It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating.

--Oscar Wilde

The Model Millionaire

Ahh this made me laugh.

We leave Guanajuato in twelve days. Leaving Mexico is the end of a project that began a year and a half ago....or perhaps decades ago when somehow I committed to the idea that my (then imaginary) children should experience another culture fully. Meantime on the meat and potatoes front, Jake, my better half, has sent a book off to a publisher and is headed back into some contract writing. I’m finishing a few commissions.

Last week my son Max wrote a summary of the last year of his grade 8 year, homeschooling in the fall and living in Mexico for six months, the crunchy with the smooth. It has been quite a (school) year for all of us.

Completing a major life goal, contemplating the impact this has had on my work and and chewing on new directions for the future is both exciting and daunting. Singer/songwriter (oh, and close personal friend!) Jennifer Noxon wrote,

No plan is the best plan of all,

I’m throwing my hat to the wind,

I’m taking time to answer my call with

No plan, no plan at all.

These lines have been like a duvet on a cold day for me over the years. They remind me of wintry Saturday morning with coffee, when the day opens up before you without deliverables. I’m a person who has avoided and then finally yielded to internal directives, often doubted her own plan, and then gone ahead, usually hand in hand with my good friend Trepidation.

I love when we can let go of how things will unfold, suspending one’s “to do” list, put aside the Evaluation, and feeling safe, expansive and idly curious enough to sit back and allow the world to unfold around you. This delicious headspace is not unlike my experience of painting which has never felt like “work” ; a place where I feel safe to explore, where any number of things can rise to the surface and there is neither time nor performance.

The title of the above painting is “Sometimes It is Okay not to Know” a concept I was vaguely musing on while painting a measuring device!