Compiègne Eeeeep. It’s November. Not even early November. Two weeks until Thanksgiving November.
It’s been a while, I know. I don’t know what happened. Well, actually I do. Life happened. Three of the four people living under this roof having birthdays, family pictures in the forest preserve, hockey games, and making beer in our kitchen happened. Day trips to Apple Fest, Halloween, and raking massive amounts of leaves happened. Sick kids happened. My day job, new weekend painting instructor job, contributing to Indie Gift Box, working on my Etsy shop, and a couple of freelance design projects happened. October was nothing if not FULL. Full, but also really good.
Complaining about being busy is really lame. I admit to doing it (more often than I like to admit)…but yeah, lame. Busy is good. It may be slightly stressful at times, and I do have a tendency to take projects on until I’m half crazy, but at the same time, I love everything I’m doing. I love my crazy home life and my family. I adore my new job being an instructor for a BYOB painting studio (wine and acrylics…what’s not to love?) I love working on slowly expanding my art business. I don’t HAVE to do freelance work or contribute to Indie Gift Box, or have an Etsy shop or a blog. But I do these things because they give me a huge sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. I love creating, and I love sharing it. I’m grateful that I have freelance projects to work on, and I’m glad that I have money coming in.
The important thing, and the thing I kept reminding myself over the last month, is that I do all these things because I want to. They shouldn’t be a huge source of stress in my life. So in October, I let life happen around me, caught my breath, and now that things have slowed down for a minute, here I am. I even had time to make this little rainbow kaleidoscope design, which I’m pretty pleased with. It was so nice to sit in front of the computer and create something for myself, for no other reason than because I wanted to make something. After being unemployed for almost six months, starting two new jobs at basically the same time and adjusting to juggling everything again was a bit of a challenge, but I finally feel like I’m back in control.
So, here we go again…