Most every day, as soon as I step into the Airstream to dabble with work, I find myself feeling kind of amazed. With myself, with Robert, with life…with Goodness.
I. Worked. So. Hard.
For this Airstream.
For a portable studio space.
For the right to live where my husband lives in the summertime.
For the health and well being of my marriage and a nomadic lifestyle.
How did I do it? I did it the old fashioned way! I slaved in the studio until I had enough profit from my work (after paying the mortgage, buying groceries, paying all other living expenses and resupplying my work materials…) for us to purchase this big old rig. Then, I funded the refurbishing, and continue to fund the refurbishing with the profits from my work. It’s been a pure kind of business funding business. No credit cards. No loans. No inheritance to squander. No nothing, besides elbow grease, early mornings and late nights. And let me tell you, it hasn’t been cheap. Not even remotely. With that said, let me also say that Robert has toiled and worked his head off his broad and attractively well-muscled shoulders doing all the physical construction work on the refurbishing of the Airstream and he is, as you all know by now, utterly incredible and painstakingly perfectionist in all his project work. To put it lightly, he is my better half.
When we hooked up the Airstream to the truck in May and hauled it up to Washington, I spent a lot of time looking in the rear-view mirror as we streaked down the highway feeling so thankful and grateful and proud and pleased as punch for this thing we had toiled for. This thing we bled for, cried for, lost sleep over. The Airstream is a tangible result of our work, our team work. It’s so special and remarkable. I appreciate it every single moment of every single day.
Anyhow, today I found myself wondering about what special thing you have worked for lately? Big or small. A perfect party dress, a bigger chunk of free time, new nail polish, a house, a horse, land to put a house and horse on…a pair of Frye boots, a truck, a tattoo, a piece of art, a fancy dinner out, a vitamix (!!!), new shoes for your babies, opera tickets, a trip home…tell me about it. If you are in the midst of working hard for something, I want to know about it. I want to be a tiny part of that dream you are bringing true. Will you share?
:::POST SCRIPTUS:::
I feel I should add that I didn’t want this post to be about *listing everything* we want in the comment section like materialistic fiends. I realize not all the examples I listed were purely noble or brilliant in nature…I just spewed out a random list of stuff. I also want to state that I don’t think it’s wrong to want things and have things. Not at all. This is all to say I have been thrilled that of the ten comments left on this post so far, the responses are REAL responses, wonderful responses, from hard working folks. Beautiful dreams. Wonderful success stories. Just what I was hoping for.
I did want to make you stop and think about why you work, or why your spouse works, about life goals and paths because I am in a place where I’m looking broadly at my life and am ready to set fresh goals and take new directions. As always, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Rejoicing in the fruits of (y)our hard-earned labor is a beautiful thing. It’s lovely to see you shine in Miss Maple. She will love you back in kind =)
I continue to chip away at my stories, through the sleepless nights, doubts, niggling gremlins and tears. In those early morning hours I sometimes find myself wishing I could let the stories go, or that the stories/characters would let me go. Life would be simpler. But they don’t, and I can’t, and my heart stutters and gulps at what lies ahead…and I know nothing else will do. So I’ll keep going. And I’ll look forward to my own Miss Maple moment. I’ll bring the bikkies. You can bring the grape juice!
