Reflections of Getting Unstuck and Resistance

 Before I move on to the next experiment, it feels appropriate to close out the past month's lesson. 

Perhaps more profoundly, we've moved now into a new year. 2022 has arrived with a lot of baggage; and yet, the sky is lightening earlier in the morning. The snow has melted for now, new projects are in the works and another holiday season is behind us. 

My thoughts and reflections on being stuck and resistance haven't changed but I will say that both of these sentiments seem to be permeating my life right now. COVID has made many of us feel like we are in holding patterns - if we're lucky. If we aren't lucky, we're experiencing freefall and have no idea how to land safely because so many things are impacting our lives adversely. We, as human beings, are incredibly resistant to holding those with different values (and news sources) with compassion. Black and White thinking, as Kelly calls it - its one thing or the other. The nuances and other choices seem to have disappeared. But what can we expect if we live siloed in our echo chambers? Maybe this is also profoundly exasperated when the collective bandwidth has narrowed so direly. Our collective trauma has made us all brittle and unable to hold the multiple perspectives as valid. Not as "truth" but simply as valid.

I'm not sure where this country of ours is headed. The disparate values and beliefs are tearing us apart with very little common ground for us to find.  We are stuck in a toxic cycle and we are resistant to any attempts to change that. The men and women who stood in the middle, respected by all, seem to be gone.

So I can choose kindness and compassion and hope. I can choose to be empathetic without agreeing. I can keep trying to listen into the gray areas beyond the sound bites of the public media industry.

I can keep looking out into the world and find what I love - and bring it home to my studio in color, fabric, pen, and paper.

As far as dealing with artistic stuckness: This is why I started this course in the first place. I've been inspired to experiment - to sketch, draft, play with paints and color - without having to have a finished piece as the outcome.  I've begun just sitting down with my sewing machine and scrap fabric - and sewing pieces together. All of the above give me the sense of moving forward rather than being stagnant or stuck. Its a frame of mind, really. In the end, to actually DO - helps me feel productive.