Sometimes, my journal is about words.
I have been in a long fallow period, waiting to hear about a job (I did not get it), waiting to see where my work will take me. It takes so much trust to know you can just be, and not be making and doing all the time, and that it is okay to be with the space, to not struggle or strive or despair . . . that sometimes the long spaces of life just need to happen. To know that the cup must become empty before it can be filled.
I worked on a series of collagy-watercolory owls last year, I had 12 that I liked enough to be a calender, and a publisher, through my rep, is looking at them.
and as I wait for an answer, there are numerous other things to do, but somehow I am still in the waiting mode.
I applied for a job, had an interview, waited, waited, waited to see how much my life might change.
For my art's sake, it was better not to get this job.
I will pick up the watercolors soon (next week!!!) but for now, I think the waiting has been okay.
A philosopher, Meno, once asked: "How will you go about finding that thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you?"
Sometimes the hidden and mysterious take patience to discover, and all the busyness we think we are supposed to constantly inhabit can result in missing a subtle quiet whisper of what is to come next.
My journal is the place I can release the words of wondering, insecurity about what I am to do, lists of maybes and what-ifs and intentions. and once I've done this, done the day-dreaming (and night dreaming) and setting intentions and goals and planning paths, I can sit and see what happens next.
I am waiting.
"Certainly for artists of all stripes, the unknown, the idea or the form or the take that has not yet arrived, is what must be found. It is the job of an artist to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar, it's where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own."
--Rebecca Solnit