xxx
Dear jillian,
It’s a great pleasure to see you so happy inside Miss Maple (love her name, by the way)and i really understand the price she has for you, in terms of money that she needs but above all in terms of hard work, in terms of choices of life, in terms of what it can represent for YOUR family and your happiness. I’m actually working hard, for the happiness of my family, in an other way, but let me share it with you! We’ve got two daugthers with my husband, Maelle which is 6 and Milla which is 3;and Milla is born deaf.So since she is 10 months we’ve done a lot of hospital, medical appointment…, she has a cochlear implant since she is 18 months. And we also make a very big work with her speech therapist,a wonderfull woman. All of this thakes us a lot of time a lot of energiy, to go through. Cause we have to be here for milla, to help her to listen and to talk, but we have to be here for her sister too,and we have my husband Guillaume and i to be here for each other, because this handicap afects the life of each one of our little family. So we have to work to help each other not to fall down, to be happy with it, to love life still more, to be gratefull to be all four together.All this time and energy we spend has sense, it is not finish already but when we see Milla telling us , mom, i hear a bird! we can’t be more happy and thankfull. So an important aim diserve a big work. Because of my lack of vocabulary i can’t tell you exactlly what i feel, but i hoppe you’ll understand a little part . Take care, Love, Al
Ps. I’ll send you a photo of the root ring in a few time cause we ‘ll be in a few days in the mountains for a little trip with a donkey with the girls….
I want a house. Nothing fancy. Just a little ranch with three bedrooms – one for me, one for my son and one for guests/art studio. I want a small porch and a small yard for my toddler to play. I do want a pleasant neighborhood and a good school for him. I am sick of paying overpriced rent on a 2 bedroom townhouse – it’s getting me nowhere. I want my hardworked for money to go to something valuable – mostly I just want something that is actually ours.
I am a first grade teacher, so I work hard and don’t make as much as others who work equally hard. And daycare is so expensive, but I make too much for a discount. It’s frustrating. I am beginning to explore my art again, mostly photography, illustration and linocutting – but I don’t see how I will have time or resources to make a profit after teaching all day and raising my boy and here and there having a moment to myself . . . someday . . . someday I will have that downpayment ready for our little house . . .
Hello Dear Jillian,
I worked so incredibly hard for academia for a decade… and I’m still not done with my dissertation. Sometimes dreams shift and finding our value in productivity no longer serves, you know? And, academia is such a place of ego and pleasing/appeasing folks just to do that. So, I’m slowly rediscovering my work in academia again, (and pursuing it because I love it- not because I have to) along with my love of art and working with children. I asked a friend where it was I might blend all of these desires… and she though of a teaching school, but I long to have my own business one day. In a large farmhouse, with animals, children and room for art. Yup, still dreaming of all of it.
I am so glad you have met your dream and goal. It’s a lovely thing and hard-earned. xoxo
For me, it’s less a particular item than it is our life in general right now.
Four years ago, we lived under the poverty line in a big way, in one of the poorest areas of my home state of Illinois. We were scraping by on one income – we’d graduated from college right as the recession hit and in a town already flux with out-of-work miners and over-educated service industry workers there just weren’t jobs enough for two of us, and we couldn’t seem to get the money together to make any steps towards anything better; all our money went to rent, and to bills, and to trying to save up to move to Jason’s home state of South Carolina, to the little city he grew up in, where we knew the economy was better and we had a better chance.
We managed to pull the moving money together, showed up in South Carolina with no jobs and six months’ of rent in a bank account, and…
three years after that move I’m sitting in a house WE OWN, looking at my nearly half-acre backyard. We have a dog, we can afford that dog, and he has room to run and play. We’ve got nearly enough saved to buy a new car – and once we’ve got the car we’re going to start trying to have children.
It was anxiety, and fear, and sometimes by the skin of our teeth. Jason got laid off once when his workplace downsized, and had to spend over a year working for the worst boss either of us had ever seen to help us keep saving to get the house. I spent the first year working minimum-wage in a bookstore coffee shop, working my ass off only to be told at my yearly review that there was no chance they would ever pay me enough to live on. I bounced into a call center and back out of it within six months. Now he’s got a good job with good people and so do I. We’re about five years behind our original plans, but we’re still back on the track, and we worked hard to get back there.
So for me, it’s less the house or the dog or the yard than it is my whole LIFE. Four years ago, I was worried we’d be trapped in the poverty cycle our whole lives. Four years ago we had a couple of months where buying the cat’s food was a significant drain on our spending money. Now I’m thinking about replacing my thirteen-year-old hand-me-down car with something brand new, off the lot, because we can put roughly half of it down off the bat.
