The Life and Times of the Plume
I Love Your Soul
Sorry for the short notice, I meant to post this for you last night but time managed to get away from me! I am stocking my shop shelves today around 4PM (mountain time zone, please). I am only offering rings today — none of the necklaces or earrings I have been previewing will make it into this batch of listings. ONLY RINGS. Thank you all so much for your generous interest in my work and for your kind support.
Warmly,
Jillian
Slow and steady is the motto in the studio right now as I chip away at building you a new batch of work. While I have been listing new offerings at random since I switched over to the new shop space, I have had some requests for a scheduled update lately and I think I’ll acquiesce to those requests before shifting back into random shop stocking mode. Hang tight for details regarding the date and time and as always, thank you so much for supporting me in my work.
I’m having a hard summer, harder than usual. This is my thirteenth consecutive season as a wildland fire wife and I’m ready to admit to the world that I am tired. Moreover, I worry that Robbie and I are going to look back at these thirteen years and feel like we spent too much of our thirties on being slaves to the flames. Today, I’m dealing with a great and thorny burden of resentment in my black, black heart…I have this overwhelming sense that this lifestyle is asking too much of me, requiring me to sacrifice too much, and I’m not sure what exactly I’m making these sacrifices for. I spend the fire season toiling through varying degrees of chaos and somehow I figure out a way to juggle my responsibilities and make everything work but this week, I hit the wall. I said yes to a really great opportunity one month ago and it has become clear that this one specific thing is the straw that is breaking the camel’s back — it’s pushing the rest of my life off axis. I am, everything here is, the definition of entropy.
I’ve reached critical mass when it comes to my brain and body and emotional bandwidth and everything all around me is exploding. I sent out a resignation email last night, weeping as I wrote it for the pain of lost opportunity, for the agony of having to turn my back on a commitment, for the excruciating feeling that I am letting people down…sullying my reputation…withdrawing from a thing that was bound to be great…the ache of not being ABLE to be a part of that great thing. I’m heartbroken. And I’m angry, too, if I can allow myself to write that here. Angry at the fire season and angry about everything it demands I sacrifice year after year. I’m not going to dwell in this place of anger, I’m going to deal with it, I’m going to sweat it out of my body, I’m going to exhale it, I’m going to release it, I’m going to talk about it with my closest people, but first, I just really needed to acknowledge it for exactly what it is. I’m mad. I’m sad, too. But today I’m really, really mad.
Up on the mountain tops, behind most wildland firefighters, is someone like me who is giving up large portions of summer, of life, of opportunity so that your trees don’t burn, your homes don’t burn, your rangeland doesn’t burn, your public lands don’t burn. Today, I just need the world to know about it.
