The Be Brave Project--Days One and Two

I'm participating in the month-long "Be Brave" project, featured over at Jessie's blog--the badge in the sidebar will take you to the original post and explanation.

I did this before, and it helped me to make some important changes in my life. This time around I'm going to post about what I've done. Some of the time I'll just be taking baby steps, and I was going to apologize for how 'unbrave' I've been lately--but I'm not going to apologize. I can only do the things that I need to do, and I shouldn't be comparing them to anyone else's...(I do that all the time, compare, that is, and I'm stating here that I want to stop. I especially seem to do it when I know it will make me feel inadequate, and I know that there's no point in that. So I'm going to stop.)

Yesterday I called the gallery where some of my pieces are hanging. I don't know why this is so hard for me to do, but it is. I'm going over tomorrow with my friends Geri and Nancy, to see the pieces that are hanging at Cafe 225--I told them that if they drive us over in their Prius, I'll spring for lunch--and I wanted to make sure that that the seven pieces I took over last week are up with the others. Well, they aren't hanging at 225, only the original three are hanging there; the other seven are in the gallery and won't be going up at the cafe venue. She explained why, and I don't think that I'm getting the whole story, but I'm letting it go. They're all ten up somewhere, and that's what I wanted.

Today my brave thing was that I left the kids in the house and came out to my studio. I didn't say no about anything in particular, but it feels as though I've been tailoring my life to completely enable their social schedules. I've backed down on having them do their chores, and today I stuck to my guns. I'm not really explaining this very well, but I guess that the crux of it is this: If my art were a normal job, I'd still be going every day even during the summer. I'm lucky that it's not, and I can spend time hanging out with the kids--but--I need to continue making art. I NEED TO SPEND TIME IN THE STUDIO. And today I told the kids. They were fine with it, btw--probably even relieved to get me out from underfoot...