And I can still make a hell of a mean latte.
Thanks for sharing Jillian! As a reader far away, I didn’t know how you had come to where you are, and it’s mighty impressive! Yay!
I am the most introverted person on the planet I think, terrified of talking to strangers, so I’m working towards acceptance and something else I’m not quite sure of yet. Peace? Strength? I’m getting on a plane in a week and jetting off to Costa Rica by myself…only me and my backpack. Gulp! I have never travelled alone, but it’s something I’ve needed to do for myself for many years.
Nostalgia is a killer, I live in the past (always wrapped up in all the dreams in my mind, unaware of what’s actually happening around me) So on this trip, I am working towards being present; experiencing the immediate life and beauty around me. I will write down all my innermost, crazy thoughts and feelings…and I might just leave that notebook behind for someone to find in the jungle one day…throwing them to the wind!
All the very best to you!
Cristy
Way to go Cristy!! Hope you have a wonderful time. 😀
That’s so brave! Good for you!
Aww thank you so much!! xo
being present!
i love this, Cristy. i have not doubt your trip with be one for the books and open you up in ways never thought possible.
Cristy! May I also point out that you write beautifully! If the first paragraph in a book started out this way i would be hooked and intrigued. More! More! What happens next?!! I admire you for your courage to take a solo trip. Now i am daydreaming too about doing the same! Any time I have taken a trip by myself it has always been food for the soul. May you have the adventure of a lifetime 🙂
Thank you so much for all of your kind words and support ladies! I appreciate it so very much!
Dearest Jillian,
What a lovely conversation to be having! I have watched you for years now, having found you early on when you and that lovely husband of yours were still in Arizona, with Tuba and that brightly pink cabinet-ed kitchen of yours. I have loved watching your accomplishments both in your work and your growth in lifestyle.
I myself am working towards a dream I can just now begin to see. I was never really taught to dream as a child – not in the conventional sense, anyway. My “dreams” were given to me in a sense of concrete goals and choices – not a wide open field of possibilities, which makes learning how to dream in my middle-age years a bit difficult for me. BUT, I am working. I’m working towards learning about more techniques in jewelry and lapidary. I’m working towards being able to leave my 9-5 job that I no longer find any interest in and pursue my own path. I’m working towards living in a new city and a new place with my partner. I’m working towards building a life I am proud of and can revel in – each and every day – and not an existence where I collect property and money and tangible things which I will merely pass on to my yet-to-be-born children. I’m working towards living a life more fully, more experientially, than I have before.
I know it’s not quite as concrete as Miss Maple, but this is what I’m working towards and I am just at the beginning of my path.
Xoxo,
Cathy
Lately I’ve been thinking about what is the next thing I should be workign towards. My thoughts have been mulling over Lasik surgery, a new sports bra (that can really work for my busty self), a trip to Maine, a trip to Iceland, or a pair of summer sandals. Then I think, is this going to be my life? Working like crazy for the next ‘thing’? Which things matter most….?
Very good questions.
I’m not terribly materialistic. In fact, I think less is more and have, for a couple of years now (especially with our lifestyle change), really been whittling down my life in tangible and intangible ways which feels good and freer. However, sometimes having something can pave the way for how I spend my time. Ultimately, I want to be with people I love, or I want to be alone in nature. I work towards the things that will propel me into those spaces better.
Such a beautiful and inspiring post, thank you.
I’m working hard towards a better future for my self and my partner, in fact we both are. After 12 years of working in horribly paid mundane jobs I decided there had to be more to life. So I gave up the security of a monthly pay and became a student. I’ve just passed my second year of my Degree with a 1st after working so hard for 9 months, (early mornings, late nights, time away from partner/family/dog). It’s a struggle, but I love every second of it. My partner is doing the same, pretty soon he’s going to graduate and be out in the world doing some thing he loves and worked so hard for, I have another two years of hard work ahead of me, I can’t wait to doing something I love.
