I’d been sick for a long time. Like really long. Eventually I was diagnosed with a rare pituitary disorder. I managed for a few more years but about two years later I became so ill that I was forced to leave my long time job at the public library . Talk about dream jobs!
I was living in a one room cabin with no insulation in Vermont, I only had wood heat and no running water. It was October and those first few months of being home alone with nothing but my illness and my feelings were brutal. I was spending a lot of time on social media, as one does, I happened upon a couple of people who were making art every day throughout the year.
As the first of the year approached I decided to give it a try myself fully expecting to fail or flake out or hate it. Instead what happened changed my life. Art became my elixir, the escape from the pain in my body, my way to connect to joy and meaning now that I wasn’t working or even able to leave my bed many days.
That year was a trial and error, YouTube taught, art school intensive and I went from someone who hadn’t taken an art class since I was a child to someone who was painting and drawing and sculpting and block printing. It was life altering. Something about posting to Instagram every day forced me to get past my embarrassment at being a beginner and my first tries and my horrible failures (or at least what I saw as failures,)
I’ve since come to think of all creations of the human hand as beautiful. (My Instagram is @scoffsatgravity and that year was 2016 if you’d like to check it out)
I spent nearly five years very ill. I eventually moved out of my cabin. All the while maintaining a daily art practice, though I don’t post about it every day any more. What has changed is my health. I am MUCH more healthy and getting stronger every day and using that newfound energy to spend even more hours of the day making art.
Sometimes I wonder when someone favorites something on my Etsy shop at 12am and I get a notification if they know how much it means to me that something I created connected with them. Your support means more than I can actually say. Thank you.