"I See Potential For Virtual Assistants Already"

That sound you are hearing is the big guffaw that I am having over myself. I am at that point where rubber meets the road, And I am afraid there are going to be tire tracks all over my back. Seriously, see this small mountain of non painting that I need to do so the painting can get to market? It is not the only stack. There are two notebooks there and 5 more on the shelf, not to mention the other two shelves of "source material" that I need to wade through for "content".

So I was checking the photo to see if anything that should not be public was readable. Oops, potentially one right there. That little blue note on the bottom right hand corner...see, yeah, just down there, the long horizontal sky blue one. It reads: "I see the potential for virtual assistants already. " DUH. And an in person one wouldn't be bad either. Nope not too personal. Just true. I had to laugh. Because the note echoes my feelings at the moment. I am shaking my head, and actually thinking about what Karen Swim said yesterday in comments in response to my routines and ladders post. And I am thinking about those ladders.

When I made the decision to "write " in public, I really did not know what I was getting into. It began as another experiment. Why write? Because throughout my career that has been a sticking point. Artists always need writing about them, about their work , about their process. It was a weakness of mine. Hated that part. I have friends who are writers, very good ones. Pulitzer nominated good. And I had a dear friend intimately involved with publishing the New York Times ( my favorite paper as you know which I STILL haven't read from Sunday and is probably why I am so , uh, out of sorts). Writing and good reading are a huge part of my life. Just as painting is and good art in any form.

So that note made me laugh. It was telling me , hey, you ARE a little swamped. It is okay to feel a little overwhelmed. ( I wrote it to myself after Nick Cernis's review of VA's. ) It is a note to self. So here's the kicker. In painting when I sense a weakness in my technique, or a preference against a certain palette or art form, I try to go toward it. John Scott, (my MacArthur Genius Award mentor ( so he's smart right? ) always said go toward what you don't know, there's where the good stuff is in your work.

So here I am swamped, in the middle of pulling the painting out no matter what is going on. Rebuilding, relearning, readapting to just everything and I am considering this: writing a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. WHAT?! She is absolutely bonkers. Am I nuts? Well I am very tired of all this uncertainty and want to get over myself about this writing thing that has plagued me my entire career. I am going to blame Sean and James and Harry of course. For even putting it in front of me. And maybe all those swaggering alpha male writers I know. We all know they are trouble with a capitol T.

Somehow, it is very tied into the painting. Maybe it is the path to integrating this chapter of my life. I am uncomfortable, I am swamped, I am bursting to get to the next place. The work is stirring around inside me still. Begging to move up a notch, move forward, change, or perhaps just intensify. Perhaps, wrestling a few thousand words will ease the way while I paint. We'll see. I think it is a ladder against one of the walls I'm scaling. And I want that paint, those marks to flow with certainty and confidence born from that place of experience I could not have tapped into a year ago, or even a few months ago. I am kind of shaking at the thought....so I must be on to something. Sheesh.

How do you deal with things you aren't so great at, but need for your work?