These stories!!!
What strength and dedication. What fear and hope and anxiety and love. I’m cheering for you all! Keep working at it, keep setting goals! I want you all to succeed.
My own goal that I am working for is a farm. My own farm. Grass fed, sustainable, with great care and respect for both the animals that will feed families, and for the land and waterways they are raised from. There is homework, grants to apply for, house and land hunting, tears, small starts, big letdowns, a picking-up-and-dusting-off and starting again. There is hope. And there is progress.
LOVE reading about your dreams, ladies.
Love what Brandi has to say: “There is hope. And there is progress.”
Spot on.
Dear Jillian,
Thank you so much for sharing this story with us. I am so proud of you both! It is a large and beautiful thing that you have accomplished. I am so honoured to be able to hear and see about it.
Right now, I am stripped down to the barest-bones of my wanting. What I want is to have a day where I am mostly living in the present, and am feeling (some) joy and a sense of ease in the world. And after having one, I will start wanting more of those kinds of days in a row. For days, I have been low, low down, having crashed after many, many months of looking (so far unsuccessfully) for work. My best friend, and my mum, have been my anchors. I am trying to work my way back to the self that wanted a meaningful job, and wanted to be a loving part of my community. Right now, I just want to cope.
I feel, especially over the past few days, that the sadness, and fear, and loneliness that have been coursing through me, have been stretching out my soul, coming up from their resting places deep in my bones. I am trying to let them clear me out, pass through, and leave me ready for the next stage, of feeling whole, and wanting complex and beautiful things. I know that I will get there, but for now I am recovering, near the earth, with my small and humble wantings.
It has been so nice to read the other posts here. Thanks for sharing, all.
Hold on! Little goals that you achieve lead to the knowlege and confidence that it can be done, and the courage to set larger ones.
Thanks, Brandi! 🙂
Good on you and R. Good on you.
I was having a hard day at the office the other day — as you know, I work a day job as well as writing. Near tears, I called my friend to tell her that I was feeling overwhelmed and really, really tired. I also added that there were cupcakes in the office that day, and that I was eating a cupcake as we spoke.
“That cupcake,” she said, “is how you get to write your novels.”
I thought that was so very wise. And this post made me think of that.
Love,
E
We’ve been working so hard this year to get what I need to set up metalsmithing at home. I was working out of a metal arts studio that closed down in the late winter. It is something I love, and hope to someday make it part of our income. All that is left is for Mike to make me a bench.
Then, the bigger goal/dream: a house, with land for chickens, and room for my littles to run free in. A place where we can run outside and play in our yard. No more having to get in the car and drive to a playground, or a friend’s house to play outside. Selling at fairs, late nights bending those spoons (Mike is a crazy hard worker). One more year of income to prove to the mortgage guys that we can do it; that this business we have started is a successs, and growing….
You are an inspiration!,
Hello Plume!
I TOTALLY relate to the journey you have completed with your Airstream- completely and entirely. My similarly broad shouldered and attractively-muscled husband and I have spent the last 15 and a half months building a 28 foot, custom-designed sailboat. She holds our hopes and dreams, all our spare time, and our entire savings account. She is a product of our teamwork, funded by hours spent behind the counter at the cafe (my contribution) and hours spent swinging a hammer for someone else’s project (his). We are currently a month or so away from finishing, and She is in my every thought. When She is on the water…. She will be our home, our magic carpet, our dream come true. She is what I work for- why I work. For the freedom of someday, not having to work SO hard.
“When we hooked up the Airstream to the truck in May and hauled it up to Washington, I spent a lot of time looking in the rear-view mirror as we streaked down the highway feeling so thankful and grateful and proud and pleased as punch for this thing we had toiled for. This thing we bled for, cried for, lost sleep over. The Airstream is a tangible result of our work, our team work. It’s so special and remarkable. I appreciate it every single moment of every single day.”
