It is a sign of the times that New Year Resolutions are edited to one-word aspirations. Poetically, I prefer pairs. I was toying with the pandemic-inspired incongruence of intimacy and solitude. Inspiration and intuition were also contenders. Patience and practice always make the cut. However, false start and finish strong kept resonating in the back of my mind. Those are runners’ terms. I am not a runner. But that’s what came calling.
2020 taught me nothing!
Over the holidays, I started contemplating 2021. I was daring enough to have expectations! I don’t know why the flip of a calendar would make everything better. Still, I was thinking and planning. Writing events in pen. But the holidays were a false start to a new and different year. My husband had a major health scare. The kind that makes you reevaluate. He has made a miraculous recovery and is doing really well. He is definitely a finish strong kind of guy.
All Better
Many of you may know that my husband is the Steve in Steve Ellis Automotive Services. Did you know that I worked for him for a short time? I was a really bad secretary. I made up for abysmal typing skills with enthusiasm for our mission to change peoples’ experiences with car repair. 26 years ago, we met when I was his customer. I had been treated badly by someone else, but he made it all better.
Purging
It is at Steve’s workplace where the remains of Fabulon, my art gallery, have been stored. Soon we are moving to a new garage without the storage space. *Insert freak out emoji here or that quote about not really an empty nest until the kids get their stuff out of the attic.* I had packed Fabulon away, but hadn’t really let go. Purging was arduous. And emotional.
Hitting the wall
These new year transitions were consuming my time and keeping me from the studio. I needed a break. While pacing the parking lot, I caught sight of the most precious cherub. While waiting for service she and her mother were also pacing the parking lot. Only 3, she was captivated with the scraps of metal scattered about. She examined and collected with curiosity and abandonment. She was singing and happy. No editor, no worrying, no negativity that is often an adult default. Bravo to Mom, too, for just letting her be. The art teacher in me had to comment on the creativity displayed in the child’s play. We know collecting is a sign of genius.
The following day, I returned to Steve to find this sweet card waiting on me from the little girl.
Back on task
I felt renewed in spirit. The boxes before me were no longer a hot mess but testimonies of graduate school, a teaching career, and all that Fabulon was. Direction and discernment resurfaced. The answers and the energy were summoned. I got the job done.
Reinvigorated
Despite the false starts I did more than finish strong on the moving project. I remembered that time is a construct. And it is amorphous. That new year feeling of rejuvenation can happen anytime.
And there will be time for the studio again. Art guru Julia Cameron says “Bright ideas are often preceded by a gestation period that is interior, murky, and completely necessary.”
I often use the earthly analogy of lying fallow until the next cycle of planting and growth. This inspired a better word of the year!
Reinvigoration: the act of imparting renewed strength, vitality, and vigor back into something, cause to be alert and energetic, heighten and intensify.