ARGH! What have I done?!

Yeah, let's have a little freakout. I'm working on a commissioned project and I'm thinking, "No big deal, I'll grid it out and wham, bam, I'll be done with it." What the hell was I thinking? I abandoned the grid system. It seemed stupid and silly and I deemed it impossible to pencil in a layered wash. I've set the timer, so I can track my hours more accurately, but since chucking the grid, I keep forgetting to turn it on. I'm struggling on this one. Maybe I'm being resilient to order and structure or maybe I'm just being an ornery bad ass.

Tuesday was busy. First off, Kristi came over to pick up a painting that sold and I served her a fine cup of coffee accompanied by 100-year old piece of raisin bread from my freezer. (I HAVE to get to the store.) We chatted about some business stuff. Art world politics are still a mystery to me. I'm not that much into astrology, but as an Aries, I'm on the verge of shooting myself in the foot on a daily basis. There's something that's still bugging me (albeit less and less) and I know there are three choices: I can play nice and let it go or I can speak my mind and never work in this town again. My gut instinct is always the second choice However, the third choice is that I let it go and secretly think, they'll never work in this town again.

After KE left, I had to go on the other side of town to meet my divorce lawyer. I'm lame. I completed most of the paperwork, but the whole stack looked like it was put together by a drunken spider. And then, of all days to be running 5 minutes late and NOT take the motorcycle. Traffic finally came to a standstill downtown. I was stuck in the same place for over a half hour. Cars are jumping the median. I considered it, even went so far as to turn the wheels, but no, I'm in the fancy, impractical car and there's no way in hell I'm gonna jump a curb in that thing, so I wait. My first thought was a traffic accident- it's the freeway after all, but for some odd reason, and I will chalk this up to my psychic powers, I had a flashback of when I first moved to Chicago and was living with a friend in Skokie. They lived just off the 94, aka The Edens expressway. Traffic had come to a standstill and didn't move for about 2-3 hours. Some guy had pulled a gun on himself in the middle of the freeway. I can't remember if anyone was in the car with him or what the deal was, but it was a buzzkill for everyone's evening commute. So I'm sitting in traffic on the 110 North thinking about the suicide guy in Chicago and it turns out there's a bridge jumper less than a mile away from me. Firetrucks, oodles of cops- he jumped and they caught him in the tarpy thing and he lived. I, on the other hand, was an hour late to the lawyer's and missed another appointment altogether. I could hear the sound of the cash register at the lawyer's office. I have no idea what the point of that visit was, yet we had a conversation for which I will be billed. I could have mailed her the paperwork. I had buyer's remorse the whole time I was there. Then to boot, she asks if I am teaching for the fall and I still don't know and she's says, "If it were me, I'd be nervous." No, really, ya think? I missed a 3 o'clock meeting back at my studio, but got back in time to meet a friend and another artist for dinner.

Okay, as amazingly personal and revealing as I am on this blog, I try to not sound totally nuts, but here goes. I think of myself as highly intuitive although I never associated this trait with my art until a secret conversation I had with my advisor in grad school. She brought it up, saying that my work was intuitive and even though it was an incredibly uncool thing to acknowledge, to go with it. But instead of making a connection between art and intuition, I've always associated this trait with my mother. And because of this, I was never gung-ho on being intuitive. In fact, I found it quite annoying. Whenever I told her something she would tell me she had a "feeling" I was going to say that. I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes and yet, I too, have these moments of precog. I assume everyone does, but maybe not. This is all to say, that when someone asks me if I'm nervous about not having a teaching schedule locked down, I feel compelled to reply, well, yes, but really in the back of my head, I'm not. As little as I DO get out and leave my compound, I do meet people and sometimes those meetings result in fortuitous events. Even when I don't leave my studio, I make connections with people. At this point in my life, I'm 90% sure I'm spending a good portion of my time productively going in a forward direction. I was supposed to be in the studio 30 minutes ago, but the extra few minutes it took to write this paragraph may fit into the bigger picture somewhere. That's my theory today.

Now I'm off to the studio to tackle the painting. I have an ice cream break planned around 3 pm and I HAVE to go grocery shopping tonight. Tonight's reward will be The Wire. Season 5: Disk 4

There's also some grant app and job apps I NEED MUST HAVE to apply for and bills to pay. I'm busy, it's all good, but I could really use an assistant this week. This weekend is busy too.