Replace “Airstream” with “Sailboat” and this passage will sum up my feelings this August (Or September…) And I can’t wait.
Thanks, as always, for sharing your lovely words and images. They saturate my mind in beauty.
Sending love along the waves….
B
Congrats! The airstream is beautiful, but I also like that it’s a means to an end – in that it allows you to continue to work and be with your husband during the summer months. What a huge accomplishment! I’m working hard to get myself out of a rut. I spent 2 years in grad school so I could do something meaningful (be a librarian). Unfortunately, it’s a competitive field and I’ve spent the last year looking, applying, interviewing, but not getting. I’ve come oh so close a few times and had my heart broken. So I toil away at a job that is not meaningful because I need to pay the rent. Ultimately, I don’t want things, but a certain kind of lifestyle. A modest home to call my own with a yard and a garden. To belong to smaller community that I can make home. The option to be out in nature on a daily basis and not have to fight heavy city traffic to access it. It’s hard sometimes to keep on keepin’ on. I’m so tired of living in a tiny apartment, with no balcony, in a big city and far from my friends and family. But, I’m paying the bills and keeping my goals in site. Here’s hoping…
I’m loving reading all of these inspired stories…What a wonderful topic to put out there! What I want more than anything is to have my little jewelry biz be my main “work”…I’ve been teaching myself the smithing skills, computer skills, business skills, and “personhood” skills required to make a real go of this thing! My goal is to get to a place where I can say adios to my “real” job, and spend all of my days in my studio, building jewels. The satisfaction I get when I have just one sale every so often is so freakin’ amazing that I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to do it every day and be able to support myself doing it!!!!! DAMN that must feel good~ If I could “make it” as an artist I think I would need nothing else in my life. My material wants will always be there, but as I progress on this path I’m finding that they are less and less as time goes by, and when I think of what I “want”, I always come back to just wanting to quit my job and be able to spend my days in my studio.
Lately I have tried to ‘work’ toward some inkling of an understanding of why I’m here and what lies at the end of the road. As a Canuck, you’ll be familiar with CBC Radio. While driving last night I heard some of Pt. 2 of this series. Food for thought. I don’t feel ‘chosen’, but I liked hearing how people were analyzing and working to understand their lives.
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/06/12/the-chosen-part-1/
and
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2013/06/19/the-chosen-part-2-1/
Your airstream is shiny and bright in all ways.
Working towards freedom from the machine…the daily grind. First, recognition of the need for change. Next, how to accomplish change…and on, and on it goes. Barely even getting started, but people like you make me realize it just might be possible.
Beautiful photo to capture how hard you’ve worked! You can tell your joy is full by the fruits of your labor! I related to this post so much and it encouraged me. It’s nice to hear of others ladies who are working hard for their dreams. I’ve currently started up a business and I’m praying and working and praying and working hard to succeed, profit, and change throughout the process. Love this Miss Plume! God bless lady friend!
Raising a daughter who is a wonderful human being, that will only make the world a better place to live in. Having her later in life, gave her a Mom that needed naps but it also gave her a Mom that had more confidence and life experiences under her belt. I’m far from perfect but I tried to teach by my actions and was available to her when she needed me. She just graduated from high school last week so been doing a lot of reflecting lately.
It is so uplifting to read about the success stories and also the struggles we all go through at various times in our lives. I empathize with the women that are struggling on a day to day basis to simply feel joy because life is wearing them down so low and then feel joy and happiness for the women that are achieving their goals and for whom life is going well at the present. Hopefully I do not sound like an old lady for saying that life will be filled with these ups and downs and that although making goals help to give us direction in our lives – life itself often dictates the success of these goals. No matter how hard we work, or how much we strive for something important and meaningful in our lives – life will often read you another story – and that will be the story of your life. For some reason I have been learning about loss and displacement which has taught me that I need less things than I thought I needed AND that I need the people in my life more than I thought I needed them. The last four or five years of my life has taught me humility, strengthened my faith and stretched my capacity for love and patience.
