beautiful illustrated book about a hermit crab. And yes, I recognize the significance, as I tend to have hermit tendencies myself.

The other night I had a dream that I was working on an art book, a big book filled with paintings and collages. It was an art book just for me; I wasn’t planning on showing it to anyone, at least not right away. When I woke up I realized that maybe I need that right now- maybe I need to be more private, more tucked away, more selective about the things I share with the public. I’m so used to making something and then immediately posting it to social media, so that often I’m aware of that as I’m creating the thing- already thinking of it as something I will present to the world. And I’m so comfortable with sharing personal things about myself that every so often I feel exposed and vulnerable, like a hermit crab who has left an old shell behind to search for a bigger one. A couple years ago when we were exploring tide pools at Cape Lookout, we saw a shell-less hermit crab, and it looked so strange and wrong. We kept finding empty shells and placing them in front of the crab, hoping it would choose one and crawl inside but it never did.

This seems like a good time of year to go inward, to crawl inside my shell for a while. I realize the irony of doing a post about not sharing, but I thought I’d let you know why I’m going to disappear for a month or two. I want to see what it feels like to create things just for myself for a while.