Failure Is Not An Option-- It's the Process

Scraps of the Past, or Ann Arbor Light Post

Welcome back.

Or rather, welcome me back.

I've spent the week and more packing, moving and unpacking, finally settling back into my own place after a gypsy life this last couple of years.

It feels odd, but good. All sorts of plans and visions are bubbling to the surface... but I literally have no place to put them yet. I need book shelves and tables and dressers and all that mish mosh. I also figuratively have not place to put them, my mind is a whirlwind of all there is to do.

But what does this blog title mean?

It's been an upside down, trying to make things work last few years. In some lights, it would be easy to see it all as a failure... but I can't.

I have learned too much, grown too much, started to become the me I always wanted to be.

It's the failures that teach you the most. It's the sutmbles where you learn to pick yourself up. It's figuring out what doesn'twork that helps you undestand what does work. And when you mess up, fall on your head, need to ask for help, have to come up with new solutions... well that's when you discover that failure is not the end of the world and you are stronger and more creative than you thought you were.

This is what living creatively is about. It's about seeing the possibilities in the disaster. It's about recreating what is not satisfying into something that feels right. it's about envisioning what you want to have in your life and making it come real on that blank page.

I am getting back to my art. I am getting back to my writing. I am finishing up unfinished projects. I am getting a studio where I can paint big and make messes and be afraid and not be afriad of being afriad. I have come from a place where I have screwed up, and found wisdom and joy and growth and peace within the mistakes. I am still making mistakes, but I'm trying to have faith.

And I'm doing all these things while getting ready to paint and old dresser teal and hang circus stripe curtains in the kids room, and buying an awesome new kitchen table and doing all the things that make a house cozy. I am working on it all.

In the craziness that is my rumpled life.

I may not have the time. Or perhaps I'll make the time, and damn the mistakes, the anxiety, the fear.

Oh, I'm also putting prints back in my shop. HOORAY! Flying Girl is home.