I love reading your posts Jillian – they are poetic, open, honest and generously spirited.
The fact that you provoke these thoughts and evaluations on the lives of your readers bear witness of that generosity and love.
Good luck with your new plans and goals – may they soar to success!
With much love and thanks
xx
Hey Darlin’,
We just ‘unloaded’ our ‘monster’ 2700sqft. home to a quaint purposeful 806sqft. You’ll have to come visit us in Lil’ Norway. It’s all about being intentional. xx ;-*
Came over to your blog from Fawned Friday and loved reading this post. What an accomplishment to work towards something and know that you earned it. I think things are that much more meaningful when you have to work and save for them. My husband and I are in the middle of prioritizing some of our big plans/purchases. Other than praying about them, I’m not really sure what to do to figure it out. Any tips?
Bryan and I are so close to paying our house off this year that we are foregoing any vacations( really jonesing for one though!)We get more excited each month as we send in our check. We have plans to build a house and my own studio in the backyard in the near future so after this house is paid we’ll be saving,saving saving.
Most often, I want a paycheck for my words and photographs, it doesn’t have to be big, though I certainly wouldn’t mind. That desire for outside validation and belief in me rings so loudly in my ears. Then I want what IS and whatever comes to be enough, a sense of being whole without the fulfillment of my desires, that the doing is enough. And I want not to feel so sad about it and not to cry so often. Big things, really. Thanks for asking. Thanks for caring. Thanks for sending out so much love.
I have to tell you all that I love your stories! I have been lurking in this space for a good while now and never commented, but while sitting here at work (living vicariously through your beautiful selves) I nearly cried reading about hard work paying off! Right now I am struggling – working hard, but not sure how to translate that hard work into “my” life. You know that life? The one you dream of, but don’t know how to create? That’s the one I’m working for… and maybe soon I’ll have an epiphany that will lead me to a plan. But for now, I continue to work and to read your stories of triumph. Thank you all for sharing – you made this gal’s day!
After a five year sabbatical from the culinary industry I was lucky enough to be hired at the most perfect job working at a bed and breakfast on a 100 acre homestead. It was everything I had dreamed of in the past years as I diligently worked in kitchen after kitchen. The competitive schooling, the battling up the ladder, the 16 hour days, the sweat, the burns, the tears had all paid off. I was ready to leave my cushy, mundane, “desperate housewife” life (as some friends called it) to rejoin that grueling lifestyle again.
The first day on the job something clicked…what drove me five years before, did not necessarily drive me today. I had become a total and completely different person. I was that “desperate housewife” who lives in a house (literally surrounded by a picket fence), who has a hard working husband, a wee one and a fiddly part time job. I left the position two days later-volunteering my service and resigning because I thought they deserved someone who was like me five years ago, someone with that drive and fire.
I realized after those three days of hard work that I actually loved my life. Absolutely and completely. I sat on my steps realizing new dreams too. It is now up to me to fulfill that next chapter.
Thank you all, so much, for these huge, awesome, honest shares. I wish I could respond to each and every single one, but my internet connection here at the LCITW is tempestuous. It’s like a sporadically leaky faucet. No. It’s like a three toed sloth with only two toes instead of three. NO! It’s like a blind grizzly bear with four peg legs trying to gallop up a mountain slope. It’s, quite possibly, a little worse than dial-up.
Anyway.
I digress.
I just wanted to tell you all that I’ve read every single comment here and I’m proud of you, I’m rooting for you, it may seem like the hard work is never going to end, never going to pay off, but it will. Don’t quit. And bless your hearts, every single one.
XX
Ohhhh….working hard to realize a dream. We have found our dream coming alive in our own piece of property. A lifelong dream of searching, debating, and now a reality. The task that lies ahead seems great and wonderful all at the same time. Here’s to all types of hard work. May we keep each other strong!
