I’ve been thinking a lot about loss.
There is so much loss in so many of my friends’ and family members’ lives right now.
Loss is so universal and so incredibly, exquisitely personal at the same time.

I sat in the garden this morning with my paints for the first time in a long time, painting, thinking, and looking at the flowers. Dad gave me a flat of zinnias starts this spring, and they’re really taking off right now. The heads are so cheerful and improbable, big mops of unapologetic colour. While I was sitting there the flowers were visited by all kinds of critters, among them were our honeybees, a big swallowtail butterfly, and even a hummingbird. Seeing the painting in its current state in the photo above makes me realize I’ve signed it prematurely, it’s not finished yet. Once completed, it will be a gift for a family member I’ve not seen in years who has just lost her husband to cancer.

It’s been hard to allow myself to put pen to paper lately, to do some drawing and to move some personal projects forward. I used to have a home-based business in which I managed all manner of projects for myself and for others, and with that was able to do a surprising number of things. I look back at it now and am astonished at the personal risk-taking I did, how I managed to get out of my own way. I can remember having real difficulty some days in getting to the work, but somehow managed to accumulate a good body of it, regardless. Maybe someday I’ll look back at this time and see it in the same way. It’s so hard to know.

There’s so much emphasis on performance. How do I measure success for myself? These days, it’s becoming more and more about being than it is about doing. That being said, I have real difficulty settling when I’m not doing something. Like today, doing something about my feelings around this loss.

Back to the painting. On to the next thing. Thanks for reading.