painting it up

I'm so exasperated with myself over my endless self recrimination. Ha ha.

I keep coming up with one more reason for not making a go of "arting" full time, and then feeling bad about it, and then wondering if I'll end up "wasting" my talent in the cesspool of humdrum. But that's silly.

I have a baby now - Mateo - and that means that my day has a few less empty spots than it did before. I get up, I eat, I go outside and do chores-for-rent. Then I clean up and go olive gardening. When I'm not doing that, I'm sleeping and getting up (on account of the screaming). Whenever I can, I wedge in an organizational moment in the development of my new website (woot! woot! hold on to your butts!), but I really haven't been able to find time yet to do any painting.

I'm going to be interviewed in maybe a month at this church art thing, and they're going to ask me how having a baby has changed the art I'm making, and I think I'm just going to have to shrug my shoulders and say, "what art?" But that's OK. Because life is art of the best kind, and making life is where life is really at. If that's a no-brainer, then color me vacuous.

The reality is, we went through a brain-rattling ordeal. Nobody expects to go through eighteen hours of labor, followed by a c-section and a week of real-life zero spousal sleepytime - but that's the reality. So I'm going to choose to be OK with that, and to make the art of my life into the most beautiful piece I've ever painted.

I guess that's what I can say, at church. That having a baby has made me into a cheeseball.