Can you do a photo shoot of the workshop.
Better yet, swing bye and I’ll do a shoot on it for you..
Yes.
I can.
And I will.
These posts are so motivational to read. I find that I am often guilty of talking more than doing – I want to work hard and dream and work to achieve those dreams, but at the end of a long day you come home and it is so much easier to lay down and forget about the stress of the day and all those other things you desire to achieve… I love learning and have realized recently that I am happiest when I am learning multiple things at a time, much like I was in college. In addition to my third grad school class (Environmental Hydrology), I am simultaneously reading the autobiography of Madeline Albright (foreign policy), The Happiness Project (how to take small actions to be happier!) and just started learning the clawhammer banjo. Stretching all these different parts of my brain while working as a landscape architect and training new LAs is exhilarating – and exhausting – but keeps me interested in life and helps me from the complacency of laying on the couch. Which is great to do at times too!
I work to stay thankful, to be filled with gratitude, to remember the joy. I work to keep a simple life that is filled with acceptance and minimal regrets. Be well, Kaylin
To breathe in and then to breathe out like the wind. To see limitlessness pour out of these hands. To understand I’m human, and yet a shared soul with abilities of which I only dreamt as a shy and castigated child. To be redeemed beyond any amount of outside shaming. To simplify as the simplicity of a single drop of water. To love as many things as possible until this body leaves this Earth.
I cheer you on from where I stand. Thanks for being so successful in what you do.
I just found your blog and I have to let you know how much I love it, your story is so inspiring and I love reading through these comments as well!
Right now, I am plugging away at the computer trying to get to a 100% debt free life so I can live a more self-sufficient lifestyle with my partner. I want to spend more of our time outside, camping, hiking, taking photos, living small and simple. I’m working on generating more passive income so we can live life to the fullest and spend our days doing what we love most (and writing about it, of course).
I mostly lurk, very appreciatively, here, but you’ve inspired me to finally comment.
I am working just now to restore my equilibrium. My kids are mostly flown and the nest is almost empty here, that takes some adjusting to. I have health problems and money worries and they’ve been crushing my creativity. I seem to have lost sight of the artist and artisan I used to be. So this summer I have given myself permission to just play and to see where that takes me, to allow myself total freedom for three months and hope to reconnect with with my art. It’s harder work than I thought it would be, but already I think, hope, it’s working.
Thank you all, again, for being part of this space, for sharing the dream behind what you are working for right now. I have read over this comment section, in full, multiple times now and am inspired by your strength and verve. Deeply. Thanks for being here. And for being open.
X
i started out waiting and watching, and now finishing up the ‘working’. i recently bought for myself something i need. and what i want. a little cottage of my own. to share with my big red dog. i can see the light at the end of the tunnel. with this house, i will rebuild my life. after this, all i will need are a few amusements. trifles. a lemondrop martini. new brown sandals. a weekend at a lake. an artsy magazine. i am full and satisfied. i thank the universe everyday. even for the crows that are hosting a mad symphony outside my window. keep working, beautiful ladies. and keep asking for what you want. you will get it. claw and fight for the good you deserve. i have been in the proverbial gutter several times in my life. i don’t know how i got there this time. i didn’t even see it coming. just over a year ago my health was failing (my best girl thought i needed to apply for disability), angry at work, overwhelmed with a controlling husband, and thoroughly deflated. i have risen again.
Phoenix.
XX
to let go of him
After being bullied for a year at a recent job, I mustered up all my strength and left.
I feel good about standing up for myself in such a matter, but it’s something I am still working through everyday.
Sometimes I cry.
Sometimes I am frustrated.
Sometimes I am just plain miserable.
But I know that there is a reason for what I have done, and also that so much happiness and love is awaiting me in another position. Somewhere where I can feel like I belong and not ridiculed and put down everyday.
Small steps.
HUGE changes on the horizon.
I trust the universe and myself to get through this and move forward with joy. <3